Teaching is an important component of your graduate education. Training and mentoring are provided both before and throughout your teaching assignments.  

Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) Assignments

Communication and Media students begin teaching in their second year of graduate studies, during the first term of teaching, students enroll in COMM 993 for pedagogical training and support.

COMM students are expected to teach during one Spring or Summer term as an instructor of record for either an existing COMM course or a course of their own design. This is traditionally during the Sp/Su of their third year. 

GSI Opportunities In Communication and Media

Other courses may be available periodically, but this list reflects the standard, regular courses that are taught in the department annually.

• COMM 101. The Media Past and Present. This class provides an introduction to the evolution and impact of the mass media and digital media on American culture.  Because the media have been, since the late 19th century, the major storytellers of our time, we will focus on the stories they have told us over the years, and provide you with important stories about the media, past and present. We will review the ideological, technological, industrial, and regulatory developments that have produced our existing media ecosystem, and consider how media content has, over the years, inspired considerable controversy over who should get to tell stories through the media and should not. Our goal is to provide you with a sense of the strong connections between the history of the mass media and their present-day formations and uses in the United States, and to provide you with the critical tools and language to deconstruct their storytelling assumptions and techniques. 

• COMM 102: Media Processes and Effects. Despite dramatic changes in the media landscape, we still take the media for granted. Having access to information, communication, and content through media is an increasingly important part of the social landscape. Starting with its historical roots, this class traces the uses and consequences of mediated messages and communication technology. The class emphasizes research that has developed within the social science tradition. In that sense, it complements COMM101, which emphasizes developments from critical and cultural studies. Throughout the term, students will have opportunities to both learn and directly experience social science research on the uses and consequences of today’s and yesterday’s media.

• COMM 221: Quantitative Skills for Communication Studies. This course explores the basic principles of scientific research. Students explore different ways scientific studies are designed, quantitative data collection methods, and data analysis related to mass communication. We explore a variety of techniques and assess assumptions researchers make in these techniques. Students learn to recognize what can and cannot be concluded in our examinations. These skills will also help when encountering scientific information in real-world settings. 

• COMM 230: Principles of Advertising. This course examines the role of advertising in shaping people's preferences and behaviors, considering the conditions under which advertising can (and cannot) influence people's decisions. The course will also address over-time changes in the use of advertising, as well as advertising across different platforms. 

• COMM 261: Views on the News. This course offers an in-depth examination of the role of journalism and news in our society. During the semester we will focus on how news differs from other types of information we encounter. We will learn how news is made and think about how the news we see is shaped by multiple individual, organizational, political, economic, or technical factors, many of which are unseen. The course will emphasize how technological changes have altered not only how audiences receive and engage news but also how journalists conduct their work. We will discuss the importance of having a free and open press in a democratic society. The goals for this course are to better understand what news is, why it is important, and to think critically about the role of journalism in our society and in your own life. 

• COMM 281: Media Psychology.  This course covers research and theory on the uses and effects of media. Emphasis is on psychological processes, such as those involved in media selection and appreciation and the facilitation or inhibition of media effects on individuals' attitudes, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors. We examine a variety of topics, keeping in mind the role that individual differences and structural phenomena play in media representation, exposure, reception, and effects. Throughout, we will focus on the complexities of developing and executing media effects research. 

• COMM 324. Political Communication. This course examines the role of political communication in a democratic society. We draw on social science work at the intersection of media and politics to look at how the behaviors of journalists, politicians, and citizens influence the overall democratic process in a digital age. The course explores the political media environment, with a specific focus on how citizens use digital media to both produce and consume political content, and to both build up and tear down democratic institutions. 

• COMM 341. Fashion and Media. This course introduces the critical study of fashion in media and culture. It provides a framework for studying how fashion, as a multitrillion-dollar global industry and a significant component of everyday life, helps structure social relations and functions as a site of identity construction. We develop theoretical, analytical, and methodological approaches to studying fashion and fashion media, drawing on interdisciplinary readings that place questions of identity and power in conversation with matters of representation, technology, the environment, labor, and the law. 

• COMM 345. Communication Science Health, and Environment. From advertisements to individual conversations with doctors, from academic journals to comics to video games, from lab notes to Instagram to TikTok, communication plays a fundamental role. This course is devoted to developing an understanding of the prevalence, challenges, significance, and applications of communication in science, health, and environment. We will explore theories, models, contexts, perspectives, research findings, and “real world” experiences in areas such as media portrayals, public opinion, health disparities, science literacy, journalism, marketing, museums, social movements, and citizen science.

• COMM 348. Media and the Body. This course fulfills the Upper Level Writing Requirement. It requires the GSI to take WRITING 993 through the Sweetland Center for Writing before or during the semester teaching the course. This course explores the way the human body is portrayed within, and influenced by, commercial and social media. Built on a foundation of original social scientific studies and book chapters, the course covers a wide range of issues divided into five segments: the ideal body, the sexual body, the body of color, the athletic body, and the audience body. Gender is not the focus of the course but appears as a theme throughout the segments. 

• COMM 370. Social Networks. This course fulfills the Upper Level Writing Requirement. It requires the GSI to take WRITING 993 through the Sweetland Center for Writing before or during the semester teaching the course. This course introduces the theoretical perspectives and practical applications of the study of social networks, including friendship networks, political discussion networks, social support networks, organizational networks, disease transmission networks, and online social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Students will have the opportunity to learn the basic network concepts and theories, such as network size, density, centrality, contagion, and diffusion. The emphasis of the course will be placed on the impact of emerging media and communication technologies on the creation, maintenance, and expansion of social networks. 

GSI Opportunities In Other Departments

Students in Communication and Media occasionally teach in other departments as a way to increase their professional breadth of experience. This is especially true for students with formal links in other departments through a certificate or joint degree, but it can also be an option for other students to expand their experience and strengthen their CV.  We encourage students to take initiative in applying for GSI opportunities in Sweetland Writing Center.

Teacher Training and Support

Communication and Media Mentoring and Support 

The Department has several built-in structures and roles to provide mentoring and support for GSIs. These include meetings as well as faculty and student mentoring positions. 

The Associate Chair of Graduate Studies (ACGS) 

The ACGS is responsible for training and support of all GSIs in the department. The ACGS is the faculty supervisor for COMM 993. 

Graduate Student Mentor (GSM)

The GSM works with the ACGS to support Communication and Media graduate students in their teaching and in their work as GSIs. The GSM is available to consult with all COMM graduate students about matters related to course design, pedagogy, evaluation, and classroom best practices and is familiar with other resources on campus for teaching. 

The Center for Research of Teaching and Learning (CRLT)

CRLT offers programs and services designed to support graduate students in all stages of their teaching careers from training for their first teaching experiences through preparation for the academic job market.  These include campus-wide GSI orientations, Mid-term Student Feedback consultations, and the U-M Graduate Teacher Certificate.