76-291 Getting Heard/Making a Difference

9 units, Carnegie Mellon University

How can a college student get people to pay attention to a problem, whether it is a personal, social, environmental, ethical, or public issue In particular, how do people who dont already have what is called standingsuch as the authority or credentials to speakget their community to listen In this course you will learn how to create real dialogue and carry out effective not simply adversarial engagement within a university and later in your professional lives. It introduces you to the rhetorical art of savvy, issuecentered social engagement. Drawing on research, theory, and our own campus investigation, we will try out methods for collecting competing perspectives, for framing a shared actionable problem, and for creating wellsupported, persuasive and motivating accounts in proposals, reports, editorials, stories, or media. The theory and strategies we study are designed to create what is called a rhetorical presence for your ideas, to put them into circulation, and help create a more engaged local public. This course meets the Dietrich College Communicating Gen Ed requirement.

Prerequisites: none listed

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