Courses

NOTE: This site is an archive of 2010–2011 programs and policies at Boston University Metropolitan College. If you are looking for current information about Metropolitan College and its programs, please go to our official website: www.bu.edu/met.

• MET CM 701: Contemporary Public Relations
  Provides an overview of the professional principles and practices in public relations for corporate, governmental, agency and nonprofit organizations. Includes history, organization, and scope of the field; its roots in social science; types of campaigns and programs; and professional ethics. Theories, strategies, and tactics in current practice emphasized and applied to health communication. Explores opportunities and requirements for work in the field. Students will learn to apply the basic public relations campaign planning model and examine public relations specialty practice areas including media relations, community relations, government relations, crisis communication, investor relations and employee communication.
• MET CM 704: Contemporary Mass Communication
  Overview of and current trends in the contemporary mass media labor force. Topics include career opportunities in print, film, broadcast, and digital media; changing relationships between media; contemporary patterns of ownership and audience attention; how the media select their content, how they are financed, and how they are related to agencies of control; and ethical issues and controversies regarding media content and influences.
• MET CM 707: Writing for Media Professionals
  Introduction to basic formats, including news releases, editorials, features, profiles, scripts, and basic copy qualities such as readability, clarity, crispness, color, and organization. Emphasis on developing the ability to write copy for varied audiences. Regular writing assignments; considerable rewriting. Includes lead writing, editing, and interviewing.
• MET CM 708: Principles and Practices of Advertising
  Overview of the nature, function, practice, and social, economic, and behavioral aspects of advertising. Student teams develop advertising plans, create campaigns, and explore problems of account management, creativity, production, and ethics.
• MET CM 711: Consumer Insight and Account Planning
  Grad Prereq: MET CM 708 Explores how to arrive at consumer insights that lead to better advertising and promotion. The course focuses on the set of skills necessary to create breakthrough advertising, including qualitative research, observation, interviewing skills, mapping, and presentation tools. Students learn to write effective creative briefs.
• MET CM 716: Computers in Communication
  Introduction to the personal computer as a tool for human communication. Shows how computers are used to design, produce, and deliver communication in publishing, advertising, entertainment, and education. Students learn to use basic computer tools to build works of communication in a variety of media, including text, images, numbers, sound, and video.
• MET CM 717: Fundamentals of Creative Development
  Examines the creative process in advertising, including concept development, copywriting, layout, and campaign strategies. Emphasis is on print advertising, but radio and television commercials are also included. Assignments include consumer and trade advertisements for both new and mature products.
• MET CM 719: Interactive Marketing Communications
  An overview of the theories, practices, and techniques in the emerging field of interactive marketing communications (IAMC). Students gain an understanding of the strategy and tactics of IAMC and its place in the more comprehensive field of marketing communications. In addition, students review IAMC’s relationship to and its effects on society, culture, and the economic system. The course will explore almost all the ways interactive marketing can be practiced via the Internet: historical introduction, dotcom era, basic principles, database marketing, etail, email, search (SEO & SEM/PPC), display advertising, social networking, gaming, mobile, et al.
• MET CM 721: Advertising Management
  Prereq: MET CM 708 Administration of a complete advertising program. Case study method used to explore the marketing mix, budgeting, media strategy, planning, coordinating advertising with promotion, working with client or agency, and the social responsibility of advertisers.
• MET CM 726: Strategic Brand Solutions
  Explores the impact of current advertising/marketing issues from business, economic, political, social, legal, and ethical perspectives. Modified case method, with lectures from experts on selected issues.
• MET CM 727: Portfolio Development for Advertising
  A course for students intending to work in the creative area of the advertising industry. Throughout the semester, students develop a portfolio of advertising campaigns for presentation during their search for employment at advertising agencies. Print and broadcast ads are designed to provide solutions to clients' marketing problems.
• MET CM 734: Contemporary Health Care Marketing
  This course provides an in-depth understanding of the essential concepts of marketing and their application to health care. Students gain a working knowledge of marketing tools (such as pricing, promotion, channels, consumer behavior, brand equity, and segmentation) and how to use them. Students build practical applied skills in analyzing marketing problems and developing marketing programs and strategies, with particular attention to health care and its organizational structures, financing, technologies, market demands, laws, and regulations. Students also expand their understanding of the differences and similarities between marketing in for-profit and not-for-profit health care organizations, and they increase their appreciation of the role of data collection, analysis, interpretation, and management in marketing decisions.
• MET CM 736: New & Traditional Media Strategies
  Prereq: MET CM 708 Examines media planning, buying and sales as performed by advertising agencies, clients, and the media. Research sources providing data on media audiences and product usage are evaluated. Examines contemporary trends in communications media and their effects on advertisers.
• MET CM 743: Media Relations
  Students learn publicity techniques used in mass media communication, including working with daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, radio, television, film and online media. The course will examine the principles and practices of working with mass media “gatekeepers” to accomplish campaign objectives as well as strategies and tactics for communicating directly with audiences through new media. Students will develop knowledge and skills related to the production and use of media relations tools with a focus on health communication. Case studies will be employed to understand the challenges and opportunities inherent in working with mass media as well as the special demands and practices associated with crisis communication. The course will also explore the emerging role of interactive and social media.
• MET CM 750: The American Health Care System for Health Communicators
  A vital component of the Health Communication curriculum, this course explores the health care system in terms of 1)communication within organizations, resources, and processes that constitute structure and operations; 2) relationships among stakeholders that shape it; and 3) resulting policies that impact system performance and influence the future of health care. Given the complexity and dynamics of the health care environment, an understanding of related issues at all levels is essential for effective communication and prevention of error within health care organizations. Without it, organizations must react defensively to environmental and political threats, often at the expense of patient safety and well-being; with it, organizations can act strategically to maximize growth opportunities and anticipate those forces that influence policy. The course draws upon multiple perspectives, including health communication in medicine and public health, health management (access, quality, and cost), politics, healthcare ethics, law, and the complexities of cross-cultural and psychosocial considerations within today’s healthcare system.
• MET CM 751: Introduction to Epidemiology for Health Communicators
  This course is recommended for students who are not Epidemiology concentrators. The purpose of this course is to introduce the basic principles and methods of epidemiology and demonstrate their applicability in the field of public health. A further objective is to provide an introduction to the basic skills needed to critically interpret the epidemiologic literature relevant to public health professionals.
• MET CM 752: The Biology of Disease
  This course, designed for students who have little or no background in the biological sciences, provides a foundation in the biological mechanisms and principles underlying major health problems. Selected health problems are explored from a biological perspective in order to provide fundamental information about infectious and non-infectious agents of disease, disease transmission, biological defense mechanisms, co-evolution of man and microbes, the effects of nutritional deficiency and excess, effects of respiratory exposures, the biology of cancer, aging, and other topics. Each student completing this course should be able to knowledgeably participate in a discussion of related health problems with a basic understanding of the terminology, and the underlying biological mechanisms.
• MET CM 753: Nutrition and Health for Communicators
  The course provides an introduction to concepts in human nutrition and their application in the area of public health. In addition to providing basic information regarding nutrients, the design of practical diets that promote health throughout the life cycle will be discussed. Issues such as development of public health nutrition policy, program planning and administration, and nutrition surveillance will also be reviewed.
• MET CM 754: Ethical Issues in Medicine and Public Health Communication
  This course reviews the nature and scope of moral dilemmas and problematic decision making in public health, medicine, and health care. After a survey of ethical theory, the course focuses on a broad range of ethical concerns raised by the theory and practice of public health and medicine, including: the nature of health, disease and illness, health promotion and disease prevention; rights, access, and the limits of health care; the physician-patient relationship; truth telling and confidentiality. Through a series of case studies, the course examines specific topics, including: the bioethics movement and its critiques; human experimentation; the role of institutional review boards; the concept and exercise of informed, voluntary consent; abortion, reproduction, genetic counseling and screening; euthanasia, death and dying; ethics committees; and international and cross-cultural perspectives.
• MET CM 781: Health Communication
  Health communication is an emerging field in which professional communicators inform, influence and motivate individual, institutional, and public audiences about important health issues. This course examines theories of interpersonal, organizational, and mass communication relevant to the professional communicator in the health field. Reviews strategies of persuasion, the relationship between attitudes and behavior, and the changing nature of health and health delivery in the United States, and evaluates successful and unsuccessful health information campaigns.

Note that this information may change at any time.

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