The Oral Communication Program wins Do Good Campus Fund Award

Congrats to Drs. Otis, Lucas, and Mazzone!

The Oral Communication Program (OCP) was selected as a Do Good Campus Fund awardee! Drs. Hailey Otis, Melissa Lucas, and Raphael Mazzone won $23,410 for their project, “Communicating for the Public Good: Revising COMM107's OER Textbook." Dr. Gareth Williams will also be helping with these efforts. 

The OCP award from the Do Good Campus Fund goes to revising or “remixing” the current open educational resource (OER) textbook for COMM 107, Communicating for the Public Good: Public Speaking as Advocacy & Civic Engagement. Revisions will feature Terps "doing good" across all majors, both on campus and beyond. Each example will not only reflect the practical application of theory, but also link to resources for how students can get involved in the featured initiative or student group. Funding will support textbook development, outreach coordination, image and video collection, permissions and attributions for open-access materials, and video captioning.

Diverse student presentations from across campus that they hope to feature in the OER include: pitching multidisciplinary solutions to “Grand Challenges” (xFoundry); educating the community about power-based violence and  bystander intervention (Campus Advocates Respond and Educate (CARE) to Stop Violence Peer Education Program); advocating for a student-created non-profit like Dare to Dream (Do Good Challenge); facilitating conversations about sustainability in UNIV100 (Office of Sustainability: Sustainability Advisors); performing spoken word poetry at the Farmers Market (Arts for All). 

Not only will this project strengthen the connection between course materials and real-world examples of Terps “doing good," but it will also highlight diverse opportunities for primarily first-year students to engage in meaningful activities on campus, irrespective of their major, as a means of fostering connection and belonging. 

This project leverages the oral communication classroom as a space for developing communication competency toward greater civic engagement and social impact--an issue that gains more urgency every day. The project team's hope is that, as a result of being exposed to a myriad of possible ways to “do good” as a student at UMD, students in COMM107 will internalize communicating for the public good as part of what it means to be a part of the UMD community and pursue future opportunities to put this commitment in practice throughout their time at UMD and beyond.

We are very impressed by their commitment to Communication for the Public Good and are thrilled to continue a partnership between COMM 107 and the Do Good Institute!