Abstract
In this article the authors summarize how an academic department designed and now enacts the “core skills,” a template the unit operationalized to facilitate their goal of wholestudent development. First, the authors present a brief summary of contemporary literature—including Rich’s (2008) Megaskills, plus key principles and perspectives (e.g., rhetoric, arête, culture, dialectical tension, communicative construction of organization) of the communication studies discipline—relevant to the articulation of the core skills as both a heuristic and praxis. Next, we delineate concerns and critical incidents that inspired unit personnel to decide whole-student development was mission-critical. Then we describe key challenges in of cultivating students’ willingness to embrace and align behavior with organizational values embedded in the core skills. We conclude by providing examples of the strategies by which department faculty colleagues integrate core skills into pedagogy, and celebrate them as a feature of departmental culture.
Recommended Citation
Olsen, R. K., & Weber, D. E. (2015). Embedding arête: Core skills, department culture and whole-student development. Journal of the Association for Communication Administration, 34(2), 75-87.
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