Each student will track news
media stories on one of the policy domains listed below. In addition, they will locate scholarly writing
on the policy topic area.
Although the topic may be
initially broadly defined, each student will be expected to
narrow his or her investigation for the following written assignments.
Students
should scan major international, national, or local news media for relevant
reporting. Once they have decided on the area, they should begin to collect
legitimate scholarly and academic sources from which to write their papers. This
does not include general Wikipedia, or Google.
This will set the course for
the current event exploration all semester.
How to Get Started
Select a topic
of current debate, browse recent news stories, start to take notes on how this
issue is currently defined
and debated. Compare
that with our readings in class and choose a relevant policy today.
Potential Topic Ideas include:
·
Mental
Health
·
Disability
·
Housing
·
Human Rights
·
Family Law
·
Divorce
·
Child Abuse
·
Social Welfare
Elements of
the Preliminary Plan
The preliminary plan should
use APA format, be 1 OR 2 pages long, and include at least 6 references (2 news articles and
4 scholarly articles) structured according to the following outline and please
use subheadings throughout:
·
Abstract
·
References
Abstract –Preliminary Plan. Students should
identify their tentative
topics for the historical paper and if possible, for the second paper, the
policy memo. While you are not
committed to this plan (you may change your
mind or modify it), faculty
for this course
have learned that the more
firmly developed the student’s initial plan, the better
their final projects will be. In
part, this is because this kind of
assignment often has some “false starts”
and/or it takes time to settle on a topic. Students
who leave this preliminary work until the last minute might risk getting stuck.
The abstract should
be no more than one page,
and the references will add no more than a second page. .
Reference List included
with preliminary plan. You must collect at least 2 news
accounts and 4 scholarly
sources but you may collect more if you like. You should provide the proper
citation for all sources. Be consistent with citation style and use APA guidelines.
