Overview
You manage the River Oaks Theater located at 2009 W. Gray Street, Houston, TX 77018. Your assistant manager, Abigail Marston,is applying for a scholarship at UH-Sugar Land. She wants you to write a letter of recommendation for her. If she wins this scholarship, she will probably stop working at the River Oaks.
INSTRUCTIONS: Write a one-page letter of recommendation for Abigail Marston.
▪ Your letter should be single spaced and use the direct strategy(which means, state your purpose in the introduction).
▪ In your letter, you will provide specific examples and evidence of the applicant’s professional skills, aptitude, and character as it matches the expectations of the scholarship she is applying for.
1. Review the Sample Letter of Recommendations and Instructions (posted in Modules)
2. Read the Read Dead Scholarship closely.
▪ When writing a letter of recommendation, you should try and emphasize the values and skills described in the scholarship.
3. Review the Basic Facts about your employee: Abigail Marston
RED DEAD SCHOLARSHIP: Here is the scholarship Abigail has provided to help you focus the recommendation letter: The Red Dead Scholarship is for any student with a major declared in art or digital media. Additional criteria: documented leadership, creativity, and marketing skills. Students interested in applying for this scholarship should also include mention of any volunteer experience or community involvement. |
BASIC FACTS ABOUT ABIGAIL MARSTON
Use the Basic Facts provided below to recommend Abigail Marston. However, you have creative flexibilitywith the details.
❖ What do I mean by creative flexibility?You need toelaborate, add, and expand on the Basic Facts about Abigail’s key duties at the theater and her other skills and activities. Therefore,make up creative details, support, and context that is relevant to the situation and improves the persuasive purpose of your letter.If you ONLY restate the Basic Facts you will receive a low grade—use the FACTS as a launching point for your own ideas.
ABIGAIL’S BASIC FACTS:
❖ Note: You do NOT need to reference all of the facts list below—only focus on what is most relevant for the Red DeadScholarship.
ABIGAIL’Sduties at the theater:
Abigail Marston has worked a weekly shift at the theater for three years. She is also responsible for the following:
▪ Abigailis an assistant manager who assists you in many areas of the movie theater’s operations
▪ Abigailsupervises the ticket box office.
▪ Abigail handles difficult customers.
▪ Abigailmanages the social media account for the theaterwhere she promotes special events, blockbuster premiers, and film festivals that the theater is sponsoring.
▪ She engages online with the theater’s customers, using the River Oaks social media accounts (Facebook, X, and Instagram).
▪ Abigail supervises private theater rentals for VIP guests.
▪ Abigail has assisted in promoting film festivals that the River Oaks sponsors. For example, she assisted with the marketing campaign for theWeird West Festival that shows films that are mashups of the western and horror genres. The festival happens at the end of October with 20% of profits donated to Texas Children’s Hospital.
❖ Important: You are NOT required to mention or list all of Abigail’s shift duties and activities listed above. Instead, choose the duties and activities that you want to write about, and which connect most closely to the criteria of the Red DeadScholarship.
Send letter to:
Dear Sam Hauser,
Address:
Santos Street
Los Angeles,California 90252
Grading Criteria:
● Review the Sample Letter of Recommendation posted in Modules—it also includes a brief guide on how to write this type of letter.
● Add creative details that expands onthe Basic Facts about Abigail Marston
● Use Topic Sentences to organize your paragraphs.
● Provides evidence and examples to support claims about candidate (Abigail Marston)
● Both addresses should be single spaced.
● You will be graded on appropriate business letter format. This letter should fit one pageand use 11pt or 12pt font, and use Times New Roman.
● You will be evaluated on grammar and punctuation; clarity and fluency of language; professional tone; and persuasive detail.
● Do NOT use ChatGPT to write this letter.(I use Turtin.com and ChatGPTdetector).
You will receive 0 points and your professionalism grade will also earn 0 points. Your name may be submitted to the IST Chair forreview of your academic standing at UH. Not worth it!
BEGIN YOUR ASSIGNMENT BELOW
Final Exam Part 2 (2 of 2)
Memo Editing
Video Overview (5 minutes)
[20 points]
Instructions:
The premise of this assignment is that you have been sent by your company (Bethesda LTD) to the BGS Conference that explored the subject of workplace violence. You are required to submit a memo to your supervisor, Todd Howard, and provide details on the content and recommendations that you took away from the conference.
However, you still need to edit and condense your rough draft and revise the document for proper tone. You will also want to improve the memo’s organization.
Summary of Primary Goals:
1. EDIT THE DOCUMENT FOR CLARITY, CONCISION, AND PROPER TONE. Tone is created through word choice (also called diction), so if a word or sentenceseems too casual, awkward, pretentions, then replace or rewrite it.
▪ The memo is currently 702 words.
▪ You are the editor: Condense the language and material on the memo—it’s too long.
❖ Your target word count is to cut approximately 300 words from the memo.
❖ If you submit a memo that is significantly shorter than the target word count, you will earn a low grade.
▪ Focus on the facts and how to communicate them efficientlywhile still retaining the author’s essential content and purpose.
▪ In a few instances, you may need to add a word or phrase to connect ideas or sentences.
▪ Consider removing any details that seem irrelevant for the audience and the purpose of the memo.
▪ Proofread the document for any spelling, grammar, or typos
▪ Replace words and phrases that seem too casual or inappropriatein tone.
2. ORGANIZE THE CONTENT—also called the “body”—of the memo. Use the sample memos in Modules for guidance and inspiration. “Final Exam Part 2: Memo Samples.”Use these sample memos to help you organize the body of your memo.
▪ Use any design elements from the memo samples that helps you effectively label and organize the material/content of the memo.
▪ Use any graphical elements that help you organize the information: headers, sub headers, bullet points, numbers, boldface, and include —use whatever you think is most relevant.
GRADING: You will be evaluated on the clarity and concision of the content, proofreading, professional tone, memo format, organization, and overall usability of the document.
BETHESEDA LTD
TO: Todd Howard
FROM: [Your Name Here]
DATE: ????
SUBJECT: ????
The BGSConference basically focused on the hugesubject related to any strategies that companies can utilize to prevent actual workplace violence. I found thethings theyspoke abouttruly fascinating. We have been fortunate to avoid really serious incidents at our company. However, from a contrasting point of view, I would also suggest that—regarding such matters—it’s better to be safe than sorry in my personal opinion. As the representative from Bethesda LTD, I figured you would appreciate it if I got down to business and summarized the most relevant strategies discussed at the conference. The keynote speaker was a Human Resources Consultant. He provided three main recommendations on preventing violence that I will heretofore share in the following report.
As I mentioned above, the BGS Conference was hosted by the keynote speaker. The speaker wasannounced to be Mr. Jon Romero, who happens to work as aHuman Resources Consultant. He is basically what people would consider an expert on employment safety and accountability, due to the fact that Mr. Romeroworked in the HR industry for twelveyears. Mr. Romerocan also make the claim to being the author of the bestselling business management book,An HR Guide for Doom Slayers.
First, to prescreen job applicants was one initial thing that he recommended for any organization to implement as a safety measure. He indicated that apolicy of literally prescreening a potential candidate could no doubtrevealbehavioral tendencies that might lead to reduced conflict or harassment of various and different employees. The benefits of prescreening could literally save the company various money and sundry legal resources. Mr. Romeroindicated that just the mention of such a policy is enough to make a lot of unqualified or shady candidates withdraw. Adopting that strategy is a no brainer, and I suggest wetake the initiative of adopting this practical measure and update our HR-2 Handbooks as soon as possible, if not immediately.
His secondrecommendation has everything to do with recognizing red-flag behavior. What are some of these red flags you ask? Well, let me get right down to it. He offered a list of 5 employee warning signs, and I will list all 5 of them here. For instance,one warning sign is an increasing number of arguments with coworkers. He also indicated that another warning sign includes complaints or reports of sexual harassment. Another warning sign is extreme changes in behavior and no longer maintaining hygiene. Another warning sign is verbal or physical bullying. Another warning sign is bringing weapons to work or displaying an extreme fascination with firearms.
Mr. Romeroconcluded his presentation with his third and final point of advice. In summary, companies should revise their employee handbook, which is one of the key changes he advised. He stated that auser-friendly handbook should outline the actions that employees should take when they suspect possible and potential workplace violins. Additionally, the handbook should include a very clear and ultimately proactiveway thatemployees canstay anonymous when reporting a workplace incident. A similar situation happened to me during my undergraduate degree when I worked as a Lab Assistant with my university’s engineering department. I went through this frustrating experience where I had to report another student who was using the department’s 3D printers for his own use. I remember I was pretty upset that we didn’t have an anonymous method of reporting the incident. Mr. Romerowas insistent that HR Departments mustincludeanonymous reporting methods. Mr. Romero and I agree that it’s a very effective way to ensure that employees have asafe and grandiose strategy for alerting management to warning signs.
As it happens, Mr. Romero announced to everybody who attended the conference that he will be hosting another conference later this spring on the subject of sexual harassment. I certainly enjoyed my trip, so I volunteer to attend any future conference. If you would like me to attend, then I’d literally need to sign up by July 2nd.I would be glad to continue my research on this important subject. Please contact me by email or phone if you have any silly or irrelevant questions or concerns that will waste my time.
ph: