Assignment Description: Your semester-long research project, the Deeper Look project, will begin with a formal project proposal. This is an opportunity for you to “pitch” your project to me and make a case for your area of focus for the Deeper Look project.
The research proposal is your request for approval of your semester-long research project. Many academic disciplines and programs ask students to write research proposals before they launch a research project. Research proposals are also very common in professional or corporate environments, where supervisors may ask an employee to write up a project proposal before that project is launched. This assignment will give you practice in preparing these kinds of documents.
The purpose of the proposal is to persuade the reader that your problem is important and worth exploring over the course of a semester-long research project. In addition, you want to persuade the reader that you understand the issues at hand, and that you have done a bit of research.
Audience: Prof. Hermansen is the audience for your proposal.
INSTRUCTIONS
You research proposals should include these essential ingredients:
- Description of the question/problem you will attempt to address in your final project
- Analysis of the rhetorical purpose of your final project (what will you try to convince theaudience to do or think?)
- A consideration of audience: Who is the person with the powerto effect the change you will propose? What are their values, interests and beliefs? How will you shape your proposal to appeal to your target audience’s values, interests, knowledge, beliefs, emotions?)
- A discussion of genre: What genre will your Deeper Look project be in? A video, a research paper, a website, a social media campaign, or something else? Why do you think
that genre is well-suited for this project? How will it help you reach the people you want
to reach?
- Questions that Remain: List here any aspects of the problem you don’tunderstand,
- Research Plan: What kinds of sources will help you address the question you have inmind?
Format and Length: Your proposal will be between 700-1,000 words. Your essay should adhere to MLA formatting guidelines: 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced with an extra space between entries, 1” margins on all sides.