In the future assignments in this project, your team will be asked to research a local problem and propose a practical solution. The reason we focus on smaller problems and solutions is to keep the research and writing each proposal requires to a manageable level. Since big problems usually require multiple solutions and years of research, it's better to choose a smaller problem, or some smaller piece of a larger problem.
The readings above provide two examples of campus-area proposals that have succeeded in the past, which should give you and your team a sense of the size of problem that makes a good fit for a writing project like this one.
In this assignment, we'll explore a few preliminary questions to help identify researchable topics you might investigate further with your teams.
Submission
For this assignment, select a problem or issue that affects students, faculty, and/or staff at more than one university. These can be universities in Florida or around the world. If you're having trouble thinking of an issue, consider the kinds of things that affect you right now as a student at USF: housing, food, cost of living, campus safety, health (both physical and mental).
- What's the problem or issue and who is most affected by it here at the University of South Florida? Be as specific as you can and remember that even if an issue affects everyone, it might affect different people differently.
- Now, search the web: How have some universities besides USF addressed this issue already, or how have they begun to address it? What parts of the larger problem are they focusing on? Look for news stories or press releases that describe what the university is doing, as well as social media posts or local news clips.
- Through your research, can you figure out what the process was for solving or addressing that problem? Who noticed the problem or drew attention to it? Whose job was it to solve the problem? What kind of planning was necessary?
- Let's turn back to our own organization now. Has USF done anything to deal with this issue yet? If so, what has USF already done and how effective was it? And if USF hasn't done anything about the problem yet, why do you think that is?
Each member of your team will have identified a similar problem and done a little research as well. In the next major assignment, your team will select from among the problems you've researched so far (or select a new problem you all agree to) and continue researching and writing about that problem.