Course Syllabus

Click the link above for a full course overview, including grading/assessment, how to request an extension, and much more! If you have questions about course policies, this is where you will find the answers.

Read on for brief overviews of our projects for this year.

College Essay Boot Camp

In our first project of the year, we will be tackling the very real problem of how to make colleges like you in 300-500 words.  For the first two weeks of class, we will engage in a college-essay boot camp.  This will allow me to get a baseline assessment on your writing skills, and will allow you to knock a major task off your college application to-do list.

For those overachievers (who have already finished their essays) and iconoclasts (who are taking a different path) out there, you will have the option to write a scholarship essay, or to work on a piece of narrative non-fiction to hone your writing skills.
The United States is founded on principles of equality, yet we live in an increasingly unequal society.  Income inequality is growing, and the divisions between classes are becoming starker. And yet, class is one of the few topics that is still seen as taboo in the United States.  Too often, discussions of class center around stereotypes and tropes that are not grounded in evidence, and that serve the mask the complexity of this issue in the United States. Our job in this project is going to be to open this topic, and more importantly, to dig deep and see the enormous complexity of class and inequality in the United States today.

As we explore this topic, we will also be getting meta- we will be using this project to essentially teach you the skills and processes you will need to be successful in researching, designing, and executing your own senior project.

Fall Project: Class and Inequality

Senior Project: Thesis, Action Project, and TED Talk

.Okay, this is the big one!  For the entire second semester, you will exploring a topic of your choosing, both through academic research and writing, and through a self designed project.  Your senior project will have three main parts:
  1. Senior Thesis:  The writing part.
  2. Thesis Defense:  The speaking part.
  3. Senior Project:  The action part.

Start thinking of ideas now, because you will cycle through many of them before you end up on your final topic.  Don't be like the plant guy.