Category Archives: Syllabus Statements

I can think of at least two reasons for outlining my entire, detailed Attendance Policy:

One, attendance is one of the main areas that assist me in helping determine which direction to go in the instance of a student having a “borderline” grade, such as the difference between an “A-” or a “B+,” or a “B-” and a “C.”

And two, the classes I teach take as one of its main focuses you and fellow students’ writing. You need to be present, in the classroom, to be able to work on each other’s writing, to present to the class, to participate in a workshop. Attendance, then–in class, prepared, on time for every class meeting–is especially important, and is therefore mandatory.

For classes that meet twice a week, my policy stipulates that two absences, either through absence or lateness, are allowable without affecting a student’s final grade. After that, a student’s final grade drops with each successive absence:

For classes that meet once a week, my policy stipulates that one absence is allowable. After that, a student’s final grade drops with each successive absence:

Where do those .5 half-absence figures come from? Latenesses. Read on.

Lateness is defined as coming in the classroom after the time the class begins. I also define lateness as having to leave class early for reasons other than a medical emergency or having to do with your work at the College (such as a registration appointment). Being late once, excused or unexcused, equals one-half an absence; two absences comprise a full absence.

Arriving more 15 minutes late or longer, as well as leaving more than 15 minutes early, counts as one absence. Arriving late after a break mid-class may constitute a lateness if that privilege is abused.

Your Attendance Total, Make-Ups

Your instructor may or may not alert a student regarding the ongoing tally of absences is as the semester progresses; it is the student’s responsibility to keep track of this. I’ll be happy to tell a student at any time what his or her attendance tally is at any time.

I may allow a student to do extra credit work to take off some, but not all, of his or her excused absences or latenesses. I will assign this extra credit work. But please know that there is no way to “make up” or erase missed class meetings, nor is there a real way to “keep up with the work” over an extended period of absences. If you “plan on being absent a lot this semester,” as one student told me a few years back, I advise you to drop the class.

What’s the difference between an excused and unexcused absence? An excused absence or lateness is when a student tells the instructor beforehand that he or she will be absent or late, and arrive prepared for the next class. This means, among other tasks—and offered here purely for example—that you must contact your instructor or a fellow student about assigned reading to be prepared for the following class. Again, being prepared for a class after an absence is the student’s responsibility. To be prepared for the next class after an absence, I advise you contact a fellow student first, your instructor second. In the case of absences due to hospitalizations or major illness to be excused absences, I require a note from a doctor or Student Health Service.

An unexcused absence or lateness is when you neither call nor write, and arrive unprepared for the next class. These absences are not “make-up-able”; I make this distinction between these two classifications to demonstrate that being unprepared after an absence or lateness compounds the act; so much so that, for example, the effect of that absence or lateness cannot be erased by any extra credit work whatsoever.

Occasionally when an attendance or assignment situation has reached the point where it will affect the final grade, no matter how much extra credit is performed, usually when the student is at the risk of failing, I will draft up a Memorandum of Understanding, which outlines the total number of absences and/or latenesses, assignments or work that is still outstanding, what is that student’s best final grade. I may also include what the student needs to do to pass the class. Both of us sign it and we keep a copy for our records. This is just to make sure both of us are on the same page regarding grade and attendance.

Your instructor is firm about each and every component of this policy. Please note that this Attendance Policy includes, but is not limited to, the components that I have outlined here.

By this point in your academic career, you should have mastered elements of grammar and usage and documentation in your writing. This class will not deal with these issues; sloppy mechanical errors in your writing, however, will affect your grade.

I do reserve the right in some cases to assign a student to make an appointment with the Writing Center. In those instances, you will need to confirm with me that you have visited the Center, preferably within a week so I can keep a record in my grade book. Failure to go to the Writing Center after I assign you to will negatively affect your grade.

If you need help with your writing skills this semester, please visit the Writing Center, located in the Academic Support Center on the second floor of Saint Joseph Hall. The tutors can assist you with all stages of the writing process, from selecting a paper topic and creating an outline, to documenting research and working on grammar and punctuation. Reservations are required for sessions. Please call 454-5299 or stop by the Academic Support Center to reserve a session. For more information and the tutoring schedule, please visit www.strose.edu/writingcenter.

All writing files you hand in must be Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format (RTF) files.

If you use some other word processing program on your computer–Microsoft Works, Apple’s Pages, or Open Office, for example–you should be able save your files as an RTF or Word file before handing in your first assignment. The file should also not lose any formatting, such as spacing, links, or running headers.

For research papers, we use MLA style format for documentation. For some classes, particularly in English 105, students may use another format, such as APA, but not before getting permission. In creative work, we will not use scholarly documentation to cite sources; rather, we will acknowledge and attribute sources in-text.

For all writing,  we use 8.5-by-11 documents, typed in 12-point Times New Roman typeface, double-spaced with 1-inch margins. Some prose and poetry can be single-spaced, provided that is your intention as an author.

I require a running header at the top of each with page numbers and your last name. If you do not know how to add a running header, you should learn how to do so before handing in your first assignment.

Your name and description of your assignment–one we usually agree upon or one that is obvious or deadline- or assignment-specific–in the file name. For example, if a student named Jane Doe sends along her first draft of January essay, she might call the assignment “January Submission” to be helpful and name her file “JaneDoeJanSub.”

I will then send back my comments with a renamed document named
“JaneDoeJanSub withcomments.”

Please do adhere to this naming convention. It’s important to have all of our document ducks in a row for this kind of class. Failure to do so may result in my not findind your work in my email or on my hard drive, and in extreme cases I might not accept your work!

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Punk Rock Aerobics.

Over the course of a semester, you may be called upon to be a Workshop Discussion Leader of another student’s work in our workshop.  Or you might be assigned to be a Lead Critic. Below are some instructions to help you in this task.

These are  fairly similar to what your instructor does—or tries to do—as each student’s work is under discussion in class.

Now it’s your turn.

I have tried to quantify some items here that I don’t usually keep in mind—my entry for #3 below, for instance, might sound a bit prescriptive, but I am hoping it helps you see what I am looking for in a Workshop Leader.

Discussion Leader

1.  Call on the first few people to “notice” elements of the writer’s work and technique, without any qualitative judgment or evaluative statement.

2.  To relate and encourage workshop members’ comments with one another as the discussion moves along, make connections and summary statements along the way. To do this, the Discussion Leader should read the piece especially close, to anticipate the different possible readings, interpretations, and ambiguities.

3.  Prepare a couple of open-ended, Socratic questions to ask the group as it relates to the piece.  This may also include a comment that makes connections to other things (other student’s writing, readings critical/creative) we have read in class, or possibly something the workshop leader has seen or read (a movie, some trend or Zeitgeist) that might help discussion along.

4. If there is a Lead Critic, make sure you remember to call on  that person.

5.  To try to sum up the qualities of the conversation as it turns to the author. Ask any clarifying questions the group may have brought up.  This may just be a simple or open-ended question about the process of writing the piece, or perhaps the piece’s inspiration or starting point.  I usually read at least a bit of what I have written to the author as a kind of closing comment.

Lead Critic

1. Has prepared, when called upon by the workshop leader, to make a succinct, to-the-point 2-3 minute presentation to class in the workshop segment. This is not a just-press-play set piece: what the presentation centers on varies on when in the workshop he or she is called on, where the discussion is going, and what the lead critic wants to focus on.

2. Has copy edited piece for grammar, mechanics, spelling. Has made written comments about the piece.

3. Has made connection(s) of piece between piece and critical/creative readings.

4. Has done a close reading of the piece.

5. Has looked up every proper noun and possible allusion in the piece, and chimes in and presents to class if the issue or question comes up.

If you need help with your writing skills this semester, please visit the Writing Center, located in the Academic Support Center on the second floor of Saint Joseph Hall. The tutors can assist you with all stages of the writing process, from selecting a paper topic and creating an outline, to documenting research and working on grammar and punctuation. Reservations are required for sessions. Please call 454-5299 or stop by the Academic Support Center to reserve a session. For more information and the tutoring schedule, please visit www.strose.edu/writingcenter.

These appointments are free and are helpful to students of all levels. I encourage you to use this resource.

I reserve the right in some cases to assign a student to make an appointment with the Writing Center. In those instances, you will need to confirm with me that you have visited the Center, preferably within a week so I can keep a record in my grade book. Failure to go to the Writing Center after I assign you to will negatively affect your grade.

These rules are used by many other writing workshop classes, regardless of grade level or genre.  Like a pick-up basketball game, the rules vary from field to field—or, in this case, classroom to classroom.  The general thrust, however, is of a studio model[1]  in which a particular piece is under discussion, and loosely follows a Socratic method of question-and-answer. Before you come to a workshop, however, we assume that you have read your fellow students’ work before class if it has been passed around; that you have a printout of said works in front of you, well-marked and with questions or comments; and that you approach your own writing and others’ as a work-in-progress, amenable to comment and revision.

What follows is a step-by-step guide to the workshop process, as your instructor sees it.

The author reads the work aloud. Whether this is done or not depends on the genre and the length of the pieces under discussion. We may hear a representative passage. In my class—again depending on genre and length—I may also require the person to the right of the author read the work aloud again.

The first person to talk is the last person to have their work considered in class. Again, this is not a universal rule, but it is a popular variation.

The first comment(s) begins with the words, “I notice.” This is very specific to my classes and a few others. Some workshops require the comments to be something nice or positive about the work. Others let the comments fly where they may.  I adopt a middle ground, and require the first commenters to “notice” something—that is, point out a word or group of words in the piece.  That which is noticed may be in turn praised or criticized as the workshop moves on, but it’s the job of the first comment-noticer to point some component of the work without judgment.

An example: “I noticed the piece uses the word “purple” 12 times” is correct; “I notice “purple” is used a heckuva a lot in this piece” is not.  The former presents in a nonjudgmental, objective way; the latter lets judgment seep in.[2] For more, read Further Thoughts on the “I Notice” Segment of the Writing Workshop.

Someone leads the discussion. I will lead the discussion a good amount of the time. I may appoint a student to lead the discussion and another to be a point person or lead critic. (See my post on the roles of the Workshop Discussion Leader or Lead Critic for more thoughts on this.) Other members of the group may take on specific roles in the discussion. Whoever leads the discussion, he or she asks students to comment on the work, takes notes of questions for the author, and tries to translate and clarify what other people discuss.

Usually the leader withholds major opinions about the work until the discussion has ended—a rule that has evolved, no doubt, with teacher privilege in mind.

The author does not talk until the end of discussion. Sometimes rather harshly called the “Muzzle Rule,” this does not mean the author sits there with his or her arms crossed.  The author should take notes during the discussion, and can offer comments and clarification at the discussion, when he or she is allowed to talk.

The lesson here is to separate any privileged, over-the-shoulder-type comments an author may have, as well as introducing the idea of the elemental division of artist and the work of art, the made thing that exists in the absence of its creator. It is also to avoid entering into discussions based on of what is called the Intentional Fallacy, which is defined as “[t]he belief that judgments of a literary work based solely on an author’s stated or implied intentions are false and misleading. Critics who believe in the concept of the intentional fallacy typically argue that the work itself is sufficient matter for interpretation, even though they may concede that an author’s statement of purpose can be useful.”

Students make and write comments on their copy of the work under discussion. These comments will be handed over to the author at the end of discussion. These written comments can also be marks.

These can be suggested edits and, but they can be as simple as an underlines passage with “!!!!” in the margins, indicating to the author that something works for them.[3]

Students make comments that are objective, not subjective. This means that a comment such as “this piece sucks” or “I don’t believe this” or “is this really supposed to be graduate-level work” or “whine whine whine” would not be constructive or objective, while “I’m not sure where this image comes from” and “I have some continuity problems” are both objective and constructive.

Students refer to the the author of the piece under discussion as “the author.” We do not address the author directly or ask questions directly.We don’t make first person-directed comments or references about the author personally. If the author has written a piece called “On Wearing a Large Frog Suit To My Writing Class,” and the author sits at our workshop table wearing a Large Frog Suit, we don’t notice, comment upon, or critique the fact that that is the case. Readers outside the room will not have the privilege of seeing or experiencing a person with a Large Frog Suit, and so cannot be integrated into our critique of the text. Why do we have this rule?  It’s perhaps the most important of all “rules,” I find. We avoid ad hominem-type comments and discussion; we avoid bringing in our own personal knowledge of the author; we also avoid unnecessary and unhelpful personal judgments.

____________

[1]  In many ways, the studio model manifested in a creative writing workshop is an offshoot of New Criticism, a branch of literary study that emphasizes the “close reading”—a particular kind of explication (the French term explication de texte is particularly appropriately frou frou) that holds the autonomy in the text itself.  This kind of reading holds the text—one that is ambiguous, one that has an internal order and multiple meanings, often all at the same time—and de-emphasizes biographical and cultural backgrounds and contexts.  I have described New Criticism elsewhere as sort of the “Texas Death Match of literary analysis: no outside sources, no hagiography, no prose paraphrase, no one gets out alive until each word is combed-over and understood.”

The movement started out in the 1920s and 30s in England and the United States, and dominated college classrooms well into the 1960s and remains today.  The most notable New Critics were T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, and Cleanth Brooks, on up to today with Denis Donoghue, Helen Vendler, to a certain extent Harold Bloom, and new convert Camille Paglia.

[2]  People get confused about this task of “noticing,” but it’s as simple as it sounds.  It’s as straightforward as this scene in Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy, when cast members are rattling off things they “love.” Steve Carrell’s character, Brick Tamland, a self-admitted idiot weatherman, blurts out, “I love lamp.”

“Do you really love the lamp,” Ron Burgundy asks, “or are you just saying it because you saw it?”

“I love lamp,” Tamland replies. “I love lamp.”

Go to this link for further thoughts on the “I notice” segment of the writing workshop.

[3]  Monitoring how students are progressing in a workshop is an inexact science.  In the past, I have considered requiring students make duplicates of their comments to the author, but I think simply calling on someone who is slacking in the written comments department suffices.

In all of my classes, we will follow some basic manuscript format requirements, most pulled directly from MLA style.

All work is to be typed, on 8.5-by-11 inch white paper, in 12-point Times New Roman, double-spaced, and with 1-inch margins.

If it is more than one page, staple the top left corner.

Do not use title pages (with apologies to APA style)! Instead, in the upper left-hand corner of the first page, list your name, my name, the course (English 105), and the date (date month year, like 3 September 2013) each on its own line.

On the upper-right-hand of each page, put your last name and the page number (Nester 3, Nester 4, and so on), also in 12-point Times Roman. Microsoft Word and most other word processing programs (Google documents is one notable exception) have the header and page number as an automatic function. Do not manually type in your last name and page number into the document. If you don’t know how to put in a running header with your word processing program, ask a friend, classmate, or see me. I can go over it very quickly in class.

Exceptions, Additions

For critical papers, I require all writing to adhere to MLA format. In our creative and informal work, however, we will not use scholarly documentation to cite sources; rather, we will acknowledge and attribute sources in-text.

Also: in a creative writing class, some prose and poetry can be single-spaced, provided that is your intention as an author.

In my English 105 classes, students can use APA format if they have a good reason for it (i.e., it relates more to their major, etc.). You need to tell me first, however. For longer research papers, can do an APA title page and everything!

In so many ways, I wish grades were not necessary, but I do know that many students want to know where they stand in the class, and it’s helpful to offer assessment of student work.

Please feel free to ask me at any time in the semester what your grade is. You can also take a look at your entries in my grade book. Here is a detailed snapshot of what my grade book might look for this class:

[click to enlarge]

I have used names of famous people instead of students. In this snapshot from my gradebook on September 13, Count Chocula is absent, unexcused (“A/U”); Pat Benatar gets to class on time, hands in paper #3, and participates in group work well (you might say she hit it with her best shot) and does a great job in the discussion; and Big Bird comes late, is unprepared (“U”), and does not do a good job in the Participation category.

I use a check-and-minus system for these ungraded tasks, but it will, at any point in time, add up to a letter grade. I do use letter grades for papers; I put some examples here so you’re not confused about how I use combination grades, often for things like idea development/mechanics, as is indicated here (“idea/mech”).

I will require you to meet with me for at least two half-hour conferences, once at mid-term and once during our alternate final exam schedule. Feel free, however, to set up as many meetings with me as you want and to pass along as many drafts of your writing as you wish. In the scheduled conferences, we will talk about your work as well as your overall course progress.

Attending readings is a great way to listen to how published writers read and talk about their work. It is also an excellent way to learn about one’s own writing life. Plus, they are fun.

I require each student in this class to attend two readings each semester and to discuss it with the class as a fellow writer. It depends on the semester, but usually this class requirement can be fulfilled by attending the events scheduled as part of the Frequency North reading series on campus.

If we do make plans to go to a reading as a class, I urge you to make arrangements to come to these readings. We will be reading the works of these writers as well as exercises inspired by them, and it would enrich your class experience immensely.

If you cannot make these readings, please notify me as soon as possible. You will have to make alternate arrangements to attend another public reading(s) during the semester. You can find that procedure here. You must present your proposed alternate reading event to in a timely fashion: I can assist you in making choices, and will require you to read a work by a writer and make a short presentation to the class, or integrate your impressions into our discussion.

This is not a lecture class. This is an active, student-centered, performance-focused class. I will conduct short talks on elements of craft and our performances each class. But it is you, the students in this performance workshop, who must participate for it to be successful. Participation means both listening and speaking; it also helps us feel more comfortable and to create a space for everyone to perform. To learn how to critique performance in a cohesive, thought-provoking way is an essential part of this class, as well as working with criticism regarding one’s own work. Your participation, then, constitutes a large part of your final grade. To get an idea of how I assess student participation, please see my Participation, Collegiality, and Conduct Rubric [pdf].

You will be required to read and perform every week as well. One of the goals of the class, as stated above, is to read as teachers and fellow performers of poetry. The readings will directly or indirectly address an issue of craft or subject matter brought up in class, or coincide with the work assigned for the following week. Students should expect to comment on reading assignments during class. Students should also be prepared with spoken comments for their fellow students’ work. To learn how to provide constructive feedback, written and verbal, to fellow workshop members is one of the most important aspects of the class, and this is why it is a large part of your final grade.

This is not a lecture class. I will conduct short talks on elements of craft and our readings each class. But it is you, the students in this workshop, who must participate for it to be successful. Participation means both listening and speaking; it also helps us feel more comfortable with each other and hear everyone’s point of view. To learn how to critique work in a cohesive, thought-provoking way is an essential part of this class, as well as working with criticism regarding one’s own work. Your participation, then, constitutes a large part of your final grade. To get an idea of how I assess student participation, please see my Participation, Collegiality, and Conduct Rubric [pdf]

You will be required to read every week as well. One of the goals of the class, as stated above, is to read as writers. The readings will directly or indirectly address an issue of craft or subject matter brought up in class, or coincide with the writing assigned for the next week. Students should expect to comment on reading assignments during class. Students should also be prepared with written and spoken comments for their fellow students’ work. To learn how to provide constructive feedback, written and verbal, to fellow workshop members is one of the most important aspects of the class, and this is why it is a large part of your final grade.

The short version: No late work is accepted for this class. It’s not good to hand in any work late, whether it’s a writing class with workshops, or ones with assignments for letter grades.

The longer version: I don’t accept late work in my classes.  Late work is defined as failure to hand in an assignment, at the beginning of the class on the scheduled due date or any other designated time. I define “hand in” as submitting the assignment in the manner in which it is due—email attachment, printout, blog post or otherwise. If you do not have a draft at the time of the beginning of class on the designated due date, then the work is late and you are marked as being unprepared for class. If you cannot attend class for an extenuating circumstance, it is your responsibility to get your work to me beforehand by the beginning of that class—either through email, dropping off work at my office or mailbox, or passing it along to a fellow student. If you do not hand in a rough draft or revision of a formal writing assignment, this will affect your overall grade. I require a note from a health care professional or Student Health Service for medical excuses, but for logistical reasons, I can’t guarantee any assignment will be covered in our workshops.

Let’s break it down further by the two general varieties of assignments for my classes: creative work and assignments for a grade. In the case of creative work for critique, the work will also not be workshopped or critiqued in class. Not handing in this kind of assignment on a habitual basis in any given class will also affect the student’s Participation grade, since having one’s work read and discussed by the class, and integrating this into a writer’s process, is part of how one is assessed for this kind of assignment in my classes.  In the case of papers, essays, or any other items that are not workshopped, late work will not receive a letter grade of “A” if the assignment receives a letter grade. The assignment will lose another, full letter grade for each day it is past the due date, on up to a failing grade.

Does that mean I “accept” late papers after all? Maybe. It depends on what one thinks accept, or even acceptable, really means.

Which brings me to another topic: handing in work “for credit.” I bring this up with students who do not hand in an assignment on time might then think it’s not necessary to hand in the assignment at all.  This is not true: just because a student does not hand in an assignment on time, and it will not be “accepted” for class or workshop, does not mean I don’t want students to hand in their work. I also don’t mean to imply those students are excused  from an assignment.

If I don’t “accept” a student’s assignment because it is late, I still want that student to hand in their work as soon as he or she can to “get credit” for that particular assignment.  By “credit” I mean just that: an assignment has been “handed in.”

A student might not get the best grade for late work, not have the work critiqued in a class workshop, or both, but I still want students to do the work for the class.

[Revised August 2010]

For my classes, it is expected you have these materials and skills to work together in class. If you need help in any of these areas, see me, another member of the class, the Learning Center, or contact ITS if it’s technology-related.

• Regular access to the Internet and an activated College of Saint Rose email account, which you must check regularly; I define “regularly” as, at a minimum, the morning of and the morning after each class, for a total of four times a week;
• Working knowledge of the following technologies: Microsoft Word, Rich Text Files (RTF), PDF files, email attachments, Dropbox, and document printing;
• Access to and literacy with file storage, either on a flash or jump drive or online file storage (e.g., a great service is the WebFiles.Strose.Edu service available through ITS);
• A laptop or a notebook and a pen or pencil, which you must bring to every class, along with required texts;
• You will print about 250 pages throughout the course of the semester, as well as making Xeroxes of your own drafts for others in class. Make plans accordingly: add prints through your ITS account, if necessary, to make sure you can print out your readings or your own work for class (250 prints cost $17.50). Failure to be able to come to class with your own printed documents or copies of other students’ work, as well as the ability to print in class when needed, will mean you are unprepared for class.

This class is a community of writers. To ensure that this community thrives and everyone benefits from and feels comfortable in this class, your instructor requires that appropriate classroom decorum is maintained. My definition of appropriate classroom decorum includes punctuality, courtesy, civility, and integrity, both online and in-class. I ask and require that we respect everyone’s opinions, comments, and writing. Your participation grade will suffer if you are disruptive to the community in this classroom.

I will not allow disruptions and unnecessary chatting, and reserve the right to excuse from the classroom anyone who is especially disruptive to the class. Students are advised to consult the College’s “Student Responsibility and Social Conduct” section in their Student Handbook.

The College of Saint Rose prohibits the use of cellular telephones—including text messaging and camera features—in classrooms, testing locations, locker rooms, bathrooms, and other private areas, as well as while driving a College-owned, -leased or -rented vehicle. Students who violate this policy will be subject to disciplinary actions and possible expulsion or termination, as well as criminal or civil penalties for related violation of federal, state, or local laws.

I also require that there is no use of PDAs or any other interactive electronic device. There is no ringing, answering, see-who-is-calling-checking, IMing, or text-messaging. There is no use of any social media–Facebook, Twitter, and any other forms–unless it’s part of the class.  If you do so, you will be excused from class, and you will receive no credit for participation for that day.

If our class meets in a lab or a “smart” classroom, computer work will only be class-related from the time class begins until it ends—no personal email, text-messaging, web-surfing, or any form of internet activity not covered here. There is no eating of any solid or liquid food while the class is in session. Beverages are acceptable, coffee encouraged, provided the classroom in which we meet allows it. Since our class meets in a “smart classroom,” there will be no food or drink at all from the time you enter the classroom until you leave.

To get a grade-specific idea of how I assess student participation, please see my Participation, Collegiality, and Conduct Rubric, which is linked here from my site and from the Class Blackboard site.

Just about all of the work handed in will be in digital format. Some will be emailed directly to me, others to fellow classmates, and others to our shared Dropbox folder.

These files must be either Microsoft Word files or, if you use another word processor, saved as Rich Text Format (RTF). If you use some other word processing program find out how to save your files as RTFs before the first assignment is handed in.

We also name our files very specifically. This is a good practice to get into for other classes as well as your post-college professional life. Safe to say, if your instructor got 18 files names “essay 2,” it would drive him crazy! Seriously: you need adhere to the file-naming convention described here. I won’t accept your work if you don’t.

Here’s how you name your files.

Begin your file name with your last name, followed by your first, followed by the assignment’s name.

LastnameFirstnameNameofAssignment

Make sure you put your Last Name first, so I can alphabetize the assignments. The Name of the Assignment is usually one agree upon in class or one I email to you. It will also  corresponds with the name of the folder in Dropbox where you will upload your work.

For example, if a student named Jane Doe sends along her first draft of her persuasive essay, and we agreed in class to call the assignment “RoughDraft1Persuasive,” Jane Doe would name her file like so:

DoeJaneRoughDraft1Persuasive

The folder in Dropbox would be called something like “02 Rough Draft 1 Persuasive.” The number there (“02″) indicates it’s the second assignment we’ve done for the class.

If you are a student with a documented disability and require academic accommodations, please register with Lynn Cantwell,  Director of Services for Students with Disabilities, located in the Academic Support Center on the second floor of St. Joseph Hall (campus extension 2335 or 518-337-2335) for disability verification and for determination of recommended reasonable academic accommodations. After you have made arrangements with that office, please see me to discuss your accommodations. Please remember that timely notice will help avoid a delay in your receipt of accommodations.

Academic Integrity

Students at The College of Saint Rose are expected to be honest in every aspect of their academic work. Plagiarism, cheating, academic misconduct, or any other submission of another’s work as one’s own is unacceptable. Students working in groups are each individually responsible for the academic integrity of the entire group project. In a situation where the course instructor determines that, more likely than not, a breach of academic integrity has occurred, the incident will be reported according to the http://blackboard.strose.edu/@@b4fe99bd5d8fc64a09cadd95b72f9109/course%20s/1/org-all-aig/content/_185867_1/Policy%20on%20Plagiarism%20and%20Acade” href=”https://email.strose.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=16a59c2756564e0bbbda87d36bdcfa9b&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.strose.edu%2facademics%2facademic_integrity%2farticle2575″ target=”_blank”>Policy on Plagiarism and Academic Integrity.

If you can’t make a reading we have planned as a class to attend, of if I am allowing you to make up an absence (maximum one), here is one way to make up or get extra credit. Please ask me about doing this before you do it!

1. In the “Blogroll” section in the column to your right, choose an event from the links to events calendars around the region.  Other colleges and other organizations will have events pages as well.

2. Find a lecture or reading that fits into your schedule or interests you. Open Mike nights are OK, but only if there is a “featured reader.”

3. Submit your choice(s) to me. I can offer advance advice on choices, but I also must approve of your going to the event.

4. Read material–links from a Google search, writing on the author’s website, a book from the library–before the event.

5. Attend the event.

6. Tell me you have attended the event, and we will set aside 3-5 minutes and arrange a day for you to talk about it with the class or integrate into our class discussion. Or you can write a 1,000-word report on the event. There are other scenarios that we can discuss as well.