Your upcoming assignments involve a Research Proposal & Researched Argument (Essays 2 & 3, respectively).
From Dr. Noletto's Essay Assignment parameters:
Essay 2: Research Proposal
"Before you write your Researched Argument (Essay 3, 7-8 pages), you will write a Research Proposal (Essay 2). Your object for Essay 2 is to convince an audience (Dr. Noletto) that your proposed research project is viable, significant, and worthwhile.
Topic Direction Options (Choose 1):
Your chosen topic should relate, however directly or indirectly, to our course theme of Community and the Common Good.* There are many directions you can take with this broader theme:
Research projects related to the theme of community and/or the common good
A topic that you first clear with me.
Examples of Possible Research topics are listed here.
Essay 3 will be a researched argument, which can come in different forms (Argument of Evaluation, Argument of Policy, for example).
*Note: I reserve the right to reject a topic that I think may be unsuccessful or nonviable. "
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We (your research librarians), are here to help you accomplish the above goals. Once you have a general topic or concept in mind, we can help you refine that concept and develop it into a thesis statement that you can research. It's important to workshop your topic into a refined thesis statement for a couple of reasons. One reason is to aid your composition process, to provide yourself a clear set of boundaries and goals that will inform your writing and thus, the message you are attempting to convey to the reader/audience. Another reason to have a refined thesis statement is that this will aid the research process considerably. Carefully considering the terms you will use to provide scope to the problem you are exploring, properly defining who or what is effected by this issue, and proposing evidence based solutions to your issue all help to develop a search vocabulary and inform the types of resources you'll need to support your claims.
We suggest that you explore each section of this guide, including watching the brief videos and text examples provided. This content will offer suggestions on search strategies, recommended databases, and/or journals for exploring community research themes, as well as tips to get the most out of using our discovery service (Pathfinder/Search the Library tool) to develop a robust collection of credible books and scholarly articles to support your paper.
Also, please do not hesitate to contact one of us to assist further! We have librarians who serve as subject liaisons for various disciplines, so if you need to speak with the English Librarian, or another discipline specialist, we're here to help!
You can find the information to contact a librarian under our Get Help section of the library website, under Subject Specialists. We are happy to converse via email or phone if you like. We also encourage you to set up a One-on-One Consultation session with us if you'd like to book a few minutes to chat about your topic, need some help finding resources, or anything else we can help with!