English 325: Advanced Business Writing
Ferris State University
Winter 2007
Instructor: Hugh Culik

Catalog Description:

ENGL 325 Advanced Business Writing
Credit Hours: 3
Pre-requisites: ENGL 250 or ENGL 211

Catalog Description: Continues skills begun in ENGLISH 2, with focus on typical types of problems and documents used in Business. Emphasis on audience and rhetorical analysis, working with multiple documents, primary and secondary research skills, and completion of a major analytical report.

Greetings,
Business writing succeeds when it reflects the intelligence, planning, and research of the writer. Unless you've prepared properly, your judgment will be of little use. For this section of English 325, Advanced Business Writing, we will undertake a real-world business project. We will become a small, fund-raising consultancy that provides valuable tools and information to our own university for one its major assets: The Jim Crow Museum. Our task is to perform the strategic, planning, and writing tasks necessary to sharpen the funding tactics for a funding request to a major foundation. At the end of the term you will have built your business-writing skills by serving a nationally recognized collection. As you help Ferris refine existing approaches and build new ones, your skills will come to include:

• Using appropriate online research tools
• Describing the key terms, focus, and value of philanthropic and corporate foundations
• Understanding how an identity strategy contributes to or inhibits an institution's success.
• Assessing potential supporters in terms of the foundation administrators (program officers) with whom the museum might interact.
• Assessing the funding potential of The Jim Crow Museum
• Creating strategic approaches to potential funders

You will gain these core business competencies as you write the analyses and recommendation recommendation report that will serve the funding strategies of the Jim Crow Museum.

Hugh Culik

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In this course, critical thinking will include:

• Accurately reading and understanding the claims of a document.
• Describing how it make its case.
• Recognizing the alternative solutions and explanations that are ignored, avoided, or excluded.
• Recognizing that knowledge arises from the practices of what we'll be calling a "discourse community."
• Recognizing that both the power and the limitation of knowledge lies in the complexity of the way knowledge emerges.

For a much more detailed sense of what I mean by the term, "critical thinking," visit Teaching Philosophy.

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General Requirements
The organization of online classes tends to be heavily structured, and it's important that you set aside some time to go through this web site in detail.

All the assignments are here, and most make use of the magnificent FLITE Library. All of your "texts" will be online articles, web pages, databases, etc. This makes it crucial for you to immediately sign up for access. Here's how to do it:

• FLITE sign up
  1. Have your student ID card with numerals above barcode on back. If you do not have an ID card, call me, and I will help you obtain this information.
  2. go to https://wwws.ferris.edu/flite/databaseaccess.html and sign up immediately. [note: do not include the letter at the beginning and end of the barcode.]
  3. Required Exercise: explore the FLITE library by going through the following tutorials:
     1. General Tutorials

• Submitting Papers: papers should be submitted as follows; no exceptions.
  • Send papers to hugh@culik.com as attachments.
    1. File name should be formatted as follows: "lastname-firstname-assgt#-311-section"; for example, Nora Smith's third paper for English 325 would be
             smith-nora-assgt3-325
       
    2. Subject line should be formatted as follows: "lastname-firstname-assgt#-325"; for example,
       Nora Smith's third paper for English 311eia would be
             smith-nora-assgt3-325
  
  
• Online courtesy: your papers can require careful discussion of complex issues. Rudeness, attempts to silence others, and denigrating language not only damage the class and other students, but also they undercut the ethical and intellectual basis of genuine education. Lively disagreement, difficult differences, and philosophical disagreement are enriching experiences if we listen attentively to others.
  
  
• Portfolio: you must keep copies of any work submitted to me or to other students.
  
  
• Plagiarism: plagiarism is relatively easy to detect, and it can end your school career. Don’t do it. For a clear definition of plagiarism, see PLAGIARISM for a thorough explanation of the routes – innocent and not-so-innocent – that can lead to failure and even to expulsion.
  
  
• Late papers: the structure of this course makes any late paper unacceptable. If a catastrophe befalls you or your family, let me know so that we can solve the deadline problem. Without notification, I can only assume you've chosen to skip the assignment. I am always available to discuss this issue.
  
  
• Completing all assignments: you must complete all assignments in order to pass the class.
  
  
• My home phone is 517.333.7177. When you need help, please please please please call. I talk to many students during the term, and it’s always easier to steer a paper back on track early in the process rather than when it’s nearly complete. If you call, and I say, “hey, I need you to call me back later,” it means “hey, I need you to call me back later.” It does not mean, “Oh, you vile, evil, presumptuous creature; how dare you phone me.”
  
  BUT I don't return calls because it becomes a pointless game of phone tag with 95 students. If there's no answer, you'll have to call back. AND please, no calls after 9:00 p.m.
  
  
• Note that this is a tentative syllabus that may be changed. Students must regularly check the site for updates. Remember to refresh the browser every time so that you view the most recent changes to the information posted.
  
  
• Please review
  SYLLABUS ATTACHMENT
  COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
  FERRIS STATE UNIVERSITY
  
  for institutional information regarding services, schedules, etc.

1. Four Background Memos
   DUE:
           #1: January 17
           #2: February 12
           #3: March 12
           #4: April 2

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2. Analysis of Student SWOT
   DUE:
           January 29
   

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3. JCM Ideological Analysis.
   DUE:
           February 19
   

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4. Funder Analysis.
   DUE:
           March 19
   

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5. Recommendation Report.
   DUE:
           April 23

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6. Informing Clients [tentative]
   

1. FLITE Databases
   
   
2. Google.com
   
   
3. Dogpile.com
   
   
4. scholar.google.com
   

1. Tools, links, etc.

1. Grading Criteria

1. Instructor Email hugh@culik.com
   
   
2. Peer Assistance [list serve]