Political Science 495 Dr. Fairlie Internship in Local Politics Spring 2014 Office hours: T-Th 2:00 - 3:00 and Wednesday: 2:30– 3:30 and by appointment Office phone: 594-6278 Office: NH108 If you feel ill, please do not come to class. Go to Health Services. Take care of yourself and your classmates. Please do not come to office hours if you do not feel well. ELIGIBILITY. This course is open to seniors who are Political Science majors. All internships must be approved before work can begin. After getting approval, you may begin field work in the vacation period immediately preceding the semester of your enrollment. This course is staffed during spring and fall semester but not during the summer or winter break when it is not on the class schedule. Watch Blackboard for announcements. If there is a change in the class meeting room, it will be announced in class and on Blackboard. COMMUNICATION: You may receive notices via Blackboard. For that reason, using a rohan email address is a course requirement. If you do not have a SDSU rohan address, log in to Webportal. On the left side you will see a list of choices. Scroll down to Get a Rohan e-mail account. If you are sending e-mail, be sure to put the course number, Pol. Sci. 495, in the subject line. I do not reply to e-mail on weekends. FIELD WORK HOURS. All internships must be approved before work is begun. All students must submit the Field Work Application Form. Any student who does not have an approved internship will receive an automatic F in the course. The only proof of approval is completion of the Field Work Application form which will be kept on file. 80 hours of field work are required. The rest of the time you spend on the course will be devoted to attending class, library research, writing your papers and commuting to your field work. In order to find the internship best suited to you, please make an advising appointment with the professor. Based in part on the discussion during the advising appointment, students choose their own internships within the following guidelines: Internships should be done off-campus in San Diego County and must be done for organizations that have a paid staff member in an office (in contrast to volunteers who work from their homes). Frequently, students choose internships that are closely related to their career interests. Some examples of previous internships include offices of interest groups, political campaign firms, government agencies, the judicial system or offices of elected officials at the local, state and federal levels. Do not consider internships that might pose unacceptable risks to your personal safety. Be sure that you choose an internship with an organization which has a full-time employee and a business office with work hours that are acceptable to you. This is to your advantage because, in principle, it increases the chance of getting a supervisor who can send in your grade forms on time and provide you with sufficient guidance so that you can have a valuable learning experience and leave at the end of the semester with a good letter of recommendation from a recognized organization. 1 FIELD WORK GRADES. Several people play a role in making sure that your field work grades are received in a timely manner so that you can receive your final grade on time. The student’s responsibility is to fill in COMPLETELY the information requested on the black and white Department enrollment form which will be distributed in class. You are asked for your own address and phone number and the complete address and phone number of your supervisor. If your supervisor has a business card, please staple it in the section which asks for supervisor contact information. You must turn in this form to the professor when you turn in your first paper. Department office staff will mail the form to your field work supervisor with a letter thanking them for giving you an internship opportunity. Field work supervisors will be asked to evaluate you after the completion of each third of your field work. Each of the three reporting periods counts for 10% of the course grade. As a whole, field work counts for 30% of your grade. Grade forms are submitted by supervisors once, at the end of all field work. The form submitted will show the three grades, one grade for each third of your work. In the rare cases in which the supervisor gives a grade of zero for all three reporting periods, the student will receive an automatic F grade for the course. If you do not like the grade a supervisor gave you, you may not ask that a different supervisor submit the grade, so BE SURE that the name you submit as supervisor is the accurate name for all three reporting periods. The reports are mailed by the Department to the Supervisor and returned by the Supervisors to me. Students do not handle the grade forms after they fill out the address of the student and the supervisor and turn in the form. Supervisors are asked to grade you with a numerical score ranging from 0-100 for each third of the course. The grading scale is A 93-100; A- 90-92; B+ 87-89; B 83-86; B- 80-82; C+ 77-79; C 73-76; C- 70-72; D+ 67-69; D 63-66; D- 60-62; F 0-59. They are asked to use the following grading standards which are published in the undergraduate catalog: A outstanding achievement, available only for the highest accomplishment; B praiseworthy performance, definitely above average; C average-awarded for satisfactory performance--the most common undergraduate grade; D minimally passing; less than the typical undergraduate achievement; F failing UNIVERSITY COURSE REQUIREMENTS The university requires that all students who are doing some part of their course work off campus must sign the “Warning, Waiver and Release of Liability” form. This will be done in class on the first day. If you are not present on the first day, it is your obligation to sign the form as soon as possible. ACADEMIC WORK. Because the internship is accepted in place of the senior thesis and 500 level courses, a comparable level of academic work is required. Two essays, each with four pages of written text, are required in this course. Attendance Attendance will be taken at specified class sessions. If you hope to do well on essays, you must attend specified mandatory classes and you should be bringing in your work for review at various stages during class consultation sessions. All of the mandatory class sessions will be held in the classroom. A lot of class time is used as office hours because many students have a hard time coming to office hours outside class time due to their field work and other obligations. The class sessions used as office hours will be held in my office. If several students come with questions about their field work or preliminary work on their papers, I will ask you to wait in the Dept. conference room, NH 131 (almost opposite the Department office) and I will call you when it 2 is your turn. This is necessary because I will be typing a report of our conversation on my computer and printing copies for both of us so we can each monitor your progress with the same information. If you bring a paper rough draft for review, please be sure to bring two copies: one for you and one for me. Be sure to check both in class and on Blackboard for the correct class meeting room. Sometimes classes are moved around. The following GRADE PENALTIES will apply in the case of absence from mandatory classes: during specified class periods attendance will be taken. If you are more than five minutes late, you will be marked absent. If you are not present or do not have an acceptable excused absence, your grade on the next paper due will be lowered by one grade increment. For example, if you are absent during one of the specified sessions and you later receive a grade of B+ on the next paper, your grade will be lowered to B. If you are absent for another session, an additional penalty will be applied to the next paper that is due and the same penalty will be deducted for each absence from a specified session. Absence excuses: The following are examples of legitimate documentable absences: illness requiring the aid of a medical doctor, death in the family, mandatory military duty, a conflicting university-sponsored activity such as a sports team competing out of town or an emergency which can be documented, such as a car accident or required military or job duty which cannot be rescheduled. Required documentation: Any absence from mandatory class sessions requires documentation from an appropriate professional such as the Student Health Center in case of absence for medical reasons. A note from a family member or friend is not acceptable documentation. If you go to the Student Health Center be sure to keep evidence of your appointment date and time. Family occasions are not grounds for excused absences. Examples of family occasions which are not excused absences include but are not limited to the following: sister’s wedding, brother’s family gives birth to a child, grandparents’ wedding anniversary etc.. Be sure to check with your friends and family regarding these matters before you decide to remain in this course. Student Learning Objectives: Purpose of essays: The purpose of the essays is to analyze your field work experience within the intellectual context of academic research that is relevant to your field work. Depending on your field work experience, you may be reading and analyzing research from fields such as political science, public administration, criminal justice, sociology, or psychology. Grading standards and advice on writing a good paper: Your objective in writing the paper is to compare your own experience with the research findings published by scholars who have studied situations similar to your field work experience. Your essay should be exploring why your experience is similar to or different from the findings reported in academic literature. Write in an academic writing style. You can get good guidance about academic writing style by going to the library’s website. Under Help go to Citing Sources. On the left is a box tiled Main. Under that choose APA (American Psychological Association). Under that go to B Examples and then to APA formatting & Style Guide. There you see the Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab). On line 2 you will find General Writing. From there go to Academic Writing. There are various sections such as Establishing Arguments and Paragraphs and 3 Paragraphing. The library changes the website often, so if it does not appear exactly the way it is described here, please ask at their Reference Desk. After you have received a grade on a paper, you may never re-write it for a higher grade. If you want feedback, bring in a rough draft before you submit the paper for a grade. Don’t wait until the last office hour before the due date, because if there are a lot of students, it may not be possible to answer all of your questions in the specified time frame. In the essays, you are assigned to integrate on each page both academic literature, meaning scholarly books and articles, and your field work experience. Academic literature and field work should be equally balanced on each page. o Both essays must have both of these components. o To find current academic books and articles in the literature, pay close attention and take excellent notes during class. consult the bibliographies at the end of chapters in text books and library resources as a starting point. One way to find research reported in books and articles that may be relevant to your field work is to go to the library’s website and under Help go to the section called Research. Look, for example, at the section called Articles. Find the box on the left called Reference. At the bottom find Research Guides. Choose Political Science or Public Administration or Policy Analysis California or Policy Analysis, U.S. if one of those closely matches your field work. In the case of Political Science, See Main and then Articles. Use additional advice on use of library resources for these assignments (given during our class sessions with a librarian.) be careful to be sure that you are using scholarly publications as opposed to things such as chat groups on the Internet. Do not cite dictionaries and textbooks in your paper. You may want to refer to them to help you use footnotes and bibliography to locate research materials but in your papers use peer-reviewed academic literature which is as close as possible to your own field work situation. This means that the academic literature you study must have a level of analysis comparable to your field work. If you are working in a City Council office, you should be looking at academic literature for U.S. cities. Do not choose academic journals published in foreign countries because their cities are not necessarily comparable with ours. If you are working in a county office or a state govt. office, choose literature about how your level of government works. The same applies for internships in offices of elected officials in the U.S. House of Representatives or Senate. Be sure you have literature that is a correct match from this level of analysis perspective. If you are working in an unusual internship such as SANDAG, an inter-governmental organization, be sure to talk with the instructor about appropriate academic literature. If you have questions, ask during weekly class consultation sessions. Use several academic sources on each page. Sources such as newspapers, magazines, interviews, textbooks and trade journals may be used as 4 supplementary materials but do not substitute for academic sources. Papers which only discuss field work or use sources limited to the internet, newspapers and magazines etc. and do not include the required library research including books and scholarly articles will receive an F. Also see details on first and second essay for other circumstances causing failing grades. include in your paper quotations and appropriate citations of them from books and articles which illustrate why the book or article has made a contribution to your intellectual understanding of your internship field site and how it fits comparatively with comparable campaigns, judicial systems etc.? (Caution: be sure not to include quotations which are so vague or general that they could apply to almost any internship and/or could have been written by almost any author. Examples: Do not include quotations which say things like: “The author claims that leaders often have more power than others” or “the author writes that politics is a complex process”. These are examples of vague quotations which do not demonstrate that you have read and carefully thought about the author’s work and how it relates to your field work.) Read the sample papers on reserve in the Department office to see an example of a paper written by a student who received an A or A- in the past. o Do this in the first two weeks of your internship field work. o Model your work on theirs and ask questions during weekly class consultation time in order to get advice on how to modify the model to fit closely with your particular internship. In order to prepare for analyzing your field work, you should keep a journal of your daily activity at your field work site. Your journal entries should be kept from the perspective of the essay theme. Attributes of the good essay: o Good essays are well written and logically organized with a clear logical flow linking ideas. In part, this means you will be graded on English language usage. Your grade will include evaluation of the accuracy of your word choices, grammar and sentence structure. It should also be written in an academic writing style. o Good essays have a significant number of academic articles and books from appropriate academic journals. Be sure the level of analysis matches your internship. o Student writing must avoid plagiarism. To avoid plagiarism be sure that all of the ideas and words you use from academic literature are fully cited in APA format. This is common courtesy. All authors must be given credit for their creativity, ideas and word choice. For university policy on plagiarism and penalties go on the web under Academics to General Catalog. Under University Policies see Section 41304 on page 483 of the 2013-2014 General Catalog. o They also have correct paragraphing and use topic sentences with supporting evidence in each paragraph. Paragraphs are logically linked in a flow of ideas so 5 o o o that each paragraph clearly follows logically from the preceding paragraph and clearly links to the following paragraph. Writing the ideal first page: For both essays, your first page should identify the NAME (do not provide street address in the essay) of the person or organization with whom you are interning and which major intellectual concepts you will be using. Your opening paragraph should contain this information. Give a brief summary of your plan for your paper. By the end of your first page, the reader should have a bird’s-eye-view of how all of your main concepts will be linked. Citations in text and Reference List Use of material. Be sure you have used all of the sources in your Reference List. Do not use the same two or three sources many times. Every source cited in the text must appear in the Reference List. For citation format see APA section on “Short quotations”. Note that the guide says that when you are directly quoting from a work, you will need to include the author, year of publication, and the page number for the reference (preceded by “p”). The guide says “Introduce the quotation with a signal phrase that includes the author’s last name followed by the date of publication in parentheses. Note the following example in the Guide: “According to James (1998), “Students often had difficulty using APA style, especially when it was their first time” (p.199). In this case, James is the LAST name of the author. Be sure you always quote the author in order to avoid the risk of plagiarism. Correct format should be used. Use the APA format to cite your sources. You can find examples of correct citations by going to the library’s website. In the section below Help they have a section on Citing Sources. You will not be receiving an A or B grade on your paper unless you alphabetize your bibliography and follow other APA instructions. Format The first page of your essay should have this information on the first line: Your name, Pol. Sci. 495 and Spring 2014. Double space down from the first line and begin your essay. Do not triple space between paragraphs. That is a waste of paper. All work must be typed in Times New Roman 12 point font and double spaced with margins on each side no greater than one inch on each side. Length: The essay must have four complete pages of text with footnotes and bibliography beginning on the fifth page. Text beyond four pages will not be read. All pages must be correctly numbered and typed or printed out on dark print. Papers without page numbers will not be accepted. Staple your paper before you arrive at class. Do not expect someone else to provide a stapler for you at the last minute. Do not put it together with a 6 In order to get the highest grade you can, be sure that your work complies with EVERY standard discussed in the syllabus. For example: the A or A- paper includes: device, which easily comes apart such as paper clips or slip-on side plastic bindings. This is to insure that your work is not partially lost etc.. All papers must be submitted in paper form. No e-mail papers will be accepted. In addition: Students agree that by taking this course all required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to Turnitin.com for the detection of plagiarism. All submitted papers will be included as source documents in the Turnitin.com reference database solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of such papers. You may submit your papers in such a way that no identifying information about you is included. Another option is that you may request, in writing, that your papers not be submitted to Turnitin.com. However, if you choose this option you will be required to provide documentation to substantiate that the papers are your original work and do not include any plagiarized material.” Format penalties Any paper that: Does not have pages numbered Is not stapled WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED. IT WILL BE IMMEDIATELY RETURNED TO THE STUDENT AND MUST BE SUBMITTED THE NEXT DAY IN COMPLIANCE WITH INSTRUCTIONS. LATE PENALTIES WILL APPLY compliance with all syllabus requirements interesting intellectual observations linking field work experience with library research about a comparable level of analysis of relevant organization no major grammar errors; logically. excellent writing skills used to link ideas Details on the first essay: Your first essay and journal entries should focus on the theme: Which organizations, people, and other factors outside of this organization affect its behavior? Economists sometimes refer to these factors as "externalities." Which indicators tell you which externalities are important? Be sure to cover all the players and their roles. It will be easier to write your essay if you focus your daily journal entries around any information you get which contributes to this theme. Use topic sentences that focus on the concept, not on the person. All of the grading standards noted for the first essay also apply for the second essay. Additional advice on preparing for the second essay will be given in a class session in the library jointly taught by the professor and a librarian. To get credit for this paper all externalities in your paper must be from fields such as political science, public administration or criminal justice. You may encounter externalities that are not political science 7 subject material such as the weather. No credit is given for discussion of these externalities that are not part of the assignment and are not related to appropriate academic literature. Hint: When doing your research, don’t use the word “externalities” as a key word in a data base search. The word “externalities” is used in many fields outside political science. Instead, focus on the substance of your internship. For example, if you are doing an internship in a political campaign, it is probable that externalities in your campaign may include at least the media, voters, campaign contributors, a government regulatory agency and your opponent. In this case, for example, your inquiries to data bases would focus partly on looking for academic literature which examined the relationship between campaigns and the media. Your key words would be campaign and media, not externalities. You would also have to make inquiries about academic literature which explored the relationship between campaigns and voters etc. etc.. Be sure to look for literature about comparable campaigns. If you are working in a congressional campaign, look for literature on congressional campaigns. Don’t seek out academic literature about presidential or local government campaigns. This instruction regarding reading academic research about the comparable level of analysis appears in previous sections of the syllabus. Details on the second essay: The theme for the second essay is: who in this organization has power and who has authority? How do you know? What are the "indicators" you are observing? Are the relationships changing? If so, how are they changing? Draw upon definitions of power and authority which you draw from library research. Use the works of political philosophers and political scientists who have written about power and authority. You might wish to draw upon writings about political elites, organization theory, the work of political philosophers, or biographies or autobiographies of U.S. politicians and their assistants who have commented on power and authority relationships in their organizations. When you are writing about the relationships in your field work, the topic sentence of each paragraph should begin with a concept, which you illustrate with data from your field work and related literature later in the paragraph. Do not begin topic sentences with the names of people in your organization. Example: don't start a paragraph with a topic sentence which says something like "Mrs. Joan Smith is very powerful in our organization." From a long-term perspective, it is not Mrs. Smith you want your reader to focus on. Instead, you should focus on some concept which explains why she is important, such as the importance of experience or knowledge or loyalty to the candidate during a political campaign. Be sure to include on each page academic literature from political science or public administration articles and books, which explore factors such as experience, technical ability, psychology or loyalty and campaigns etc.. You can use illustrations from your field work to illustrate these conceptual relationships. The fictional example "Mrs. Smith" may, as an individual, retire or quit etc., so for your long term understanding of political and public administration concepts, it is the idea which is important in your topic sentence rather than the individual. Be sure to use enough concrete examples from your field work to convince the reader of your paper that you have intellectually examined your field work experience in the context of relevant literature in fields such as political science, public administration or criminal justice.. Also see syllabus section on grading standards. 8 MORE ON GRADING. Grades submitted by your field work supervisor count for 30 per cent of your grade. Each essay counts for 35% of your grade. No extra credit is allowed, so do your best on assigned work. No exceptions regarding extra credit will be granted. PROCEDURES FOR TURNING IN AND PICKING UP PAPERS. In order to calculate late penalties for papers, it is necessary to have evidence of the date students turned in their paper. Therefore, it is a course requirement to turn in your paper in person to the instructor and to sign the attendance sheet when you turn in the paper. Never leave your paper in my Department mailbox or under the door etc. where it might get lost. You will also be asked to sign in when you pick up your paper to be sure there is a complete record. PENALTIES FOR LATE PAPERS. As with the senior thesis, grades are lowered 1/3 of a grade for every 24 hours of a business day which it is late. For example, a paper grade would be lowered from "B" to "B-" for the first 24 hours it is late. Essays are due in class on the dates indicated in the course schedule. You may avoid late penalties if your work is late for any of the reasons listed below. In order to be excused from late penalties you must provide documentation of the reason for your lateness at the time you submit your paper. Documentation musts be from an appropriate professional such as the Student Health Center in the case of medical reasons for absence. A note from a family member is not an acceptable excuse. The following are examples of legitimate documentable reasons why late penalties would not be applied: illness requiring the aid of a medical doctor, death in the family, mandatory military duty, a conflicting university-sponsored activity such as a sports team competing out of town or an emergency which can be documented such as a car accident or required military or job duty which cannot be rescheduled. Family occasions are not grounds for excused absences. Examples of family occasions which are not excused absences include but are not limited to the following: sister’s wedding, father’s change of command ceremony, brother’s family gives birth to a child, grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, family reunion etc.. EXCEPTIONALLY SEVERE AND UNUSUAL PROBLEMS. Occasionally, students request exceptions to late penalties etc. due to problems which they perceive to be exceptionally severe or problems which do not fall within the general guidelines given above. Sometimes these involve grief, addictions, accidents, job layoffs or other problems. In any such case, the student will be asked to take advantage of a free advising service offered to students at the office of Counseling and Psychological Services. Find them on the campus website. You will be asked to make an appointment with them and to have the counselor you met with send me a letter making a recommendation for appropriate action to be taken in your case. They are very busy and sometimes have long waiting times for appointments. Be sure to contact them as soon as possible. If you wait until the crisis has passed, you may not be eligible for their help. They never provide excuses for a problem you had in a previous semester. INCOMPLETES. This course operates like all other courses. Incompletes are only available in those rare cases in which students have a very few hours of field work remaining to be completed. For this course, in order to be eligible for an incomplete, a student must have completed both essays by the due dates and have field work reports for both the first and second reporting periods. No student is ever granted an Incomplete in order to finish a paper. If you need an incomplete, get a Request for Incomplete form from the professor or the Department Office. Fill it out and attach a letter on letterhead from your Supervisor identifying why an Incomplete is needed and identifying a target date for completion. Work which is submitted after the target date will have 9 the above-mentioned late penalties applied. Your work will only be handled during fall or spring semesters. This course is not staffed during the summer or winter break when it is not on the course schedule. CLASS SCHEDULE Be sure to inform your field work supervisor in advance that on days when a class is scheduled, you must attend class and you cannot work at your field work site during class time This class is currently scheduled to meet inLL406. Any change in classroom will be announced on Blackboard. Be sure you have given Blackboard a current e-mail address. A Rohan address reportedly provides the best insurance that you will receive messages. Other addresses reportedly sometimes result in messages being sent to your junk mail. 1/23 Brief introduction to syllabus and in-class office hour of advising for those students who are looking for internships. Those present will be asked to sign the university liability release form. This is university policy. 1/28 Tuesday Introduction to the syllabus. (The detailed review of the syllabus takes place on this date because on the first day of class many students are only beginning to find out about internship course requirements.) University liability release form process continues. (See 1/17) Field Work Application Form distributed. All students must have the instructor’s signature on this form, signifying that the internship is acceptable as a Political Science internship. Any student who does not have an approved internship will receive an automatic F in the course. 1/30 Thursday office hour in the classroom during class time. 2/4 Drop/Add deadline 2/4 Tuesday MANDATORY CLASS in the classroom. YOU WILL RECEIVE A GRADE PENALTY IF YOU ARE ABSENT FROM ANY PART OF THIS SESSION. See paragraph on attendance. Focus for this session: How to avoid low grades when writing papers. Last semester, the grade distribution on the first essays was as follows: A 1; A- 2; B+ 3; B 3; B- 4; C+ 1; C 5; C- 3; D+ 1; D 3; F 1. This session will focus on tips to help you write a good paper. Field Work Application Form must be turned in today or a schedule set for its submission. 2/6 Thursday papers. MANDATORY CLASS in classroom. Advices continues on writing 2/11 MANDATORY CLASS continues in classroom. Tuesday 2/13 Thursday` MANDATORY CLASS in classroom. MANDATORY CLASS in classroom. YOU WILL RECEIVE A GRADE PENALTY IF YOU ARE ABSENT FROM ANY PART OF THIS SESSION. 10 A librarian will join me in conducting this class. He will give a lot of helpful hints about new resources available at the library and ways to use the library efficiently in order to write a competitive paper. The focus will be on the topic for the first paper. The Department field work enrollment form will be distributed. This is the form your field work supervisor will be filling in with your field work grades. It must be turned in along with your first paper. 2/18-3/4 office hour during class time in my office, NH 108 for consultation. 3/6 Thursday MANDATORY CLASS in classroom. YOU WILL RECEIVE A GRADE PENALTY IF YOU ARE ABSENT FROM ANY PART OF THIS SESSION. Two items are due during class. If you have not completed the two items listed here, please bring the paperwork necessary to drop the course late. Your first essay will be checked in along with your Department field work enrollment form, filled out completely. Bring journals for discussion of the second essay theme as it worked in your field work site. A librarian will join me in conducting this class. The focus will be on doing research for the second paper. 3/11 –Tu. 3/25 office hour during class time in my office, NH 108 for consultation. 3/27 Thurs. First papers will be returned in my office. Spring recess 4/1 – 4/5 4/8-4/15 4/17 office hour during class time in my office, NH 108 for consultation. Thursday Second paper due. Meet in classroom, LL 406. Tues. 4/22 – Tu. 5/6/ office hour during class time in my office for consultation. Thurs. 5/1 Field work grades due from field work supervisors. office hour during class time in the classroom 5/6 Tues. office hour during class time in my office for consultation. 5/8 Thurs. Second paper returned in my office, NH 108. 5/15 Thurs. No attendance required. I will be in the classroom from 10:30 – 11:30 if you have any last minute questions. This is part of the time period for final exams for classes in this time slot. This is the last time during the semester that I will be in the classroom to answer questions so be sure to come by if you have any outstanding issues. 11