Syllabus

All course materials, including the instructions for assignments and the corresponding due dates, will be posted at the URL below. In addition, Microsoft Teams will be used for weekly updates. Blackboard will only be used for submitting written assignments.

• https://wilcoxen.maxwell.insightworks.com/courses/max401/

This is a project-oriented course in which you will:

1. Select and analyze a real-world problem affecting a specific community;
2. Develop an idea that would address it;
3. Work with an organization in the community to implement it. 

Together, those three components will comprise your Action Plan: a pragmatic, real-world example of civic engagement based on social-science research.

You must be a CCE major and have completed MAX 301: Ethics, Justice, and Citizenship and MAX 302: Research Seminar on Civic Engagement and MAX 310: Community Placement in Ethics, Justice and Citizenship.

After completing this course, you will be able to do each of the following tasks. The broad CCE program learning outcomes are shown in parentheses.

• Identify and evaluate the key features of the community and context where your action plan will take place, including the range of private, public, and non-profit actors that are relevant and their prior or ongoing efforts to address the problem (Community & Context);

• Use social science research to understand the root causes of the broad social problem, the scope of the problem in your specific geographic and demographic target area, and the effectiveness of potential actions to address it (Research & Discovery);
  
  
• Design, and implement if possible, a concrete, feasible, and sustainable action to address the problem (Design & Implementation);
  
  
• Engage extensively with one or more community partners to implement the action (Collaboration & Engagement);

• Make a clear, rigorous, and well-reasoned ethical argument in support of your action, drawing on facts and community values. You will be able to make your case both in writing and in a professional-grade presentation (Values & Ethics).

Grades will be based on the activities listed in the table below. The weight of each component in the overall semester grade is indicated in the "weight" column. The details of each assignment, including its due date, will be posted on the main class web page.

Notes:

1. Based on providing Teams updates and pod check-ins each week and not missing class without advance notice.
2. Graded on a 4 point scale: 4 points if the document covers the right issues and is well written; 3 points if it needs minor fixes to either the substance or exposition; 2 if it needs larger changes. Can be resubmitted for regrading any time within two weeks after the original deadline.
3. Graded on a 15 point scale with 10 points for the scope of engagement (appropriate number and type of contacts) and 5 points for clarity of documentation.
4. Graded on a 40 point scale. Essentially combines updated versions of the prior documents plus adds a couple of short additional reflective sections.

Submitting Assignments:

• All assignments other than presentations will be distributed as templates via Teams. Please update the templates in Teams by 11:59 pm on the due date to give me a chance to look them over before class.
• Presentations should be submitted via Teams as PDFs.
• Log updates should be made throughout the semester as they occur so we can dicuss them during class.

As you’ll see over the course of the semester, an Action Plan will involve multiple kinds of problems and multiple actions by multiple parties. To avoid confusion, we’ll use the following terms in class: the problem is the socio-economic condition that you think needs to be improved (i.e., the world’s problem); your organization is a nonprofit. government agency or business you would like to enlist to address the problem; action is what you would like the organization to do (which may include collaboration with you); stakeholders are people or organizations that will be impacted by the action but have little direct influence on whether the organization takes the action; players are people within or outside the organization who have influence on the action that will be taken by the organization; obstacle is something that you’ll need to overcome (i.e., it’s a problem for you rather than the world’s problem); strategy is the set of activities taken by you to overcome obstacles, including gaining support from those needed to get the organization to agree to the action; and project is the overall set of activities comprising your Action Plan, including any negotiations you carry out with players and stakeholders.

The official University statement includes this commitment: "In our quest to become a campus community that embodies Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) and to live as an expression of belonging, becoming and bestowing, Syracuse University rejects and rebukes all forms of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, religious harassment and hostility, classism and all other forms of discrimination, othering, hate and non-accessibility in all its myriad expressions." This is personally important to me as well. If you ever feel discriminated against or unsupported because of your identity, please let me or someone else in the department know, or contact one of the resources on this page.

Syracuse University’s Academic Integrity Policy reflects the high value that we, as a university community, place on honesty in academic work. The policy holds students accountable for the integrity of all work they submit and for upholding course-specific, as well as university-wide, academic integrity expectations. The policy governs citation and use of sources, the integrity of work submitted in exams and assignments, and truthfulness in all academic matters, including course attendance and participation. The policy states that any work a student submits for a course must be solely their own unless the instructor explicitly allows collaboration or editing. The policy also requires students to acknowledge their use of other peoples’ language, images or other original creative or scholarly work through appropriate citation.

These expectations extend to the new, fast-growing realm of artificial intelligence (AI) as well as to the use of websites that charge fees or require uploading of course materials to obtain exam solutions or assignments. Students are required to ask their instructor whether use of these tools is permitted – and if so, to what extent – before using them to complete any assignment or exam. Students are also required to seek advance permission from instructors if they wish to submit the same work in more than one course. Failure to receive this permission in advance may violate the Academic Integrity Policy. Under the policy, instructors who seek to penalize a student for a suspected violation must first report the violation to the Center for Learning and Student Success (CLASS). Students may not drop or withdraw from courses in which they face a suspected violation. Instructors must wait to assign a final course grade until a suspected violation is reviewed and upheld or overturned.

Upholding Academic Integrity includes abiding by instructors’ individual course expectations, which may include the protection of their intellectual property. Students should not upload, distribute, or otherwise share instructors’ course materials without permission. Students found in violation of the policy are subject to grade sanctions determined by the course instructor and non-grade sanctions determined by the School or College where the course is offered, as outlined in the Violation and Sanction Classification Rubric. Students are required to read an online summary of the University’s academic integrity expectations and provide an electronic signature agreeing to abide by them twice a year during pre-term check-in on MySlice.

Syracuse University values diversity and inclusion; we are committed to a climate of mutual respect and full participation. There may be aspects of the instruction or design of this course that result in barriers to your inclusion and full participation in this course. I invite any student to contact me to discuss strategies and/or accommodations (academic adjustments) that may be essential to your success and to collaborate with the Center for Disability Resources (CDR) in this process.

If you would like to discuss disability-accommodations or register with CDR, please visit Center for Disability Resources. Please call (315) 443-4498 or email disabilityresources@syr.edu for more detailed information. The CDR is responsible for coordinating disability-related academic accommodations and will work with the student to develop an access plan. Since academic accommodations may require early planning and generally are not provided retroactively, please contact CDR as soon as possible to begin this process.

The University does not discriminate and prohibits harassment or discrimination related to any protected category including creed, ethnicity, citizenship, sexual orientation, national origin, sex, gender, pregnancy, disability, marital status, age, race, color, veteran status, military status, religion, sexual orientation, domestic violence status, genetic information, gender identity, gender expression or perceived gender.

Any complaint of discrimination or harassment related to any of these protected bases should be reported to Sheila Johnson-Willis, the University’s Chief Equal Opportunity & Title IX Officer. She is responsible for coordinating compliance efforts under various laws including Titles VI, VII, IX and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. She can be contacted at Equal Opportunity, Inclusion, and Resolution Services, 005 Steele Hall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244-1120; by email: titleix@syr.edu; or by telephone: 315-443-0211.

SU religious observances notification and policy, found at the URL below, recognizes the diversity of faiths represented among the campus community and protects the rights of students, faculty, and staff to observe religious holidays according to their tradition.  Under the policy, students are provided an opportunity to make up any examination, study, or work requirements that may be missed due to a religious observance provided they notify their instructors before the end of the second week of classes for regular session classes and by the submission deadline for flexibly formatted classes. If you prefer, however, you can notify me directly by email. In either case, just check with me and we'll work out an arrangement that fits your schedule. More information is available here.

Some of the academic work you complete this semester will be shared with other members of the class, or the class as a whole, for the purpose of soliciting feedback and suggestions for improvement. In addition, your final presentation and report will constitute your CCE Action Plan, which is the capstone project for the major. Therefore, as generally accepted practice, these elements of your work will be placed in the library, University Archives, and the CCE office for public reference, and possibly made available on the University web site as well. Finally, work completed this semester may also be sampled for an academic research project on civic education in higher education. However, before using your work for that purpose, the CCE Faculty Chair or the Program Coordinator will either get your written permission or render the work anonymous by removing identifying material. As a formal matter, your registration and continued enrollment in the course constitute your permission to use your work in the ways described above.