Your essay must include a title page containing your name, POLS 2302, Written Assignment (with an essay title), semester, and the date of your submission of the assignment through Safe Assign. (The title page is not included as a numbered page and your essay should meet the page number requirement exclusive of the cover page.)
Write a three-to-five page essay containing the following:
1. An introductory paragraph containing a brief description of three distinct subject areas studied this semester that you found most interesting and discussion of an identified contemporary political problem and solution. One of the three distinct subject areas you discuss must be one of the three branches of American government. Texas government and material contained in Module 4 may not be included as topics of discussion in your paper. The three subject areas you discuss must be gained from POLS 2302 and cannot be topics studied in POLS 2301 (i.e., parties, the media, interest groups, elections, etc.). Subject areas should focus on topics listed in the Detailed Course Syllabus (i.e., the three branches of government, the Founding, civil rights, civil liberties, federalism, foreign policy, domestic policy).
Your identified contemporary political problem may be but is not required to be related to topics covered in POLS 2302. If you choose to link a topic with a contemporary problem/solution, make sure to first discuss all three topics in a detailed, objective way through the lens of material covered in the course, and then discuss the contemporary problem/solution after discussing the three topics. Here is an example of organizing a linked discussion: Topic 1 Civil Rights; Topic 2 Social Policy; Topic 3 Congress (again, you must discuss a branch of the national government); Contemporary Problem/Solution: Social Policy the Covid-19 pandemic. Other examples would include: the 2nd Amendment (contained within the distinct topic of civil liberties) and discussion of mass shootings and attempts for gun control legislation; foreign policy Afghanistan; civil liberties abortion legislation. The possibilities are extensive. If you have questions about your topics or the organization of your paper, please feel free to email the professor.
2. Discussion of the three subject areas identified in your introduction. Citations and specific academic information gained from the course must be provided in both the body of the text and in the Works Cited or bibliography section of the paper.
3. Identify, discuss and describe a specific contemporary political problem. This section is particularly conducive for you to include academic, scholarly sources of well-cited information.
4. Construct and communicate a solution to the problem you identified (above). Make sure to develop and express your solution in the form of an argument that is supported by well-documented and properly cited facts and data. A good paper will have at least 3-5 scholarly sources in addition to the course textbook(s) and course videos.
Note: Module 4 will not have been studied prior to the written assignment submission deadline. For this reason, the topics studied in Module 4 including the Texas Constitution and Texas government may not be one of the three topics you select for written assignment discussion. Discussion of a Module 4 topic will result in an automatic zero on the written assignment.
