Proposal

Submission Requirements: Submit on or before the due date via Assessments in Blackboard by attaching your assignment.

Format and Length Requirements: Use standard memo format (single-space) and 12 point Times New Roman font; Place each heading flush with the left margin and bold it. 1,200-1,400 words

Introductory Comments about the Proposal Assignment
A proposal is one kind of informal report. Lengthy research projects, reports, and papers often begin with a proposal to do research. A proposal serves several purposes:

The proposal is a planning document for the writer in the sense that the proposal requires you to draft an outline for the future report or paper, create a thoughtful schedule of key tasks, list relevant sources, and so on. The goal is for you to actually use the plan that you develop as you write the report or paper.
The proposal is a decision making tool for the audience. With a proposal, the audience might be an instructor, employer, thesis committee, book publisher, and so on. The audience for the proposal may or may not be the same audience as the audience for the future report or paper. Essentially, the proposal audience has the power to approve or reject your request to research, meaning the proposal audience decides if your plan is feasible and if the resulting document (or other deliverable) will make a significant contribution to the company or field of study. In this sense, the proposal’s purpose is persuasive. Sections like the background section help your audience understand why its important for you to complete the research, while other sections (e.g., the outline, schedule, and methods sections) allow the reader to verify that your plan is strong (meaning that there is research available, that you have a reasonable schedule, etc.).
Your Proposal Assignment will serve as a planning document for the Formal Report Assignment. For your proposal assignment, I am the audience who will approve or reject your request, but I will not be the audience for the formal report. For your report, you’ll choose an audience that fits the topic and purpose of the formal report.

REQUIREMENTS FOR PROPOSAL TOPIC

You get to choose your topic and purpose, but your topic must relate to your academic major. Generally, the topic chosen should relate to a current problem in your field which you’ll offer solutions for in the report. Proposals submitted on topics that do not relate to the student’s major will be rejected and receive a “0.”

Note, we’ll discuss topics and audiences informally in the Discussions in week 1. Once your proposal has been submitted and approved, you may not change your topic.

ATTENTION BUSINESS STUDENTS
Students who are earning a degree within UHV’s School of Business are required as a part of the School’s AACSB accrediting to incorporate some aspect of diversity into their formal report topic. The formal report does not have to be entirely about diversity, but must include at least a subtopic that relates to diversity in business – for example, gender or race issues in the workplace, communication with people from different cultures, etc.

If you’re not sure if your major is offered from UHV’s School of Business, please send me a Message within Blackboard. The School of Business offers the following majors and concentrations: accounting, finance, marketing, management, general business, economics, entrepreneurship, healthcare administration, human resource management, international business, supply chain management, and business administration.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY REMINDER

As you complete this assignment, it may be useful to review UHV’s Academic Honesty Policy. UHV considers academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, cheating, and collaborating inappropriately, as a serious breach of ethical conduct with various disciplinary actions, including, but not limited to, failure of an assignment or course. Please be sure to cite research carefully, including providing in-text citations and reference entries for all research whether quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.

Proposal Assignment Guidelines
Use the headings below for your proposal. Follow the guidelines beneath each section to help you decide what information to include under each section.

  • Date: (Due Date)
  • To: Summer Leibensperger
  • From: (Your Name)
  • Subject: (Purpose of Your Proposal)

Begin the memo with a brief paragraph that explains the purpose of the proposal and the subject, audience, and purpose of your report. Be concise but clear.

Background
The Background section should use research and discussion to introduce a topic or problem and to convince the proposal’s reader that the topic is important. As you write this section, keep in mind that the proposal is a decision making tool for the audience—you must prove the problem is significant or the opportunity shouldn’t be missed. If you fail to be persuasive, the proposal may be rejected.

In this section, aim for three well-researched paragraphs and incorporate at least three authoritative sources. Cite the research using APA documentation style unless you have been directed to use MLA documentation style.

Audience
In this section, you should name the primary audience for your formal report, discuss the readers’ knowledge level about the topic (and any important assumptions), indicate any potential negative attitudes or objections to your topic, and discuss how you will meet the readers’ needs and overcome objections. Keep in mind that most audiences will have objections of some kind. (Minimally, most readers are busy people, and they may not want to read a report.)

Your primary audience should be a professional audience and will most likely be within your field. It cannot be the general public or any other general audience.

Topics to Investigate

This section should list the major research topics and sub-topics that your formal report will cover and provide relevant descriptions to explain the scope of the report. You may need to provide the rationale for discussing some topics and not others.

Basically, in this section you are providing an annotated outline for the body of your report so that readers have a clear picture of the formal report.

Methods
In this section, you should describe where you plan to research (databases, journal names, etc.) and how you will evaluate research. Then, provide a working or tentative bibliography of at least 5 authoritative sources you have read and plan to use in your report. At least 4 of these sources must be scholarly journal articles obtained from the UHV Library. They should be current. In your bibliography, please also include any sources you have cited in the Background or Topics to Investigate sections of the proposal. APA should be used to format the bibliography entries unless you’ve been directed to use MLA.

Note, if you are not able to find at least 4 scholarly journal articles on your topic, then the topic is not a good fit for this particular project.

You may include an interview as a source, but you must include the interview questions as an appendix to your proposal and to your formal report. The questions should clearly indicate the kind of information you expect to learn from the interview. In addition, you should include a discussion of the authority of the interview source. Note, an interview does not count as a scholarly source. Textbooks are also not usually scholarly sources.

If you are interested in doing other kinds of primary research (e.g., a survey), please write to me via Messages before turning in the proposal assignment.

Work Schedule
This section should include the work schedule you will use to complete your report. It should list the major tasks needed to complete this project (writing, editing, proofreading, etc.) and the corresponding due dates. This section shows your plan for completing the project in a timely manner.

Request for Approval
Here you ask for permission to proceed and for suggestions. The request for approval is usually formulaic. Use or adapt the following sentence: I ask that you approve my topic and my approach to it.