Community Proposal

Community Proposal

Research consumes a great deal of time and energy. The research that you’ll do this semester needs to capture and keep your attention. In order to help all of this happen, we’ll work through a particular process to get to research issues in this class. It all begins with choosing a community you’d like to study.



Step One: Create a short definition of what you think makes a group of people a community.

It only needs to be a few sentences. This definition shouldn’t come from a dictionary and should be in your own words. This is your view of what needs to be present before a group of people can be considered connected enough to consist of a community. This definition should be the first paragraph at the top of your proposal.



Step Two: Choose three possible communities that you would be interested in researching.

Write a short proposal in which you describe three possible communities that you might like to research for this class. For each community, write a bit about it (describe it, the location, the people, the connection - what keeps them connected, whatever you know about it) and why you think you might like to check it out. This step should be three solid paragraphs - one for each community.

Remember: the only stipulation is that you do not belong to the community.



Step Three: Choose a topic for each community.

In addition to your description of all three communities, include a proposal for the topic you might like to research in that community. The topic needs to have social implications - an influence on society - such as: euthanasia, juvenile crime and rehabilitation, divorce, single parenting, drug addiction, death sentence, poverty, welfare, genetic engineering, racially mixed adoptions, homosexual adoptions, etc.... Choose a topic that is pertinent to each community, and one that is controversial enough that there will be plenty of research available to you when you go to look for your outside sources. Write a brief paragraph identifying the topic, explaining how the topic is appropriate to the community, and describing why you are interested in researching this topic. Each topic proposal should be a paragraph, and should follow the community proposal paragraph for which it is intended.
All in all, this entire proposal should be 7 paragraphs long: Community definition, three community proposals, three topic proposals. The proposal, as with everything, should conform to the formatting sheet.


Seven paragraphs of proposal:

I. Definition of Community
II. Community 1
III. Topic for Community 1
IV. Community 2
V. Topic for Community 2
VI. Community 3
VII. Topic for Community 3