The mission of the Alamogordo Branch of New Mexico State University, a comprehensive community college, is to:

1. provide quality education that includes academic, technical, vocational, developmental, and career oriented skills;
2. promote student competence, confidence, and success and provide personal enrichment programs through continued response to the cultural, intellectual, and economic needs of the community;
3. maintain active ties and continuity with the main campus;
4. afford equal opportunity for individuals who meet admission criteria to receive educational services within the community without regard to age, ancestry, color, disability, gender, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status.

Course Rationale, Objectives, and Methods

Rationale
Service Learning is an offshoot of experiential learning.  Experiential learning emphasizes gains made in knowledge by working through a cycle of observing/doing, hypothesizing, experimenting, abstracting/theorizing, back to observing/doing.

Service Learning puts students into community organizations where they can work on projects for the good of the community and reflect (abstract, theorize) about the connections between their academic work and the work in the organization.

Service Learning in English involves students in organizational projects that are meant to produce texts that can improve life in the community:  e.g., grant applications, brochures for community organizations, letter campaigns for fund-raising.

Objectives
 

• to improve the power and effectiveness of student writing
• to give students document design skills
• to introduce students to project management skills
• to improve community life

This course will be mainly project based.  Students will need to take on projects for community or educational organizations to improve the functioning of those organizations, and to improve community life.  Students will show the textual results of those projects:  grant applications, proposals, brochures, procedure manuals, etc.  Students will also write reflective reports to show how their academic course work connects to and extends the work of the organizations.

Assignments & Grading

It would be my preference to grade this course S/U:  Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.  If there are reasons that I can't, then the following assignments and point values will be used to figure grades.
 

Assignments & Activities	Points
1-2 page proposal, specifying the project and the text to be produced, delivered	20
2 page mid-term progress report, reflecting on project tasks accomplished, project tasks remaining	20
Text resulting from the project	40
1-2 page completion report, reflecting on the project and connections to academic course work	20
	100 points

Semester Grade Scheme: 100-90 points = A; 89-80 points = B; 79-70 points = C; 69-60 points = D;
                                            below 60 points = F

Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory Grade Scheme: 70 points or higher = Satisfactory; below 70 points = Unsatisfactory

Attendance

Attendance is reported so that NMSU-Alamogordo may recapture federal funds allocated as financial aid to students who fail because they don't come to class.

For every session you attend, you will get 1 point, up to 15 points.  Assuming that absences may be necessary in order to work with the organization, any session missed must be made-up with a 1/2 page progress report, or trip report,  or work log entry, on the work of the community organization.  For other kinds of absences, you will lose 10 points.

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Instructor Contact Information Ron McNeel  Instructional Coordinator for English & Reading  Professor of English  Faculty Office Building #115 Office Hours Monday & Wednesday:  10:30-12:30 Tuesday:  2-6 Thursday:  By Appointment Only phone and voice mail:  505.439.3742  email:  mcneel@nmsua.nmsu.edu website:  http://alamo.nmsu.edu/~rmcneel

Books & Materials No books are required NMSU-A computer account access to a reliable computer with CD-ROM and email.

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Course and University Policies
 

1. You may not eat, drink, nor use tobacco products in the computer lab.
2. Excessive absences will affect your final semester grade.  See the grading and attendance policies above.
3. Chronic tardiness is unacceptable.  You may be counted absent.
4. You are responsible for the information presented at each class session whether or not you are present.
5. Plagiarized papers may receive a grade of zero.  Plagiarized papers may also be reported to the University for disciplinary action as outlined in the Student Handbook.
6. All late papers will lose 10% of the possible points.  But be sure to listen in class for due date adjustments.  I will not take late papers or revisions after April 30.

If you have or believe you have a disability, you may wish to self-identify.  You can do so by providing documentation to the Counselor for Special Populations, Mr. Jim Payne (phone 439-3724).  Appropriate accommodations may then be provided for you.

If you have a condition which may affect your ability to exit safely from the premises in an emergency, or which may cause an emergency during class, you are encouraged to discuss this in confidence with the instructor and/or the ADA Coordinator.  If you have general questions about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), call the ADA Coordinator, Doris Lynch, at 439-3717.

In Case of Emergency

If someone in your family needs to contact you in an emergency, use the following telephone numbers:

DAYTIME:  439-3720
EVENING::  439-3751 OR 439-3761

To make it easier to find you, the person calling should know the class (i.e. English 299, Grant Writing/Project Management/Service Learning) and the instructor.

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