Statement of Rights & Responsibilities
Course as Community
Courses comprise communities of learners with responsibilities to one
another. Our particular community is governed by the code of conduct
at Cleveland State University, and rules of simple courtesy. We expect
to listen and engage our peers respectfully, which includes turning
cell phones off, arriving on time, and not interrupting, or carrying
on side conversations.
We will strive to create a learning community that fosters
critical inquiry. Everyone is responsible for developing and engaging
this community. This means that students should prepare for class by
doing course readings prior to class and by coming prepared to discuss
the materials. It also means taking the course project seriously and
doing research/writing about it from the outset of the semester.
Each student is expected to make a commitment of twelve
hours of work per week to this course—beyond attending class sessions.
This time commitment will show in student preparation for class, excellent
and thoughtful written assignments, and work handed in on time.
Civility and respect are the final components of a successful
course community. Students showing incivility to one another or the
instructor and/or demonstrating a lack of respect to one another or
the instructor, will be asked to leave the setting in which this lack
of respect/incivility is demonstrated. Threats and/or any menacing behaviors
will immediately be reported to university police.
If is also expected that students create PRINT COPIES
of all Electronic Course Reserve readings in advance and to bring them
to class as part of the discussion. It will be assumed that students
not bring such materials did not prepare in advance.
Assignments—General
All paper-writing assignments MUST be word processed. There are NO exceptions.
All assignments must be typewritten (for more see below);
you must use a 12 point font of reasonable size, such as Times New Roman
or Times, with 1" or 1.25" margins. Moreover, you paper should
contain no grammatical or spelling errors; practically this means that
your paper should possess less than one error per two pages of text.
If these requirements are NOT meant, the instructor may return it to
you and/or refuse to grade your assignment; further, you will receive
a deduction of one-letter grade. All citations must follow the Chicago
Manual of Style format; they may appear as either footnotes or endnotes.
Failure to meet any of these guidelines may result in the paper being
NOT being accepted. This is at the instructor’s discretion.
Attendance of course meetings is mandatory. See below
for additional notes about this policy.
Electronic Submission
• The instructor will accept papers submitted electronically.
However, they must be formatted according to the following conditions
OR THEY WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED AND WILL BE TREATED AS LATE.
• Formatted in Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format;
• Title Page with student name, paper title, assignment information,
course, date, and appropriate paper number;
• Header on the page must possess the student’s last name,
assignment information, date, and page number;
• The instructor will try to acknowledge successful receipt of
the paper within 24 hours. However, if no such electronic notice is
received, it is the student’s responsibility to confirm delivery;
• Responsibility for electronically submitted papers rests solely
with the student; thus, I recommend that students supplement all electronic
submissions with hard copy submissions, as soon as possible.
Late Work
Late papers will NOT be accepted, except in unusual circumstance (as
laid out in the CSU Code of Conduct.) If late papers are accepted, there
may be a penalty, usually of one letter-grade per day.
These strict rules apply, in part, because the course
project is cumulative, and students will be expected to include the
requisite work in their final projects. If you get behind, you will
have difficulty catching up. Moreover, I am giving you every assignment
for the semester on the first day of class. No excuses for lateness
with that much advance warning. If there is a crisis in your life, please
communicate with me about it in a timely fashion. If you extend me this
courtesy, you will find me very amenable to meeting your needs.
Statement of Academic Integrity
Using someone else’s ideas or phrasing and representing those
ideas or phrasing as our own, either on purpose or through carelessness,
is a serious offense known as plagiarism. “Ideas or phrasing”
includes written or spoken material ranging from whole papers and paragraphs
to sentences and phrases. “Someone else” can mean a professional
source, such as a published writer or critic in a book, magazine, encyclopedia,
or journal; an electronic resource such as material we discover on the
World Wide Web; another student at our school or anywhere else; and
a paper-writing “service” (online or otherwise) which offers
to sell written papers for a fee.
Source: Capitol Community College’s guide to plagiarism (based
on the MLA style): http://webster.commnet.edu/mla/plagiarism.shtml