Office Hours
I have regular office hours on Mondays from 11:30 am–1:00 pm. During that time, I’ll be available to meet with you and you don’t need to make an appointment first. You can come to my office in person (I’m in Pardee 301-B) or use the Zoom link at the top of our Moodle page. I will also be on campus most afternoons before 4. If you’d like to meet then or at another time that works better for your schedule, email me and we’ll set something up.
Attendance
In a small seminar class like this one, regular attendance is crucial. When you miss class, you can’t be part of the discussion, you won’t understand the relevance of the reading and writing assignments, and you will fall behind. Thus, uneven attendance, including late arrivals to class, will affect every other aspect of this course on which your learning depends. And it also has consequences for the experience of the class as a whole. We are a small group, and talking together is the main thing we do. Doing that well requires everyone’s effort.
If you cannot make it to class, please contact me as early as possible, so that we can make a plan to catch you up. Knowing who will be in the room is helpful as I plan for small group work and other hands-on activities.
All of that said—if you must miss a class, you can schedule a meeting with me to go over what you missed. In order to do that, please follow these steps:
- Contact me as early as possible (email is fine) about your absence and no later than the beginning of class time.
- Propose 3 times, within 10 days of the missed class, when you would be available to meet with me.
- Schedule a meeting time.
- Complete all of the work from the day you were absent, including the homework and any in-class work (all of which will be available to you on Moodle), and bring it with you to our meeting.
- Meet with me at our scheduled time to discuss your work and any questions you may have about the class you missed.
I do not need to know why you’re missing class. What’s important is that you contact me as soon as you can and we schedule a time to meet.
Missing more than 6 classes (the equivalent of 2 weeks of the course), for any reason, is too many and you will not be able to pass the course.
Flexible Deadline Policy
You will be doing a lot of writing this semester, and it’s important to stay on top of deadlines. In most cases, the frequent informal writing assignments are preparing you for the work of a particular day’s class and/or the longer assignments, so missing those will make it harder to keep up with the work and the pace of the course. In addition, the more writing you produce, the more you’ll have to select from when preparing your midterm and final portfolios.
All of that said, life happens. If you anticipate a problem meeting a posted writing assignment deadline, there is a process in place:
- Contact me before the deadline. (Email is best.)
- Propose a new deadline.
For example, if an assignment is due in class on Monday, “before” means that you have contacted me before the beginning of class on Monday. Email is fine, and you do not need to include the reason for the request—only that you need an extension and what your new deadline will be. There is no grade penalty for requesting a new deadline.
If you cannot turn the assignment in on the new proposed due date, it is your responsibility to submit a new request.
Assignments whose new due dates are more than 3 days after the original due date may receive less feedback. Unapproved late assignments will receive no feedback which will have an impact on your ability to revise your work as required by the grading contract (explained below). Late assignments submitted after Dec 30 will not receive credit—at that point, all assignments should be completed except optional revisions for the final portfolio and writer’s memo.
Classroom Technology Guidelines
Laptops may be used for writing or note taking during class, but I expect you to refrain from using social medial, email, and the internet unless we are doing so as part of a class activity. In most cases, readings should be printed out so that you can annotate as you read, and you should bring your annotated copies to class. (There are a handful that are best read on screen, and I will let you know when we get to them.) Phones should be on silent or vibrate mode and tucked away.
Collaboration and Intellectual Honesty
Writing and reading are social and socializing activities, and more often than not in this course, you will be responding to and building on the ideas of other writers and texts. I encourage you to discuss the reading and writing assignments with any human in or outside the class. In addition, I will frequently ask you to read and respond to one another’s work. Should you find yourself drawing on any of these discussions in your written work, you should include an acknowledgement statement at the end of your project. (To see an example of an acknowledgement statement turn to the final page of this syllabus. Most academic books also include an acknowledgements section, usually near the beginning.)
My expectation is that any time you quote from, summarize, paraphrase, or otherwise draw on work that is not yours, you will cite it. In this course we will follow MLA rules. More information about MLA format is available in the handbooks recommended above. You can also bring your citation questions to Clara or me.
Instances of plagiarism, representing without attribution the ideas of others, will be dealt with according to the procedure outlined in the most recent version of your student handbook. You are responsible for reading and adhering to the College’s “Principles of Intellectual Honesty” explained there.
Generative Artificial Intelligence Policy
FYSes focus on developing your critical reading, writing and thinking skills. Developing in these ways requires practice, taking risks, and a lot patience with yourself as a learner, especially when things do not come easily.
In contrast, while ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) may make your writing seem “better” or “smoother,” they prioritize product over process. LLM technology was built by scraping publicly available texts on the Internet: Reddit posts, fanfiction archives, legal and illegal collections of scanned books and scholarly articles. LLMs then blend these sources together, responding to your typed questions based on the mathematical probability that a given word is likely to come next in a phrase or sentence. The resulting writing can be flat and uninteresting. Moreover, when you query these machines for help with your own writing, the advice you receive risks eliminating features of your writing that make you sound like yourself.
The good news? In this course, we are all about process, and there is no penalty for making mistakes. Making mistakes is part of learning. If something doesn’t work out in this course, you can revise.
I expect you to submit your own work with no help from any LLM, including ones like Grammarly that promise only to “clean up” your writing. There is no such thing as simply cleaning up your writing. Don’t sacrifice your agency as a writer to false narratives about grammatical correctness!
In addition, do not submit anyone else’s work to GenAI tools. Programs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude often use material submitted to them to continue training their model. In this way they profit off the work of other writers without the writers’ permission. Once submitted to these models, material is usually out of your control, meaning that you can’t delete it and it’s stored by the program. (Something to bear in mind if you have been in the habit of sharing your own writing with these models, particularly writing that includes personal information.)
You may not submit any material I provide to our class to GenAI programs, including assignment descriptions, slide decks, course reading, my feedback on your writing, this syllabus, etc. You also may not submit to any GenAI programs any material shared with you by another student, such as drafts for writing workshops, comments, or class notes.
Requests for Academic Accommodation
In compliance with Lafayette College policy and equal access laws, I am available to discuss appropriate academic accommodations that you require as a student with a disability. Except in unusual circumstances, requests for academic accommodations need to be made during the first two weeks of the semester so that arrangements can be made. Students must register with the Dean of Advising for verification and for determination of reasonable academic accommodations.
Federal Credit Hour Requirement
The student work in this course is in full compliance with the federal definition of a four- credit hour course. (See the Registrar’s Office web site for the full policy and practice statement.)
And Finally
Because we will often have dogs with us in class, please do not have open containers of food on your desk. Store all food in containers with lids and secure the container inside your bookbag. Beverages are fine to bring.