Table of contents:

1. About this course
   1. Course description
   2. Role in curriculum
      1. Foundation seminar
      2. Foundation seminar themes
      3. Writing across the curriculum (W1)
   3. Learning goals and assessments
      1. Major goals
      2. How you’ll progress toward these goals
         1. Progress binder
         2. Final Writing Project
         3. Portfolio
      3. How we’ll assign your final grade
2. Course preview
   1. Part I: Introduction
   2. Part II: Reading and organizing information
      1. Important note about content of part II
   3. Part III: Making connections
   4. Part IV: Trailblazing
3. Generic policies for my courses

What to call me	Chris or Prof. Mitsch
When and where	OLIN 275, MWF 4-4:50pm
Office hours?	Make an appointment

This course is also part of the University Writing Program, which consists of several courses that will help you develop your writing skills. This course is a W1 course, meaning that you will:

1. Learn to use writing as a way of thinking as well as a means of creating and processing knowledge;
2. Engage in recurring writing exercises that emphasize the reinforcement of skills we discuss and working with feedback from varied sources;
3. Develop skills related to each stage of the writing process: planning, composing, revising, and editing.
4. Appreciate the importance of and achieve basic proficiency with:
   1. Understanding genre and using appropriate conventions
   1. Addressing intended audiences
   1. Achieving purposes
   1. Organizing the whole paper, paragraphs and sentences
   1. Editing and proofreading;
5. Write frequently, especially to synthesize, internalize, and explore the course’s subject matter.

Again, we won’t be perfect: the point of setting out all these goals is to remind ourselves why we’re here. If we feel we’re getting off track, these are there to help us get back on.

Learning goals and assessments

Major goals

Ok, now for the goals I want us to work toward. If you’d rather ignore all the goals and rules above, fair enough, but do try to keep these goals in mind. These are the goals that I’m going to have in mind for most of our course.

1. Reading and Organizing Information: You will be able to identify the central ideas within several common styles of professional writing and organize them in a way that highlights the information and connections that are most important for you, the reader.
2. Making Connections: You will know how to use several basic strategies for making plausible connections between the types of writing discussed above.
3. Trailblazing: You will use the skills above to write a plausible story about your future at Bucknell—a future in which science “cares” in the ways you think are important. With your peers, you will also identify one concrete way that you can help move Bucknell toward those futures. You will also identify a personal goal for you to work on in your writing.

In addition to these, I expect you to meet the standard goals that apply to any class: show up, participate, work hard, respect me and your peers, etc.

Also, in case you are unaware, you are officially expected to spend 12 hours per week (for a total of 168 hours per semester) doing work for each one-credit class you take. Since we meet for 3 hours per week, that means you are expected to be doing 9 hours of work outside of class per week.

How you’ll progress toward these goals

Progress binder

At its core, this class is about developing habits and skills related to critical thinking, albeit packaged as writing. For this reason, I want us to focus as much as possible on the actual habits and skills required to think critically (and, where appropriate, use writing to do so). The entire course structure is intended to make this as easy as possible for us. However, I want to note one big feature of the course that is meant to help us: you will be submitting a final portfolio consisting of a selection of your work, and you will be submitting a physical copy of this portfolio (see next heading). As preparation for this portfolio, you will be keeping a binder of all of the work that you do in this course, including your readings, writing, reflections and time log, and anything else we decide is worth adding.

Now, I know this probably seems odd—it’s 2025, why the hell would I have you submit something physical? There are actually many good reasons for doing so, at least to my mind, but the most important ones fall into two broad categories. First, thinking—and by extension, writing—is a process; being able to easily survey that process will be super helpful for reflecting on it and making adjustments. This is just hard to do when it’s scattered across a bunch of files that you have to open individually, and that’s before we talk about how well those files are organized (spoiler: they never are). Having them physical also makes it easier to move things around.

Second, good thinking takes time, and distractions and interruptions are, by definition, hindrances to good thinking. (I’m not generally a fan of Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, or his take on dual-process theories of cognition, but he at least gets the core idea across: fast thinking is easier, and often encouraged by our environment, but far less reliable.) Our digital lives are hella distracting, so getting off of those is a good idea. There’s also plenty of evidence that working more slowly and not on a screen—even with things as simple as reading or taking notes—is better for learning.

That said, I know this is going to be annoying at first—complain away! But, know that I am going to make you think about why it’s annoying, so be prepared to think critically. Of course, I am also open to evidence that it’s not working—either in general or for you in particular—so if you have a good criticism of this, let me have it! This is the first time I’m trying this, so there will inevitably be some kinks to work out.

Also, please note that this expectation does not invalidate any accommodations you may have or need. Part of the reason I’m spelling out why we are doing this is to make it easier for us to come up with reasonable accommodations should the idea not work for everyone. I’ll also throw out that doing this stuff physically serves as a management strategy for my ADHD: “out of sight, out of mind” is basically how my brain works, so having your binders/portfolios physically staring at me—instead of buried in a learning management system—will make it a lot easier for me to keep track of your work and, ultimately, give you the feedback you deserve. Making each of our needs as explicit as we can will help us find a solution that works for all of us.

Final Writing Project

You will complete a final writing project for this course. That writing project should:

• a) engage substantially with course themes. We talked about some of these in class, but a good target here is that it should be related to science along with at least one other theme. The motivation for this is to practice integrating disparate topics, which is something you will have to do in other courses here at Bucknell.
• b) have some personal connection for you. This could be connection for your time at Bucknell, how you approach education more generally, what you look for in a job or political candidate…anything that feels personally meaningful. The hope is that this not only makes it easier to motivate yourself to work on this, it is also a good place to do reflection that will actually be helpful for you.
• c) push you to do more challenging writing than you’ve done previously. Maybe this is word length, but this could also be developing new skills in writing or working to overcome difficulties you’ve had in the past. You can think of this class as a good place to take big risks.
• d) engages with the academic literature. Now, obviously papers in peer-reviewed journals will count, but we can also be a bit more flexible than this. Really, what we’re aiming for is engaging with serious thinking about the topics we’ve been discussing. Again, this is the sort of thing you’ll need to do a bunch of while you’re here, regardless of your major. But, exactly what skills or kind of engagement you have will look different depending on your project and personal goals.

Portfolio

To give you a preview, here are some of the things I will expect you to include in your final portfolio:

• Final writing project
• Two peer response packets
  • Self-reflection prior to peer response
• • Summary of peer’s response (written together)
  • Action plan and reflection on peer response
• Annotated copies of the references you used
• Two concept maps, argument diagrams, or similar visualization of your paper
• Reflections on two trips to resource centers (e.g., writing center, research librarians)
• Reverse outline created from an early draft
• Personal writing goal packet
  • Explanation of writing goal and why it’s a goal for you
• • Weekly paragraph reflecting on progress toward this goal and setting next goals
  • Final reflection on personal goal
• At least three summaries of professor check-ins and action plans
  • One before beginning on your writing project
  • One during your writing project
  • One final check-in (action plan is for future courses)
    • Book here. Note that you are meeting with your partner!
• Plan for final writing project
  • Accountability structure and checkpoints
  • Pre-mortem and action plan
• Overall reflection on course learning
  • Explanation of progress toward learning goals
  • Artifacts that illustrate this progress
  • Discussion of your engagement in the class
  • What you’ve learned about your thinking

Okay, so that’s a lot. But don’t panic! I’m sharing all these details now for two reasons. First, having these details now will make it much easier for us to make any tweaks to our class along the way—to keep our eye on the prize, so to speak. So, for example, when we start working on argument diagrams and y’all find it really tedious, I can point to this to emphasize that we are, in fact, building towards something. On the other hand, it lets you off the hook for stuff you may get hung up on but probably shouldn’t, like using fancy words (overrated) or impeccable grammar (not really a thing, despite what your high school teachers say). So having all these details here is meant to help us focus on what matters not to overwhelm us.

 Second, I have included all of these details to yet again emphasize a super important point about writing: it is an iterative, social, and metacognitively demanding process. Scan through the list again. See how there’s only one bullet point on the final writing project itself? That’s for very good reason—I don’t want you thinking of your final writing project as the “product” of your work in this course. If anything, I want you to think of the “product” of your work in this course as the process you go through along the way. Let’s be real here: your final writing project is probably not going to change hearts and minds, including your own. The process you go through to generate that paper, however, is one that will have that potential, especially as you refine it over the next four years.

How we’ll assign your final grade

Your final grade will be determined by your progress toward each of the major goals. If you submit good faith attempt at a portfolio that includes everything on the list above, and you submit it on time, you will receive at least a B. Your general level and quality of engagement in class, the depth of your reflection on your learning, and your attitude toward learning will account for the rest of your grade. (Note: having a “good” attitude does not mean not complaining about the class, but it does mean being willing to continue engaging and thinking critically about why continued engagement, even with stuff you hate, is worth your time.)

We’ll talk about this more in class, but at the end of the day, you are in the driver’s seat for your grade: do everything I expect, engage regularly, and make a good effort at assessing your progress, and I won’t complain if you assign yourself an A.

Course preview

Part I: Introduction

During our first unit, we will familiarize ourselves with one another and the basics of this and your other courses at Bucknell. We will also briefly discuss some of the major themes we will hit on throughout the course. You will have a small number of short assignments meant to support these goals, as well as several in-class activities. We will work on this for about the first week of classes.

Part II: Reading and organizing information

During our second unit, we will work on our first major goal of the course: learning how to read and organize the ideas within a few common styles of professional writing. Some things we will cover include:

• How to annotate readings and take notes on them
• How to identify the author’s audience and their motivation for writing the piece
• Different organization schemes (e.g., concept maps, argument diagrams) and what kinds of writing they work best for (e.g., surveys, logical arguments)

You will have one weekly writing assignment, due on the first class meeting of the week, and one weekly reading assignment, due on the second class meeting of the week. We will also be doing regular in-class activities. Both the assignments and activities will differ depending on the skills we are working on at that moment. We will work on this for about six weeks. My expectation is that each of you will have notes that helped you understand the readings so far as well as the notetaking and organizational skills needed to make connections between them, other readings, and your own values.

As we near the end of this part of the course, we will start to think about the topic(s) you are interested in exploring for your final writing project.

Important note about content of part II

The biggest content goal for this course is to be able to think critically about what “science” and “caring” mean in contexts that are meaningful to you. We will begin this journey by contrasting two approaches science and scientists have taken to addressing a massive social problem today–the problem of sexual violence, particularly on college campuses. I want to acknowledge up front that this is going to be tricky for me to navigate as an instructor.

Despite the difficulty, I see the topic as one worth covering for several reasons:

1. Whether you know it or not, it’s very, very likely that someone in your life has experienced sexual violence.
2. It is likely that someone you know will experience it while at Bucknell.
3. Reliable information is very difficult for (most of) you to access.
4. It is a topic that is very important to me, as well as several other researchers here at Bucknell.
5. It is a very good example with which to think about what “science” and “caring” mean.

I will be carefully tailoring how we engage with this topic in order to minimize the likelihood of re-traumatizing experiences and other forms of harm. For example, at no point will we discuss the following in class:

• the details of particular instances of sexual violence
• your personal views on:
  • the reliability of accusations
  • the fairness of the Title IX adjudication process
  • appropriate remedies for findings of responsibility
• self-defense classes or other pseudo-solutions
• etc.

We will not be discussing these first and foremost because they are likely to cause harm. The main reason discussing these is likely to cause harm is that, at this point in your college career, most of you are not prepared to engage critically in discussions, especially about topics such as these and especially while respecting the humanity of your peers. It is just very unlikely that your education to this point has prepared you with the necessary knowledge or skills. And to be very blunt, none of you are experts on this topic, and letting non-experts converse freely on high-stakes topics like sexual violence is basically never a good idea (despite what damn near every podcast does these days).

Instead, we will be focusing on simply understanding two different approaches to studying and addressing sexual violence. This will involve developing your skills in perspective-taking, summarizing arguments, looking up and defining key terms, and generally organizing information in a way that is faithful to the source while also being accessible to you. This will keep us away from discussions that are likely to cause harm, but they will also better prepare you for having those sorts of discussions in the future.

Part III: Making connections

During our third unit, we will work on the second major goal of the course: learning some basic methods for making connections between different pieces and kinds of writing. At the same time, you will begin working toward your final paper. As in the second unit, you will have weekly writing and reading assignments, and we will be doing regular in-class activities.  Some of the skills we will be working on include:

• How to search for professional readings not used in class and determine their relevance
• Several idea-generation kinds of writing, including brainstorming maps, free writing, and peer communication
• How to do a reverse outline and use it or an argument diagram to organize your paper
• How to use campus resources at earlier stages of writing

We will work on this for about five weeks. My expectation is that each of you will have generated enough writing that we can organize it into the shape needed for the final paper.

Part IV: Trailblazing

In the final unit of our course, we will pull your writing into its final form to meet our final goal. We will do things like:

• Finalize the rubric we will use to make sure we all understand the goal
• Learn how to give, receive, and respond to peer and instructor feedback
• Practice presenting our paragraphs and evidence in recognizable forms (and discuss why this is worth doing)
• Develop our proofreading and self-evaluation skills

We will discuss my expectations more as the course progresses, but the following points will probably loom large as we develop a rubric:

• Is it clear to your intended audience what it means for science to care?
• How are the themes, processes, etc. that you address connected to course readings or discussions? Why are these themes, processes, etc. important for a caring science?
• How would this affect your time at Bucknell? Are the effects substantial? Why or why not?
• Did you identify a specific way that you could help make this future more possible? What evidence do you have that this would work?

Generic policies for my courses

To see the other policies in play for this course, see the page on generic course policies. These apply to all of my courses.