• A profile of a campus program, publication, service, club, or place
• A profile of a place or activity in your campus' surrounding community

SUGGESTED TOPICS: What follows are suggested topics for the assignment. You may choose one of these or one not listed as long as your teacher approves it. Keep in mind your topic should be of interest to the intended audience.

PURPOSE: Your general purpose will be to inform and to entertain. More specifically, you are to provide readers with new information about a place or activity or with information that enlarges their knowledge about something they know only a little about, enabling them "to visualize the place or activity."

AUDIENCE: Since your essay could be published in a collection posted on the Internet, anyone around the globe could read your essay, including future students for our institution. Despite this wide-ranging audience, you will want to more specifically target readers already at our University or those interested in finding out more about it.  Assume that your target readers are first-year college students at Middle Tennessee State University who are unfamiliar with the subject of your profile. Choose a publication for your essay: a campus newspaper (Sidelines, Scribbling Mob, The Record), a local magazine or newspaper (Murfreesboro Magazine, The Daily News Journal, The Nashville Scene, The Tennessean), a special interest magazine or journal. . . 

Narrow the subject to a manageable topic. For example, if your campus has a student recreation center, you may not be able to adequately profile all of its services in a 1000-word article, but you could cover one aspect, such as the weight room. It is better to go into depth on a specific service the program offers than to cover everything about the program.
Make at least one observational visit, taking notes on your observations and writing them up.
Interview a knowledgeable individual and collect descriptive materials, such as pamphlets or newsletters, to gather information about the program, service, or place and use the information, appropriately documented, in the essay. The first interview must be in person, not via telephone. 
Quote the interviewee at least once in the essay, 
Acknowledge sources (both quotations and paraphrases) by
        1.    Using parenthetical citations. See Harbrace 39a
        2.    Using MLA documentation style. See Harbrace 39a (interview, p. 584 and pamphlet, p. 583] on the Works Cited and in
                parenthetical citations within the text of your paper

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

Do not refer to the interview in the essay, such as "She said in the interview. . . ."
Do not refer to yourself as the interviewer in the essay, such as "When I asked him . ."
Do not present a hodgepodge of unrelated information about your subject. Do have an "angle" for your profile. Your goal is to create an interesting focus for your profile. Your angle/focus will be expressed as a thesis, a central, overriding idea to which everything in your essay relates.
You must submit notes from the interview and copies of any printed materials collected for this essay

OBSERVATION & INTERVIEW GUIDELINES: Following suggestions in St. Martin's chapter 20, schedule and plan your visit, prepare, and write out your interview questions in advance.

Observation tips:

Observe the site from several perspectives and take notes.
Divide the notes into categories covering aspects or features of the place or activity--the setting, the people, and your personal reactions.
Reflect in writing on what you have seen and heard and felt.

Interview tips:

Using the reporter's formula to generate questions, write out your interview questions in advance. 
Ask specific questions, for the most part. 
If you receive a "yes" or "no" answer, follow with a question seeking more information. 
Be flexible--if you think of a good question during the interview, ask it. 
If the interviewee wanders from the topic, steer him/her back. 
Listen carefully. 
Take only the notes you will need to jog your memory. 
Use a tape recorder if your interviewee does not object and the recorder does not distract. 
End the interview with a general invitation: "Can you think of anything else to tell me?" 
Immediately after the interview, make a complete record of it based on your notes and include physical descriptions, if appropriate. 

INVENTION AND WRITING DRAFT #1: You are required to follow through on the "Guide to Writing." Be sure to follow instructions completely, writing all lists, descriptions, dialogue, and sketches as instructed. You are expected to generate several pages of invention--at least five handwritten. Also follow instructions for writing and revising draft 1 carefully and completely. 

PEER RESPONSE GROUP WORK: For this assignment you will work with an assigned group of students from the two 1010 sections. To find your assigned groups, go to the Communications area of the website, Discussion Board, and find your out-of-class group. This group of students will serve as your critical readers in the same way that your in-class peer group has done for the first two essays. You will share draft 2 with them via the small group as an attachment, and in return, they will ask you to read and respond to their essays. As a peer respondent, first-level audience, you will want to think back about your experience in preparing to attend MTSU and advise your peers about how well their essays meet the needs of that audience. Follow the instructions for peer response work, which follow and be sure to meet all deadlines set on your class schedule:

STEPS FOR PEER GROUP RESPONSE: See the detailed list of steps in Communications, Cross-class Peer Group Instructions

Target and adapt to an appropriate audience
Have a unified angle of vision for the profile expressed as a thesis
Present the profile with adequate interesting detail
Organize material as a logical extension of the thesis
Avoid overt persuasion
Use correct and appropriate language

Reminder: Re-read the assignment instructions after you have written a draft of the essay. Make your own checklist of requirements and apply them to your essay.