Final paper for

Financial Scandals, Upheavals, and Crises (Writing Intensive) course

(IV) Your final paper

This will be composed of one or more essays that clearly demonstrate your depth of thought, engagement, and intellectual rigor. As with the selection of your class-presentation topic, you will be free to take an approach and select topic(s) that work best for you. Unlike the reflection papers, this is a “research paper” and, unlike your groups’ presentation, this is individual work. For some students, this becomes pure research on an issue or a topic, but for many (if not most students) research is used to inform and expand on their personal journey.

In picking a topic of your own choosing, you are adding your voice to Ferguson, Palazzo & Hoffrage, and other readings from the course, likely synthesizing, analyzing and applying these to your journey. You will research a topic or issue and advance an informed opinion about it. If you choose an “issue”, then your essay will deal with a point of public debate (as an issue has two (or more!) sides, and you are taking a side); if you choose a “topic”, then you are informing the reader about something that matters.

For guidance, your paper would likely do the following. (Note that this is a suggested framework, so not all of these elements are required or expected to be presented in this order.)

(a)Introduce the issue or topic under discussion

(b)Inform a moderate, impartial, educated but non-expert audience on the issue or topic

(c)Characterize and explain the research and/or points of view on the issue or topic

(d)Communicate an informed, persuasive preference for one position, or recommended action

(e)Demonstrate why the topic is (or should be) important or relevant to your reader

Read this carefully. The paper requires full documentation. Your annotated list of references (or bibliography) must contain at least six entries, reflecting your background research on the topic/issue. These are reference materials you have vetted and may or may not be cited in the paper. Your “works cited” must include at least four sources. The larger your variety of sources, the better. You may not cite encyclopedias, Wikipedia, or any video-only sources.“Annotated” means that each reference includes a quick description as to the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the given source.

Helpful resources: UNH Writing Programs resources ( https://www.unh.edu/writing/resources ); Purdue OLW: APA formatting and Style Guide; Any of the many APA citation generators found on-line.

Further:

(a)The paper can be based on your class presentation, using what you learned in preparing and presenting that, plus the feedback you received from the class to further shape the topic. It can also be on a different topic, including 2, 3, or 4 shorter essays on a number of themes that have woven their way through your weekly essays or exploration of other topics revealed by the course or your journey in finance or at UNH.

(b)This paper will make up 20% of your grade and is due Friday December 13^th, close of business.

(c)Grading Rubric for your Final Paper: