Textbook features VCU students' essays

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The textbook for next fall's UNIV 200 course – which focuses on building Virginia Commonwealth University students' research, analysis and synthesis skills – will include essays by VCU students that explore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, introverted college students, and the use of pain medication in labor and delivery.

Coleman Williams, a religious studies major, wrote an essay titled "The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Narratives and Polarization."

"In the essay I explore how the mythologies, narratives and ideologies of Israelis and Palestinians often contradict each other and contribute to this struggle," Williams said. "I specifically look at propaganda in education, maps, Israeli-Palestinian national movements, as well as the religious significance of the land which can further contribute to conflict and division."

Williams' essay was named this year's best research essay written by a UNIV 200 student, thereby earning him the chance to see his work published in the textbook and used as a model for next year's students.

The class is the third course in a three-semester sequence that comprises VCU's Focused Inquiry program, which is part of VCU's core curriculum and aims to provide first- and second-year students with skills such as written and oral communication, critical thinking, information fluency, ethical reasoning, quantitative reasoning and collaboration.

The essay contest for UNIV 200 is in its second year. The two earlier courses in Focused Inquiry have been holding an essay contest and publishing the winners in the course textbook for the past seven years.

"Publishing the essays recognizes excellence," said Melissa Johnson, curriculum and textbook coordinator for Focused Inquiry courses UNIV 111 and UNIV 112. "We use them as models of excellence and it recognizes the students who have done great work."

Samantha Poelstra, an international relations major, authored another of the winning essays, "Navigating Introverted Tendencies in Higher Education: How VCU's Focused Inquiry Program can Facilitate Control in Student Learning." In the paper, Poelstra discusses the challenges of being an introvert in higher education and how the Focused Inquiry program can better facilitate balanced classroom participation between introverted students and extroverted students.

"Throughout the course of my research it became overwhelmingly clear that amongst students there are widespread misconceptions about what introversion truly means and, since half of the population is introverted, those widespread misconceptions cause harm and judgment to run rampant, which then hurts the classroom environment," Poelstra said.

Poelstra's work was also published in the UNIV 111 and 112 textbook last year. "I think it’s a great honor to be recognized, and an even greater one to be recognized for such different types of writing," she said. "It’s been very inspiring to me as a writer."

Jessica Gordon, curriculum and textbook coordinator for UNIV 200: Inquiry and the Craft of Argument, said students in UNIV 200 develop a topic of interest and form a research question to pursue for the rest of the semester. The students produce a research essay and then translate it into another medium, such as a video, website or infographic.

"Overall, we're looking how at how well a student can make a main claim and sustain that argument throughout the length of the piece, using evidence to support his or her points," she said.

Focused Inquiry, Johnson added, is a key part of VCU's efforts to encourage and support undergraduate student research.

"We strive to have students engage in an inquiry process by beginning with questions rather than answers," she said. "We teach them to go into a research project with a questioning mind and to explore all the facets and all the perspectives before they reach a conclusion. We really try to get them to start with questions and not arguments."

By publishing the best essays, Gordon said, Focused Inquiry is making research writing more tangible.

"It makes writing and research real for them. For the student whose work got published, it's real – it's being published by Pearson or Hayden-McNeil and they get to see it in print," she said. "I hope it also makes it seem real for the other 3,000 students in that they can see that their work can be published, that it isn't just for their teacher to read, that there's actually a larger audience possible."

For Williams, the essay assignment gave him an opportunity to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and sort through his own opinions.

"I visited Israel in the summer of 2013 and was perplexed and curious about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and research [and] writing was an excellent way to learn more as well as develop and express my thoughts on this issue," he said. "Writing this essay helped me make sense of an often-times highly emotional and divisive topic for many people."

 

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