Policies

👻 Absence (TL;DR: Come to class. Make it up when you can’t.)

I want you to come to class so that we can build a fun, interactive community together. But we’re also still in a pandemic, so please come to class only when you are well.

When you can’t make it, catch up by doing the reading, looking at the #whatyoumissed channel on Slack and filling out the exit ticket (more below). If something is going to cause you to miss class more than two or three times, please come talk to me so we can make sure to keep you on track. And also because I’ll worry about you!

❤️ Accessibility (TL;DR: Contact info for the Office of Special Services)

It is important to me to provide an accessible learning environment for all of the students in this class. I’ll ask for your feedback on how to make this happen, but you may also contact Dr. Mirian Detres-Hickey at the Office of Special Services for Students with Disabilities at [email protected] or 718-997-5870 for more information about receiving additional support services and accommodations.

🏡 Basic Needs Statement

To learn effectively, you need consistent access to shelter, food, and a safe place to sleep and study. If you are having trouble accessing any of these things and feel comfortable telling me, please do. I will do my best to connect you to the resources I have, or help to connect you to other people at the college who might be able to help.

⏰ Conference Hour (TL;DR: In-class writing time)

The last 30 minutes of class will be dedicated to getting work done and working on homework, drafts, or revisions in small groups. This allows me to work individually with students and gives you the chance to start or make progress on work when I’m still in the room. If you turn in your assignments early, you will sometimes be excused from staying for this time.

💵 Emergency Fund Grants

The Queens College Carroll and Milton Petrie Student Emergency Grant Fund provides quick response emergency grants to students in good academic standing who are experiencing personal emergencies. The goal of the fund is to help students remain in school and successfully complete their degree.

Applicants are required to submit a statement of need explaining the emergency, and how, if awarded, the funds will be used to resolve it. Applicants may also be expected to supply documentation. Decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. For more information on the emergency fund grant and what it covers, go to this website.

🎟️ Exit Tickets (TL;DR: Fill them out when you’re absent or late.)

When you’re absent or late, I’ll tag you in the #whatyoumissed channel on Slack to remind you to take a look at the slides and your classmates’ annotations from that day. I’ll also link to an exit ticket: a form on our class website. You’ll fill out exit tickets to explain what you learned from the reading or assignment that you did to prepare for class that day, what you learned from your classmates’ annotations, and any questions that you have. You should fill these out as soon as possible after your absence and by no later than the unit’s end. You don’t need to fill out exit tickets if you were in class.

🍕Food Access (TL;DR: Contact info for food assistance)

The Queens College Knights Table Food Pantry offers meals to CUNY families once per week on Tues. from 10:30am – 3pm, and pantry items on Monday-Thurs. from 12pm-4pm. To make an appointment with the pantry, please visit this site.

👯First-Year Experience (TL;DR: Resources for first-year students)

First Year Experience (FYE) is a student success program designed to support first-year freshmen and transfer students in their undergraduate careers. Through FYE, students have access to support in study skills, time management and academic planning through peer mentorship, hands-on workshops, and online video tutorials. Students interested in taking advantage of these opportunities can visit FYE virtually at fye.qc.cuny.edu or in-person Monday – Friday from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm in Honors Hall room 5. Email any questions to [email protected]. For more information, check out the first-year experience website here.

💯 Grades (TL; DR: You won’t get individual grades on assignments.)

When you are writing for the world outside of school, you do not receive grades. You do receive feedback, though, and you generally have to learn how to apply it. This is a skill that can take some time to develop. 

That’s partly why in this class, you will not receive grades on individual assignments. You’ll receive feedback if your work is on time, and I will tell you whether or not your work meets a set of minimum requirements (each assignment has them). You can use that feedback to help yourself make progress on your major assignments. If something doesn’t meet requirements, you can revise it as many times as you want until the end of the unit.

At the end of each unit, based on the amount of work that you’ve done that met requirements and how much you were in class (or made it up when you were out), you’ll receive a grade. Basically, if you do all of the work, it meets requirements (or you revise until it does), and you come to class, you should do very well in this class. If you skip assignments, skip class, and/or don’t revise things that didn’t meet requirements, your grade will be lowered.

For a more detailed explanation of the grading agreement in this class, please visit the Grading Agreement section of this website.

🗓️ Late Work (TL;DR: Talk to me when work is going to be late.)

There is no “official” grade penalty for turning in work late. However, I can’t give feedback on late work unless we have arranged an extension ahead of time. Turning in work late can mean that you don’t have adequate support or feedback to move forward on revisions. While you can still receive credit for work that is late, if it doesn’t meet requirements, you would need to come to office hours if you have questions about why this is the case. Ultimately, this can end up negatively impacting your grade, even without a “points” deduction. 

This said, we all get behind from time to time (including me!).  If you know that an assignment is going to be late, let me know as soon as possible so we can plan together how to get you back on track. Talking to me with enough advanced notice can mean that I can still give you feedback.

There are a few “final” due dates for weekly work at the end of each unit that are marked on the syllabus. While there’s some deadline flexibility within the unit itself, I cannot accept late work for a unit (including exit tickets) past those dates.

🫶🏻 Mental Health Services (TL;DR: Contact info for campus services.)

The Counseling, Health and Wellness Center seeks to support the physical, psychological, educational, and social well-being of Queens College students. Here, students can seek accommodations and support for their disabilities; consult a nurse and health educator about health, diet, and reproductive concerns; discuss academic and personal issues with licensed mental health professionals; receive pre-professional personal advisement for minority students; and learn about the peer support services program. All services are confidential and free of charge. For more information, e-mail [email protected], go to the first floor of Frese Hall, call 718-997-5420 or visit the Counseling Services website.

🛣️ Pathways General Education Required Core

This course satisfies an English Composition (EC) requirement of the Pathways General Education Required Core. In this category, English 110 satisfies the EC 1 requirement. To learn more about the learning outcomes for the EC 1 requirement, please visit this website.

😱 Plagiarism and Using Generative AI (TL;DR: Most of the time it’s unintentional. Please don’t do it on purpose.)

A lot of student plagiarism is unintentional. You were confused about what needed to be cited. You paraphrased something without saying where you got the idea. You use an original author’s exact sentence structure and then just changed a few of the words without citing the source, not realizing that this is plagiarism. When this happens, I will point it out to you and give you the chance to revise.

However, I’ve had some students who tried to turn in work that obviously wasn’t their own (i.e. I Googled it and found exactly the same response paper on someone else’s class blog.) Please don’t do that. If you do, you won’t get to revise, but also, I work hard to give you good feedback, and this makes me feel sad. If you’re behind in the class, just talk to me. We can usually work out a new deadline.

We’ll be talking in the class about how and whether to use tools like Chat GPT and generative AI tools. Learning how to use these tools is a skill that could be important in your future life, and there will be assignments where you are explicitly invited to experiment with them. However, there are a few guidelines to keep in mind:

• You should avoid copying / pasting whole phrases and paragraphs that you generate with these kinds of tools, or rewording phrases and paragraphs that you generate with your own words (paraphrasing), without attribution for the same reasons that you would avoid doing this with other kinds of texts. All direct quotes and paraphrases need to be acknowledged. We’ll discuss guidance from the MLA on exactly how to do this.
  
• Don’t trust AI to tell you the truth! As Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School, puts it, you should always “assume [an AI tool] is wrong unless you either know the answer or can check in with another source. You will be responsible for any errors or omissions provided by the tool. It works best for topics you understand.”
  
• You will be asked to disclose how or whether you used generative AI when you turn in each assignment via the Assignment Submission Form. Please be honest: it’s OK to use it (and we’ll talk a lot about how), but I want to help you understand how to avoid getting in trouble for using it in future classes, because this class is supposed to help you prepare for other writing that you’ll do in college.

📱Technology Requirements

We will commonly work on drafts together in class. It is a good idea for you to bring a computer or tablet to class if you have one. If you don’t have one, it’s also fine to print off a hard copy of your draft and bring that with you. Queens College students are allowed to rent laptops from the QC library. For more information on how to do this, please visit this website.

I will use a platform called Slack to post class slides, information related to your progress in the class, and to communicate with you during conferences if you schedule a conference in this modality. If using Slack is not convenient or accessible to you, please just let me know, and I will find another way to get you the information that you need.

Title IX (TL;DR: Sexual misconduct definition + info about disclosure)

Sexual misconduct (including sexual harassment, sexual assault, and any other
nonconsensual behavior of a sexual nature) and sex discrimination violate University
policies. Please know that disclosure to University faculty or instructors of sexual misconduct, domestic violence, dating violence, or sex discrimination occurring on campus, in a University-sponsored program, or involving a campus visitor or University student or employee (whether current or former) is not confidential under Title IX. For more information about reporting sexual misconduct and accessing help, please visit this website.

✍🏾 Writing Center

Writing is necessarily a collaborative process: you need other people to look at your work and to tell you what they see. Whether you think of yourself as a “good” writer or a writer who struggles, getting and learning to apply feedback is the best and fastest way to improve.

Every professional writer does this: we have editors, peer reviewers, writers’ groups, and trusted colleagues looking at our work. None of us work by ourselves, because it’s hard to figure out whether your work makes sense if you always work in isolation. 

This is what the Writing Center does. Consultants at this center can help you to work on any stage of your writing in any stage of your process, whether it’s for school or not. You don’t need to come there with a full, polished draft (or a draft at all): you can go to get help on understanding an assignment, brainstorming, talking through your ideas, drafting, polishing — whatever sounds useful.

There are both in-person and remote appointments possible. To make an appointment at the Writing Center, please visit this website.