Unsolicited Proposal
1. Unsolicited Proposal.
Observe your current work environment (whether you are an employee, intern, volunteer, stay-at-home-mom, or
student), and uncover a problematic issue that in some way detracts from the effectiveness of this organization,
company or work-related environment. In an internal Unsolicited Proposal (Markel 421-422), write either a
Research Proposal or a Goods and Services Proposal (Markel 422-424). Your Unsolicited Proposal should have
all the elements outlined by Markel (428-435) except for the Evaluation Techniques. Your Proposal must have:
a Purpose, a Summary, an Introduction, an itemized list of Proposed Tasks, a schedule, an Experience section
and either a References or Works Cited section, depending on what citation style you are using. (Don’t use a
References section if you’re using MLA citation style in your Proposal.) A budget should be included, unless
there are no costs incurred in the production or outcome of the proposal. Whether to include appendixes or not
is left to the judgement of the writer, and the nature of the proposal.
There must be at least four sources in the Proposal. You must use and cite all four sources in the text of the
proposal, use appropriate citation methods/format, and have the same sources, again correctly cited/listed, in
your references or works cited list. Using sources means: quoting from, referring to, and/or incorporating their
information into your writing. Become familiar and employ the format requirements outlined on the House
Style Sheet. Note that the model in Markel uses APA.
An essential feature of my grading on this assignment will be your use, incorporation, and citation of sources.
Therefore, it is vital that you:
a) review the model proposal in Markel (436-442) for how it uses, incorporates, and cites its sources, both in
the body of the proposal and in its references (or works cited) page;
b) use sources to accomplish the tasks the proposal sets out and/or to answer the questions you pose in the tasks
section;
c) review the statement on “Documenting Your Sources” (Markel 614), which you will be held to;
d) decide now which system of citation you will use in this and the next assignment and stick to it consistently;
e) be and/or become familiar with that system as it is described in the sections on APA (Markel 616-632) or
MLA (Markel 641-657); and
f) always avoid “dropped in” quotations—sentences that are nothing but quoted material. Quotations must be a
“combination of quoted material and the writer’s own words,” which are grammatically meshed. See what I
just did in that last sentence?
At the very least, you should be able to incorporate quoted material into sentences grammatically, cite the
source with the body of your writing correctly, and create a references (or works cited) page that contains an
alphabetized list of sources that has all the correct information in the correct order, as specified by the citation
style you choose. You should come into this class with at least a basic competence in the use of one citation
style. If not, now you know what you need to do, and where to find the information to build those skills.
After reviewing the model proposal, it should be quite clear that the core of this assignment is the tasks section,
what Markel (430) also refers to as the proposed program or plan of work. This section explains what you want
to do and how you will do it. You should notice that it is not only built around specific tasks (acquire a basic
understanding of tablet use by clinical staff) but, importantly, around specific questions (how are tablets being
used by staff?). In both cases, this is where your research should appear; this is where you show what you have
learned in response to the tasks and/or questions you’ve set yourself. Clearly, this section is the assignment’s
core and will figure prominently in my grading.
The Proposal should be at least 1200 words, not counting the references or works cited section.
