Professional Project Proposal

A professional project requires a detailed, written proposal that must be approved by both your project committee and the project seminar instructor before the project is begun. The proposal must describe a capstone project that will develop and demonstrate both professional skills and analytic ability. The proposal must include both professional skills and analysis components.

The proposal for a professional project must contain the following elements, in this order:

Introduction. Explain how your coursework and other experiences have led to, and prepared you for, this project. Cite specific courses and instructors if you wish. More important in this introduction, however, are the skills and concepts you have learned and the professional direction in which they have pointed you. Explain as clearly as you can where you are headed, professionally, and how this project will help you get there.
The professional skills component.Answer, as specifically as possible, these questions: Where will you work? What will you do? Include these specifics:
- The journalism specialty or area of emphasis of the project.
- What educational and professional qualifications you have to pursue the project.
- Beginning and ending dates.
- Work schedule (the minimum requirement is the equivalent of 30 hours per week for at least 14 weeks).
- Detailed description of the work you‘ll do.
- How the work will be disseminated.
- What material will be included in the final project report that meets the requirement for ―abundant physical evidence.
- Who will supervise the project and how that supervision will be provided.
The analysis component. This is the part of the project that requires you to step back and examine some aspect of professional practice. As you‘ve read in the detailed description earlier, the analysis component may take the form of traditional scholarly research or a journalistic professional analysis. In either case, this section of the proposal must include these elements:
- A clear statement of your topic and what questions you propose to answer about that topic.
- An explanation of how this topic and these questions are relevant to the field and to your professional skills component.
- A succinct discussion of the mass communication theory or theories that apply.
- A description of the scholarly or journalistic methods you will use.
- A literature review that summarizes what scholars have said about your topic and your methods. (This literature review, with any necessary updates, also will be included with the analysis component in your final project report.)
- Publication possibilities, in scholarly journals or conferences if you are doing research, or in professional journals if you are doing professional analysis.

All three of the above elements must be accompanied by the proposal approval form, which has been signed by your committee members.