ENWR 1510

I had Kirsten for my ENWR: Poverty in the City. I loved her course, and I think that she's a great professor! There were 4 papers (opinion, rhetorical, research, service-learning) plus a midterm and a final portfolio. The grades were composed of the midterm & final, the service learning project, participation, workshopping, and writing exercises. She keeps attendance, so I would definitely recommend coming to class everyday!
She would give out a writing exercise at the beginning of each class on a particular topic, and you'd write your thoughts on that topic. It was a pretty easy grade as long as you put in the effort.
Kirsten's class is really different from a lot of other courses because she incorporates a service learning project into the course. Basically, you have to volunteer 10 hours with a low-income community in Charlottesville, write a paper on your experience, and then present your experience to the class. I really enjoyed this, as it definitely helped me get a lot more involved with the local community. It also connected the issues of poverty we discussed with real-world problems, and you could clearly experience the tangible results of poverty through this opportunity.
For each paper, you would write a rough draft and send it to other students in class that you were grouped with. Then you would workshop each other's papers, and spend the weekend editing based on the comments of your peers. You'd then submit that paper to Kirsten, who would edit it and send it back to you with comments on how it could be improved.
For the midterm & final portfolios, you would submit the final, revised version of your paper along with the workshop worksheets you sent to your peers. The midterm was worth 25% of your grade and the final was worth 30%.
This was mostly a participation-based class. Participation was worth 25% of your grade. Each class there would be a discussion based on an excerpt found in the course reader that you'd have to buy for the course. I really enjoyed the readings and discussions, and found that they really improved my perception of poverty.
Overall, I would highly recommend this class! It taught me a lot about poverty that I did not know, and opened my eyes to a lot of the bias certain groups face when living in poverty. Kirsten is a very fair grader, and does a great job of helping if you need guidance. She's a wonderful professor, and makes sure that the material is always engaging and interesting. This was definitely one of my favorite classes this semester!