Please choose one assignment from the following options to submit for this week's response. Please type up your response according to the guidelines listed in the syllabus, and upload your assignment as a WORD attachment at the bottom of this assignment.

Your response will be evaluated on the basis of: a) how well you demonstrate an understanding of and engagement with the course material; b) the clarity and quality of your writing; c) your overall effort on the assignment. The assignment will be graded on a scale of 0-10 points, and the grader's comments and grade should be available to you within one week of the original posting date. The grade should also appear in the Gradebook.

The weekly assignments correspond with the assigned readings and lecture material for the week. The questions posed in each option are designed to help guide your thinking and response. You are not required to respond to all (or even any) of the listed questions, although your responses should be organized in some way. As with any writing assignment, providing sufficient background information to your topic and offering specific examples to support your views will make your ideas clearer and more convincing.

You are welcome to write beyond the minimum page requirement for the assignment.

Option 1:

Re-read the important leadership skills listed on pp. 235-240 of Andreatta. Fill out the chart on pp. 237 of Andreatta, and in a 2-page paper, discuss the findings from your chart. What skills do you have little to no experience in, and what skills do you rank high in? What activities have you been involved with in the past that have helped strengthen your 'high-skill' areas? What activities are you involved with now that can you improve your 'low-skill' areas? What activities could or would you like to become involved with to improve your low-skill areas? What specificroles or tasks within these organizations can help you improve your skills? You may want to consult various UCSC websites for opportunities for campus involvement, including the SOAR website: http://soar.ucsc.edu/v2

Option 2:

If you are already actively involved in a campus organization, discuss your experiences in the organization in a 2-page response. Discuss what organization you are involved with, why you chose to get involved with it, and what your role(s) and responsibility(-ies) in the organization are. Discuss what the challenges are, on both a personal and organizational level, in being involved with your organization. Try to incorporate some of the terms Andreatta discusses in Chapter 8, particularly on pp. 235-244.

Option 3:

If you are not involved in any campus organizations yet, think about and do a little research on what organizations are available for you to get involved with at UCSC. Consider the various types of opportunities Andreatta lays out in Chapter 8: academic and curricular, co-curricular, and 'other exciting options.' Think about the various organizations that have given presentations in our class, and possibly do some research on the SOMeCA or SOAR website to identify resources and organizations you'd like to get involved with in the future. In a 2-page response, discuss your experiences with these organizations in the past tense. That is, write a fictional reflection that discusses what you imagine getting involved with these organizations is like. Describe what steps you took to get involved, what roles you undertook, what challenges you faced, what the experience felt like. The purpose of writing in the past tense is to motivate and encourage you take action to become more involved in the future (a sort of reverse psychology).

Option 4:

Are there any leaders--past or present, at the university, in your community, family or society-at-large--who you greatly admire? If so, write a 2-page response describing the person and discussing the qualities and characteristics you most admire about them. Also discuss what personal, organizational or societal challenges the person might have faced to become the leader they are today, and what strategies you think (or know) the person undertook to overcome these challenges. Try to incorporate some of the terms Andreatta discusses in Chapter 8, particularly on pp. 235-244.