Proposal Outline

Title: A Proposal to alleviate damages done by flooding in Elmhurst, Illinois

Purpose statement: To persuade the people of Elmhurst and the city that there are ways to improve the way we handle floods as a town.

Thesis statement: Damages caused by flooding can be alleviated in Elmhurst through improvements in the way that the town handles floods.

Introduction

Start by saying how urban flooding affects people and their towns and give background on flooding. Continue to say how it has affected me personally. Say my thesis that "Damages caused by flooding can be alleviated in Elmhurst through improvements in the way that the town handles floods".

Body
Main Point 1 (Urban flooding causes a lot of damage)
-Damages caused by flooding
- Weak points within the city that are cause for flooding (Creek, leaves)
-- go over anecdotes of what has happened to me

Main Point 2 (There are many faults in current procedure for dealing with floods)
- Discuss what are the main causes of flooding
- Things that are already in place to reduce effects of flooding
- Discuss how current ways  of dealing with floods can cause problems
- Can't do anything about the city closing the storm drains but we can prevent flooding from leaf blockage

Main  Point 3 (Possible solutions and justification for those solutions)
(Make these solutions into one program solution)
- Have leaf cleaners come and clear the sewer drains
- Talk over addition costs of the counteractive measures
- Talk about the possibility of retention ponds
-Old abandoned land that could be used for retention or for storage of water until  later date (Would have to talk to surrounding cities for approval)
- City could Subsidize the quarry companies for loss of operation time if we are able to fill the quarries more

Conclusion
Briefly go over effects of flooding and how it is caused. Mention the few solutions that were proposed. Make final remarks as to why one is the best and present that as the best idea. Give general overview of why that proposed idea was the best.

proposal analysis

(1)Why the united states should adopt nuclear power
Strengths:
- Provides lots of details as to what the problem is
- provides justification to the problem
Weaknesses:
- Not a great solution presented
- need more numbers on how it will help


(2)Course Requirements: Extortion
Strengths:
- Problem stated clearly
- in depth solution
Weaknesses:
- could use more justification
- could use more number to help the reader better visualize the savings


(3)A proposal to allow off-campus purchases
Strengths:
- Everything is clearly stated
- doesn't set anything in stone so there could be room for improvement
Weaknesses:
- problem stated was quite weak
- need to back up the fact that men eat more than women

Urban Flooding

Flooding is a major problem for any urban area especially those that are relatively highly populated. In my hometown of Elmhurst, Illinois there is a very long history of flooding and massive damages being accrued because of it. Whenever there is a flood in my town there are at least several hundred thousand dollars worth of damage.
    In this proposal I will address the problem of flooding within Elmhurst and acknowledge what has already been done as well as what can be added and improved on. I will suggest ways for the city to better improve the way we deal with the excess amounts of water that come from large storms.
   I have personally seen my own home and many of my neighbors homes nearly destroyed due to flooding. I have also seen much of the city be destroyed while there is flooding. It would be in the best interest of the city and the people to improve the ways in which we handle flooding. This topic interests me because it affects so many people around me and there must be a better way to deal with the issue because surrounding towns don't experience flooding ever to nearly this degree. There is a large amount of resources like government websites, flooding info websites and disaster management websites.

Major Speech 2 Summarization

We need to create and present through our speech to the class that something needs to be done about a problem that we find we could fix. The form of the presentation will be through a proposal with visual aids as to help the audience get a better idea for what your proposal is saying.

Questions:
- How big of a problem is too big for us to discuss?

Post comments for my paper

Abstract, Intro, and Methods

Abstract

Understanding the correlation between time spent inside and outside engineering and how that can affect stress levels is important because engineering students are among the most stressed out of all majors. Everyone is different and will become stressed over varying things and situations.

Introduction

               College students no matter their major and how much they are doing in and outside of school will inevitably become stressed because of their course work. Stress in unavoidable for college students, but the amount of stress can be different from person to person and can be caused by many different outside factors. Current research shows that most of the stressors for college students aren’t academic and are from outside sources like family and social problems. In one study it was found that out of 100 students “38% of the stressors were intrapersonal, 28% environmental, 19% interpersonal, and 15% academic” and while academic was the lowest, it was not to discredit the stress from academics because 81.1% of the stressors could be found as daily hassles (Heckert, Niebling, Ross, 1999, p. 312). This study helps the understanding that everyone’s situation is different and have varying stress based on their situation.

               The largest parts of stress and college students are how well they are performing academically because stress can either motivate of debilitate depending on the situation and time management. These two things are the most talked about when on the topic of college student stress. Performance and time management are shown in many studies to have a very strong correlation and “even students that who reported more frequent use of time management were expected to show higher levels of performance” (Macan, Shahani, Dipboye, Phillips p.761). Stress was also found to be negatively correlated with time management and tended to alleviate as more time management was self-reported by the students (Misra, McKean). Time management has been seen to affect many aspects of one’s life, specifically their stress and “persons indicating that they engaged more frequently in the mechanics of time management… reported… higher GPAs, higher self-ratings of performance, and higher satisfaction with life” (Macan, Shahani, Dipboye, Phillips p.765). With all these things being self-reported to be higher the more time management that took place, it can be assumed from the correlation between stress and those mentioned things that the stress of the reported people was relatively low.

Methods

Participants:

Those who took part in this study were engineering students from many different colleges across the United States. The ages of the participants were anyone from their 1^st year to their 5^th year in their colleges respective engineering program. The total number of people to take this survey was TO BE DETERMINED people.

Procedure:

The engineering students were asked to complete a short, anonymous, 5 question survey to determine how their use of their time affected their stress. The first questions asks the participants as to what their respective major was and the answers were several common engineering majors. The second question asks what year in school they are, and the choices were year 1-5. The third question asks how much time is spent within engineering and gives several choices as to how many hours are spent per week. The fourth question asks how much time is spent outside of engineering and again gives options on how many hours a week they spend outside of engineering. The fifth question asks how much stress they usually feel on any given day and they must answer on a scale 1- 10, 10 being the worse.

Data Analysis:

When analyzing the data, it was important to see that some questions such were meant solely to get demographic information that could possibly clear things up but weren’t necessary for the research. The correlations of how time was spent by engineering students and their stress levels were the main point of the data and the rest was used strictly context of the data and to give the data some depth.

synthesis chart

Article	Time management	Stressors	External activities	Performance
An examination of stress in college students over the course of the semester			Physical activity is discussed and how it effectively reduces stress in students.	Performance decreases with the more stress there is and increases with the less stress
Sources of stress among college students		Talks a lot about the stressors of college students
College students stress and its relation to their anxiety, time management, and leisure satisfaction	Talks in depth about the time management and the different correlations with it	Correlations of stressors with time management	Mentions exercise and the effects that it can have on stress	Relates back to time management
College students time management: Correlations with academic performance and stress	Poor time management behaviors, such as not allocating time properly or last-minute cramming for exams, have been frequently discussed as a source of stress and poor academic performance	Talks about different stressors		Performance was found to be directly correlated to the stress and time management that the student has