The Sea Around Us, Spring 2016
Extra Credit Letter: writing and research activity. Worth up to 5% of course grade.


Compose a letter to an individual or organization in which you intelligently and rationally argue a point and express your opinion on an issue of significance to oceanography. The topic can be anything related to the oceans or the materials we cover in class.

For full credit you must: 1) research the topic, 2) choose a suitable person or oranization to address, 3) write cogently and coherently, and 4) follow the instructions for submission (see below) explicitly.


No credit will be given for incomplete, shoddy, or plagiarized material. No credit will be given for letters that do not follow the file naming convention detailed below. Letters should include references (including books, web sites, or other sources) noted within the text and given at the end of the letter. Reference style is flexible, please choose one that seems appropriate.

Letters should be single spaced and between 1.5 and 2.5 pages in length.

Letters should be addressed following standard convention, such as given here

For example:
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date

Mrs. Red A. White
CEO The Carolina Bean and Fishing Corp.
24 On the beach Drive
Coastalburgh, SC, 12345


Dear Mrs White

My first sentence is hard hitting and to the point....
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All letters will be subject to electronic plagiarism checking, using Turnitin.com
Letters will be compared to everything on the web and to papers that have been turned in for classes at Penn State and other Universities. Do not copy material from other students or from sources on the web.

Letters are to be submitted via Angel Drop box according to these instructions:
1) Address your letter to a person at the organization you have chosen.
2) Write your letter and save the file in a standard format (pdf, Pages, Microsoft Word, rtf, etc.).
3) Change the name of your FILE to LastnameFirstname_geosc040. For example if your name is Jane Doe, your file should be named: DoeJane_geosc040
4) Make sure that your FILE is named correctly. Do not submit a file named Extra Credit Letter etc. This rule was put in place to make the extra credit opportunity possible. The extra time required to grade and give credit to letters with random filenames, and to connect those letters with student IDs from the TurnItIn originality report, would make it impossible to offer this opportunity.
5) Go to the lessons tab on Angel and use the drop box for extra credit papers.


Do not submit a file named Letter, Extra Credit Letter, Geosc040 Letter, etc. See Point #3 above.
Extra Credit Letters are due Apr 6th