University of Maryland Global Campus Historical Policy Brief Essay

Assignment Directions: As part of your Applied History Project, the third assignment requirement expects students to complete a preliminary draft or outline of their Historical Policy Brief using academic sources from the last 6 weeks. At this point, students should be familiar with their selected policy and its consequent challenges. Through academic research and independent analysis, this preliminary draft should include a title, summary of policy, historical background information, an assessment and a final policy recommendation. Students may submit an outline draft or narrative draft for review. Either way, your draft should follow the structure below and include the following subheadings. These subheadings should be included in your preliminary draft and final draft. 

Assignment Requirements:

Historical Policy Brief reliminary Draft:

Title

• Your draft should include a title that addresses your policy

Summary

• Short Introduction

Offer a quick intro to your policy (no more than 3 sentence) that includes your initial (or revised) policy question. 

• Share an overview of the policy you researched
• Discuss associated challenges/concerns

Historical Analogues and Context

• Identify precedents or analogues

Provide background of historical policy

• Establish origins/root causes of key events 
• Determine outcomes or consequences
• Assessment
• Evaluate how and why polices evolved 

What lessons were learned

• Policy Recommendation
• What sorts of actions would you recommended?

Bibliography

• Should include no less than 6 academic sources, three of which should be primary and three of which should be scholarly secondary sources from the UMGC library. Chicago citation style required.
• Writing Resources
• PDF – A Brief Primer to Citing Sources in Chicago Humanities Style

Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide