Homeland Security final assignment

I wanted to spend just a few moments going over our final written assignment for this course. As you will see from the screen for this particular assignment, at the bottom are the specific instructions as far as page length, font type and size. This particular assignment is to be six pages in length, which does not include the title page or reference list. Also, as has been required of you, are expected to adhere to the Turabian writing style, where you are to provide in text citations and a reference list. I will go over some particular issues related to this here shortly as well. However, the basis for this assignment is this document that you see here, the 2014 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. As you can see, it was recently released in 2014, is produced by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and is the third edition of this review. So when you click on this link, it will take you to this document. Specifically, within the document on page 14, you will find five specific missions that have been developed by DHS to be addressed moving forward. So the essence of your assignment is to offer information concerning the private sector’s role as it relates to these five missions and how this sector can in the accomplishment of these missions. Obviously, you will not only be expected to use this particular document, but all of the resource material that you have been provided in the previous eight weeks as well.

I want to show you a sample paper that was produced by a previous student that provides a good example of how it should be formatted and laid out. First, you see the title page which contains the appropriate information, then you see how this student formatted the individual sections with headings within the report itself, which I would highly recommend. Your report should begin with an introduction which does not have to be lengthy, but summarizes the information that will be included in the pages to follow. It is student simply provided a section devoted to each of the five missions that we discussed earlier. I have highlighted here an in-text citation that contains the three primary bits of information that has been expected of you throughout the class. These include the name of the author, your publication, and page numbers in which information was retrieved. Such information can be either a direct quote, or information they paraphrase in your own words, but was still accessed from this resource. If we continue on, we see additional information provided in this section related to this mission, and here we see another citation which appear somewhat differently, but still provides the same required information. DHS is still noted as the author, but along with the year publication, we see a lowercase letter. The reason for this is any time that you have more than one resource from the same author, published in the same year, it has to be differentiated in this manner. You will also see this reflected in your listed references as well, and we will look at that shortly. Also, there are times when page numbers are not provided, such as from a website. Here, you need to provide information related to the specific section or paragraph in which the information was retrieved. So in this example, this was a website from DHS in which the student accessed this information, which was specifically taken from this particular section with the heading “Building the Homeland Security Enterprise.” So we go back to the example here, this is the information that you see provided within the citation. So this is something to be mindful of. As you continue on, you see the individual sections with headings that correspond to the missions that are being addressed. Also, just like you have an introduction, you should have a conclusion as well. This simply ties everything together and brings your report to a close. Then you have your reference list, and I wanted to go over the different elements that are expected in your list of references. First, provide an appropriate heading for your reference list as you see here. The yellow highlights are the author, which could be for an individual or an organization. For an individual, the first author’s name is to be placed, last name first. If there are additional authors noted, all others are to be placed in their normal order, such as John Doe. The green highlights are the years of publication, and as you know and we mentioned earlier, here we see two different references to DHS that were published in the same year, so they are differentiated with a lowercase letter, the same information that was provided in the citations. The blue highlights concerns the title of the book, document, or website. Normally, if you only have a title, it will be italicized. However, there are times where in addition to the title; you are provided information related to the overall periodical, or other such information that produced this particular material. In this case, as you see here, that information is italicized, but the title is not. Lastly, is information related to the publisher, where you would provide the city and state as well as the name of the publisher. Or, if you obtain information from the Internet, you would provide the website link as well as the date in which you accessed information from it. So all of these represent the various elements that should be included in your reference list.

So as we return back to the assignment page, it’s laid out well for you with all of the specific information and details that you will need. As always, it is due no later than midnight on Sunday of the final week of class. You have any questions or need additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me at any time.