Essay

· Table of Contents

· Abstract (not more than one page with  activities completed and  broad conclusions)

· Body (a minimum of 2000 words): In the M-Global context which are necessary to complete the assignment.

· References

The M-Global portfolio activities take place in the context of a new initiative announced by Jim McDuff. For M-Global activities, you will assume a role in the M-Global organization. You may create whatever details about your audience or the M-Global context are necessary to complete the assignment. The following press release has been issued by M-Global’s Public Information department:

LIST OF ACTIVITIES

1. Introducing M-Global

For this activity, assume the role of a new employee in the Public Information Department at M-Global. Your supervisor, Shon Williams, has given you an assignment to help you become familiar with the history and culture of M-Global.

Create content that will appear on the “About M-Global” page of the updated company web site. You should provide an introduction and overview to the organization while emphasizing M-Global’s energy industry and environmental work. Although you do not need to directly discuss the Alternate Energy Initiative, you should emphasize aspects of M-Global’s history and its projects that help lay the foundation for the new initiative.

2. Fuel Efficiency Form Letter

Assume the role of an employee in M-Global's purchasing department. Your responsibilities include supervising M-Global's contracts with shipping companies. You have been asked to learn what steps trucking companies are taking to reduce their use of fossil fuels.

Write two versions of a letter asking local and cross-country trucking companies about their use of biodiesel, their efforts to increase fuel efficiency, and their efforts to reduce pollution. One version of the letter will go to companies with whom M-Global has a long-standing relationship. The other version will go to companies that provide occasional shipping services, or that have never provided shipping services, to M-Global. Assume that a mail merge program will add addresses and other individualized information.

3. Defining and Describing Alternate Energy

Assume the role of Sylvia Barnard. In response to your initial report on biofuels, Jim McDuff has asked for more information about each of the biofuels that you have briefly defined.

Write a two- or three-page description of one of the following biofuels: biodiesel, bioalchohol, biogas, or cellusoic biofuel. Include a formal sentence definition, and use and cite at least three sources in your description.

4. Alternative Energy Processes

As a member of The Pub (the Publications Development team), you have written instructional guides to help homeowners with do-it-yourself projects. Now you have been asked to create new guides for this series, guidelines designed to help homeowners with energy-saving projects.

Create one of the following documents. The document should be designed to appear in a single-sheet brochure.

A. Instructions for installing solar panels on a house. (Use at least three sources and cite them.)

B. Description of how a hybrid car recharges its battery. (Use at least three sources and cite them.)

5. Progress Report on Seismic Testing

Assume the role of George Hikaru, a field engineer in M-Global’s Tokyo branch. You are the head of a team that is responsible for conducting the seismic survey for a geothermal power plant for the Philippine government. Your contact is Assistant Energy Secretary Don Leyte.

During the past month, you have met weekly with Gio Stella, an employee of GEODrill, the company that will be doing the actual drilling. You have also met twice during the month with representatives of Enerugisshu Shisutemuzu, the Japanese company responsible for the design and construction of the power plant. After initial surveys, your team spent the second and third weeks of the month using traditional reflection and refraction seismic analysis over the 25 square kilometer site. These initial results were used to identify locations for electromagnetic seismic imaging that began late last week. This final set of tests will be completed soon.

Once the seismic data is collected and analyzed, you will be writing a recommendation report for Mr. Leyte. You hope that the report will be ready within the next month. After Mr. Leyte has responded to the report, members of your team will meet with the team from GEODrill and the architects from Enerugisshu Shisutemuzu to finalize the location of the geothermal wells on the site plan. It is now time to write your first monthly progress report to Assistant Secretary Leyte. Use the above information to help you write your report in letter form.

6. Reviewing Wind Farm Reports

Assume the role of an American student interning with the Houston branch of M-Global. You are interning with Zach O’Neill, the head of the Houston branch’s construction management office. Zach is preparing for a meeting with other M-Global construction managers to discuss potential opportunities for M-Global in wind farm construction.

Zach asks you to prepare some background research for him. He would like to know about wind farm construction techniques so that he has a sense of what kinds of new training or equipment M-Global will need to invest in to enter this field. He asks you to identify formal reports on wind farms that are useful to someone interested in wind farm construction techniques.

Using the Internet, find three formal reports that discuss wind farm construction. Create a brief summary of each of the reports, identifying the sections that Zach will find useful in his background reading. Include comments on how easy it is to find the information Zach will need and how useful it appears. To find formal reports about wind farm construction, use the advanced search tools in a search engine such as Google. Use the search terms "wind farm" and "construction" in addition to "report" and limit your search to PDFs. Make sure that you recommend reports, not other kinds of documents. Look for the word “Report” in the title or a statement at the beginning of the document that identifies it as a report. ("This report . . .")

7. Memo Proposal to Encourage Pedal Power

Assume the role of a support services employee in an M-Global branch. You may choose to be an employee in the mail room, cafeteria, copy center, or other support service. Choose an M-Global branch in an area of the country with which you are familiar.

Write a proposal to the branch manager to suggest that the branch make it easier for employees who wish to bike to work by installing bike racks and adding showers and space in locker rooms so that employees can take showers and change into appropriate clothing after biking to work. (The M-Global branch where you work already has locker rooms for employees who work in the field.)

Since this is an initial proposal, you may either estimate the costs of the changes that you are recommending, or you may offer to conduct a feasibility study if the branch manager is interested in your idea.

8. M-Global's Alternate Energy Initiative on the Web

Assume the role of a member of M-Global’s in-house web design team. One of your responsibilities is to check all M-Global web pages for consistent style and appearance. Now, however, you have been given an assignment to design a new web page for the Alternate Energy Initiative. Jim McDuff wants to set up a separate web site for the initiative, but the site will include a link to M-Global’s corporate home page and the M-Global home page will include a link to the Alternate Energy Initiative web site.

Design a home page for M-Global’s Alternate Energy Initiative. The textual content of the page will be provided by the Public Information department, so you should focus on the overall visual design, including headings and links to other web pages. You do not need to create textual content for the web page.

9. Image of Alternative Energy

As a member of the Publication Development team, you are sometimes called on to create graphics for M-Global publications. For the Alternate Energy Initiative, you have been asked to create illustrations that can be used in a variety of publications.

Create illustrations for M-Global publications, using solar panels, wind turbines, or geothermal energy as your subject. Create three illustrations, one each of the following:

· Photo of equipment with callouts: Make sure you use a citation of the source of the photo, indicating that you have adapted it

· Line drawing of equipment showing parts: Using the drawing tools in your word processing software, or other illustration software with which you are familiar

· Flow chart showing the energy collection or production process: Use flowcharting software such as Microsoft Visio, or use the drawing tools in your word processing software. You may use standardized flow chart symbols or use images creatively to represent the process that you are illustrating.

10. Presenting the Alternate Energy Initiative

As a member of the Public Information department, you are often called on to prepare materials for presentations to community groups in cities where M-Global has offices or projects.

Using the information about M-Global in your textbook and the information about the new Alternate Energy Initiative in the introduction to the M-Global activities on this companion web-site, script and create a PowerPoint that can be presented to groups interested in the new initiative. Assume that the presentation materials will be made available to all M-Global employees through the company intranet.

You may create whatever details you feel are necessary for an effective presentation. Using the "Notes" view in PowerPoint (or other presentation software), record the script that will accompany the slides.

11. Researching Hybrid Cars

Assume the role of a librarian in M-Global’s company library. Tanya Grant is researching hybrid cars and she has asked for your help.

Create an annotated bibliography of articles and web sources with information about hybrid cars. Your bibliography should include ten entries, and your annotations should help Tanya decide if the articles are worth reading for her research.

12. Applying to Work Abroad

For the past four years, you have been a junior technical writer in M-Global’s Baltimore office, but you have been looking for an opportunity to work overseas. One day, you see an announcement on the company intranet that one of M-Global’s overseas offices wants to hire a senior level technical writer who is familiar with the Alternate Energy Initiative. Not only would this be a chance to go overseas, but it would be a promotion as well, so you decide to apply.

Choose any of the overseas M-Global branches. Write a letter of application that emphasizes your familiarity with some of M-Global’s alternative energy projects. To make your fictional letter effective, create whatever details seem appropriate and realistic about your experience at M-Global (and elsewhere) and your education.

3