Memo

To: Professor Szoke

From: Abigail Bromley

Date: March 25, 2019

Re: Student Learning Outcomes for the Recommendation Report

In Sequence 2, we were tasked with choosing a topic of interest that remains a problem to
the real world and offer a series of solutions through a recommendation report. My topic of
interest was in dietary supplements in the United States and how they posed potential harm to
users. My goal was to recommend mandated regulations for all future supplements, have the
FDA review supplements already on the market, and finally, recommend that the FDA set
stricter marketing guidelines so as to make these products more transparent. In order to present
these recommendations in a compelling manner, my focus was centered on project planning,
organizational design, and production and delivery as they all helped deliver the key aspects of
the report that would most helpfully inform the readers.

In developing a process for my project, I first began with the planning stage which was
carried out over a multitude of assignments that would all lead up to the recommendation report.
The first step was to create a letter of complaint that would allow me to develop the idea and the
direction I wanted to take it moving forward in the project. The next step was to gather four
sources that would act as the main contributors to the document as they would be intensely
centered around the problem I was to be recommending solutions for. This leads to the last step
which is the actual recommendation report that I outlined in the most basic form by collecting all
the previous work and figuring out how I would adhere it to the report while also meshing it with
further conducted research.

Moving on to organizational design, the main focus was to ensure readability for my
audience by making the report as cohesive and thorough as possible. This was accomplished by
citing sources and presenting clear data that allowed for the problem to be seen from more than
one angle. I also made clear to readers the goal I wanted to achieve, which was to find
documented evidence of the supplements causing harm to users as it would further the
recommendation that FDA interference would be beneficial. Doing so would negate readers
losing interest in reading about the problem and strengthen the solutions I intended to
recommend. I found that giving a history of dietary supplements was also crucial as it was
helpful for readers to gain context to this problem by seeing the evolutions they have undergone
to get to where they are now in the present-day United States. The amalgamation of all of these
processes allowed me to develop a clear research practice that would also translate well into
what I would present to others.
 Finally, to touch base on production and delivery, this was most exemplified in the
graphs, images, and statistics I included as they allowed for the aspect of multimodality while
still remaining relevant to the information. The delivery was successful in that the
recommendations were all specifically for the FDA and most effectively showed it how the
supplements were being allowed to remain despite the evidence against them, why they pose a
larger problem to society, and the specific actions they can take to begin resolving the issue.
Action can then be taken as the matter would, intrinsically, call their ethics into question and if
enough of society is outraged over it, then they would have to act so as to prevent further
discourse.

Overall, my report benefitted by my cohesion to the Student Learning Outcomes. ​By

carrying out the plan before and after writing my report, ensuring the readability of my
recommendations, and acting in accordance with the elements of production and delivery, I am
firm in the belief that I succeeded in creating a set of relevant and executable recommendations
that are of significance both personally and societally. Should my recommendations be
implemented nationwide, I am confident that the risks and harmful side effects associated with
supplements will decrease significantly, if not vanish altogether, and regulations would
indefinitely be put in place to prevent any future misgivings.