A more applied version of the essay assignments built around The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks asks students to draft an actual policy proposal, written in the style of a real recommendation to a legislative body or institutional review board, addressing genetic privacy gaps that the Lacks case reveals still exist in some form today. This format shifts the assignment from purely analytical or historical writing toward a more applied, professional genre, which requires a different grading lens than a standard essay, since policy proposals are judged partly on their actual feasibility and specificity rather than purely on the strength of an argument in the abstract. A rubric for this assignment needs categories that reflect this shift toward practical, implementable recommendations rather than purely theoretical argumentation.

A strong policy proposal in this format needs to include several distinct elements: a clear statement of the specific problem being addressed, grounded in evidence from the Lacks case and ideally connected to contemporary examples as well, a specific proposed solution with enough detail to be genuinely evaluable, and an honest acknowledgment of the proposal's likely costs or tradeoffs. Students often struggle most with this last element, since the genre of policy writing they are less familiar with can tempt them toward proposals that sound appealing but ignore genuine implementation challenges, such as proposing a consent requirement so strict it would functionally halt most tissue-based medical research. A rubric that specifically checks for this honest treatment of tradeoffs, rather than allowing an idealistic proposal to pass without scrutiny of its practical implications, pushes students toward the kind of realistic thinking genuine policy work actually requires.

Grading this format also benefits from checking whether students have researched any existing policy attempts to address similar problems, since a genuinely informed policy proposal engages with what has already been tried, whether it succeeded or failed, rather than proposing a solution in a vacuum without any awareness of prior efforts. A student who references the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act or subsequent state-level genetic privacy legislation, for instance, and explains specifically how their proposal builds on, differs from, or addresses gaps in that existing policy, demonstrates a level of research and applied thinking that a purely hypothetical, unresearched proposal cannot match, regardless of how creative or well-intentioned that unresearched proposal might otherwise be.

Scoring Feasibility Without Discouraging Ambition

Grading feasibility carefully requires a delicate balance, since penalizing every ambitious proposal for being difficult to implement would discourage the kind of bold thinking that sometimes produces genuinely valuable policy ideas, while accepting any proposal regardless of feasibility would fail to teach the practical constraints that real policy work always involves. The most productive rubric language rewards proposals that are ambitious but explicitly acknowledge and address their own implementation challenges, over proposals that are either overly cautious and incremental or ambitious but naive about what implementing the idea would actually require in practice. This framing gives students room to think big while still holding them accountable for grappling honestly with the practical realities their proposal would need to navigate.

• Require a clear problem statement grounded in evidence from the Lacks case specifically
• Score whether the proposal honestly addresses its own costs, tradeoffs, and implementation challenges
• Check for research into existing relevant policy, not just an unresearched hypothetical solution
• Reward ambitious proposals that still grapple honestly with practical feasibility concerns
• Require the proposal to specify who would actually be responsible for implementing each element

Formatting Expectations for a Professional Genre

Because this assignment asks students to write in a genre, the policy memo or proposal, that differs structurally from the argumentative essay format most are more familiar with, providing a clear template or set of formatting expectations helps students meet the genre's conventions without that formatting confusion overshadowing the actual quality of their thinking and research. A brief model proposal, either a real example from an actual policy context or a teacher-created sample specifically for this assignment, gives students a concrete reference for elements like an executive summary, clearly labeled sections, and a call to action addressed to a specific decision-making body, all of which differ meaningfully from how a standard essay is typically structured and organized.

Grading should distinguish clearly between formatting and genre convention issues, which are more mechanical and can be corrected with relatively direct feedback, and substantive problems with the actual policy content and reasoning, which require deeper engagement and more extensive feedback to address. A rubric that separates these two dimensions, rather than folding genre convention issues into a general writing quality score, gives students clearer information about whether their proposal needs primarily formatting adjustments or a more fundamental rethinking of the actual policy substance and reasoning behind their recommendation.

Connecting the Assignment to Real-World Skill Building

Students in public health, pre-law, public policy, and related programs particularly benefit from this assignment format because it builds a genuinely transferable professional skill, writing persuasive but honest policy documents, that differs meaningfully from the purely academic argumentative essay many other courses emphasize. Framing the assignment explicitly this way to students, noting that policy proposals of this kind are a real genre they may encounter in future professional contexts well beyond this single classroom assignment, tends to raise engagement and effort, since students often invest more seriously in writing they understand has genuine applied, real-world relevance beyond a single course grade.

Instructors who teach this assignment regularly sometimes invite a guest speaker with genuine policy experience, whether from a university's institutional review board, a public health department, or a legislative office, to give brief feedback on a sample of the strongest student proposals after grading is complete. This additional layer of real-world validation, beyond the instructor's own grade, tends to be memorable for students and reinforces that the skills being practiced in this assignment have genuine value and application well beyond the specific context of a single course centered on this one particular book.