by Aaron Butts
For seniors in the communication department and honors students, senior year means one thing: the senior Capstone. Three years of hard work culminating in one final senior project, for which the process of validation is tedious.
“A capstone is a project by communication students, and it’s actually a pretty lengthy process,” Kyle Fowler, senior public relations major said. Fowler completed the Capstone process in his junior year by creating a marketing campaign for the Housing Lottery by utilizing his knowledge of PR up to that point.
Like all Capstone students, Fowler had to present his project in front of students and faculty as a way of revising his work
“It’s definitely very stressful,” he said. “There are 40-50 of your peers you want to impress, plus faculty in fields that you may want to go into. What is nice is that you get their feedback and you can take it and make your final copy.”
The process allows the student to refine their project and their ideas, into something of great substance through forcing the student to revisit the project over and over again in hopes of getting it right.
The whole concept of a Capstone is not something that is altogether foreign to students. Many majors require senior projects in order to graduate.
The Capstone, however, is simply a recent addition to the communications department which joins the long line of other majors that already requires a project; however, the Capstone provides a much different approach to combining three years of an undergraduate education.
The term itself is something that is also strange, as its partial creator and department head Sharon Croft is not quite certain how they came up with the name, but she knows what it signifies.
“The term ‘Capstone’,” Croft said “I always understood to mean some culminating experience.”
The term is actually similar to the definition of the University itself where the word “Capital” means the broad part at the top of a pillar, which is commonly associated with strength, which is exactly what the Capstone is trying to convey in the students that take part in it.
“It’s a culminating piece of scholarship that will showcase your knowledge here at Capital that will help you get into a graduate school or maybe help get you that second interview for a job,” Croft said.
The Capstone was invented three years ago as a response to the worsening economy, and a need for students to transfer their academics to the professional world in a big way
“It used to be when I first got here, that students, not just communications students but any student, that if you had a college degree, you looked good in a suit, you interviewed well, you were going to get a job,” Croft said.
“But four or five years ago we were realizing that it was taking some of our top students a year and a half to get a job. As a professor that made me nervous. I was wondering if we were not preparing them for the world outside of Capital.”
The program was created after the department went and modeled the current Capstone after similar programs at different schools and saw ways in which they could incorporate this idea into their curriculum.
“The other reason was that there was a feeling that there wasn’t an articulated move through the major,” Croft said. “Which meant that although we always wanted to have a flexible curriculum, it felt like students were just taking random courses.” This allowed a culmination of academics within the department, allowing all curriculums to be guided towards a relevant conclusion.
“It was a way to both provide our students with a challenge, and a marker of accomplishment.”
One of the main advantages to doing a Capstone is that someone who has completed it has a concrete item to add to their resume.
A Capstone project that is specific to a person’s intended occupation can be an incredibly influential tool for students during an interview that may lack some of the experience due to their age.
For Patrick Grandpre, his Capstone is something that he knows will relate directly to his occupation, and that gives him a leg up on the competition in the job market, while still playing at his academic interests.
“For my Capstone, I am doing the lighting for Candide which is the musical that the theatre department and the conservatory are putting on together in the cabaret theatre,” Granpre said. “Some people do papers, but I hate papers so I am doing lights, which is what I am planning on doing with my life after college. It’s something that I can show pictures and portfolios and events that I have done to future employers to demonstrate to them that I can do this.”
Because the Capstone program is so new, it is still constantly changing.
“There is no guarantee that the program this semester will be the same a year from now,” Croft said.
With every year, the program advances and modifies its way towards making itself more effective, in the hopes that in years to come, the Capstone may bring more success to graduating communications majors, and work to bring the department together under a more cohesive curriculum
abutts@capital.edu
