In their 2007 report, College Learning for a New Global Century, the Association of American Colleges and Universities identified capstones courses as one of a small set of "high impact" activities that can increase student engagement and success.
Allegheny College, Augustana College, Washington College, and The College of Wooster are distinctive in that they are among a small group of liberal arts colleges that require all students to engage in a capstone experience built around a significant mentoring relationship with a faculty member. We invest heavily in our capstones because we believe them to be fundamental to the development of our students, and our institutional culture, strategic thinking, and decision-making are significantly shaped by this commitment.
Through a grant from The Teagle Foundation, Allegheny College, Augustana College, Washington College, and The College of Wooster are collaborating in a multi-year project to develop a better understanding of the costs and benefits of senior capstones for students and faculty mentors, and to identify best practices. The project has the following goals:
- To assess the degree to which a universal capstone contributes to outcomes that lead to lifelong learning;
- To identify capstone program components and characteristics at each institution by refining the inventory developed during the planning grant;
- To identify features of the capstone that produce positive experiences;
- To distinguish variations in program characteristics, experiences, and outcomes across institutions and disciplines, and for specific segments of students (e.g., by academic profile, discipline, gender).
Studying the practices and measuring selected outcomes of our capstone programs will have multiple benefits both for our institutions and for the wider understanding of capstone experiences. We will benefit from being more informed about the value of programs in which we invest an enormous amount of resources and significant cultural capital, and from learning how best to develop the capstone experience in response to assessment data. Most importantly, our project will shed light on the educational benefits of undergraduate capstone projects for all students and provide four case studies of the implementation of a required capstone that will enrich the national conversation about the experience and its significance in undergraduate education.