2. Communication plan
3. Qualitative analysis report
4. Evaluation recommendations report
Capstone involves numerous constituents and requires dedicated resources. Each partner organization is represented by one or two preceptors (i.e., main points of contact from the partner organization) who provide a vision for, direct, and supervise the project work. Preceptors spend 2–4 h per week meeting with students, providing guidance on the work, and reviewing deliverables. Student teams are responsible for managing Capstone relationships, processes, and tasks and producing deliverables that enhance their skillsets while meeting their partner organization's needs. They are expected to spend 6–9 h per week, outside of class time, on Capstone. One faculty adviser per project provides technical expertise and ensures that each team's project deliverables meet UNC-CH's master's thesis substitute and CEPH ILE requirements. Faculty advisers spend 30 min to an hour a week providing feedback and guidance on the project work. Advising a Capstone team every other year is a service expectation for Department faculty. The teaching team, which is comprised of course instructor(s) and teaching assistants (TAs), recruits the partner organizations and oversees and supports the Capstone experience. Each instructor manages ten to eleven teams (typically between forty and fifty students) and receives coverage equal to twenty percent full-time equivalent per semester. TAs, who are HB or EQUITY MPH alumni and/or HB doctoral students, each work with five to six teams and are expected to work 18 h a week on Capstone. TAs provide feedback on draft deliverables, direct students to resources, and help problem solve. Departmental administrative staff provide additional support to coordinate expenses associated with the program such as project-related travel, equipment, services (e.g., transcription, interpretation, translation), books, software, incentives, postage, and other costs. Capstone students pay a one-time $600 field fee to cover a portion of the expenses associated with Capstone. This fee was approved by the University and is paid when a student enrolls in the first semester of the course.
Recruitment.
The process of setting up Capstone projects takes 9 months of advance planning (see Figure 1 ). The Capstone teaching team solicits project proposals in December for the upcoming academic year. They send email solicitations with Capstone overview information ( Supplementary material D ) and the project proposal form ( Supplementary material E ) to current and former Capstone partner organizations, hosts of other experiential education experiences, and department listservs. The Capstone teaching team encourages recipients to share the solicitation information with their networks. Prospective partners' first step is to have an informational interview with a Capstone instructor to discuss their project ideas and to receive coaching on elements of successful proposals. These interviews are also an opportunity for the teaching team to assess an organization's capacity to support a student team and gain insights on the prospective preceptors' communication, work, and leadership styles. The teaching team invites prospective partners to submit draft proposals for their review prior to the proposal deadline. Prospective partners submit their finalized project proposals and a letter of support from their leadership to the teaching team by email in early February.
The teaching team typically receives twenty project proposals. To determine which projects will be presented to incoming Capstone students, a committee consisting of the teaching team and student representatives from the current Capstone class reviews and scores proposals based on the criteria listed in Table 2 . Reviewers score each criterion on a scale of one through five with one being the lowest score and five being the highest score. The fifteen community partners with the highest scoring proposals are invited to share their ideas with students via a recorded seven-minute project overview presentation.
Project selection criteria.
Project Scope | 1. Is there a clear scope of work with tangible outputs that have clear purposes and steps, are interrelated, and connect to one overarching project goal? 2. Is the proposed scope of work appropriate and feasible for a team of students within the academic timeline? 3. Is there sufficient time and effort allocated to onboarding students to the project work and partner organization? 4. Will the project facilitate knowledge and skill acquisition and application that will enhance students' readiness for public health careers? |
Organizational Capacity | 1. Does the preceptor have demonstrated time, expertise, and interest to mentor public health students? 2. Does leadership at the partner organization demonstrate support for the project? |
Equity | 1. Does the partner organization demonstrate commitment to promoting health equity and social justice? 2. Were the people who will be most impacted by the project work involved in the project design? 3. Will students engage with the intended beneficiaries of the work? |
Impact | 1. Does the project have strong potential to make a meaningful difference in the health of the beneficiary communities and populations? |
Incoming Capstone students have 1 week in March to review the proposal materials and rank their top five project preferences. Based on student rankings, the teaching team assembles project teams using the following guiding principles: (1) give as many students as possible their top-ranked project; (2) promote diversity of concentrations and experience levels within student teams; and (3) ensure the number of students per team is appropriate for the proposed scope of work. Once the student teams are assembled, the teaching team matches faculty advisers to projects based on faculty's interests and expertise. The teaching team announces final team composition in early April. The course instructor(s) facilitates an initial meeting with each student team, their preceptor(s), and their faculty adviser in May to build community, clarify expectations, and orient the student team to their project work and partner organization. Project work formally begins in August of the following academic year.
Capstone spans the fall and spring semesters (fifteen weeks per term) and is three credits per term. To help students, preceptors, and faculty advisers become familiar with expectations for Capstone, the teaching team reserves the first 4 weeks of the fall semester for onboarding. As part of the onboarding process, each team cocreates a team charter ( Supplementary material F ) to promote authentic relationships between students and their community partners and to clarify expectations for working together. They also produce a workplan ( Supplementary material G ), which elaborates on the partner's project proposal, to outline the team's scope of work. After the onboarding weeks, the teaching team meets with each student team during class three times per semester to receive project updates and provide support. The teaching team facilitates two whole-class reflection sessions per semester to help students make meaning of their experiences. All other Capstone class sessions are protected time for student teams to meet and work on their projects.
Capstone assignments are designed to ensure a mutually beneficial experience for students and community partners. They are also intended to facilitate critical reflection, yield high-quality written products, assess synthesis of selected competencies, and evaluate how students steward the relationships, processes, and tasks associated with their projects. To share power and collect their unique perspectives, preceptors and faculty advisers participate in the grading process. Tables 3 , ,4 4 summarize course assignments, their descriptions, whether they are completed and assessed at the individual or group level, and the party responsible for assessing the assignment.
Capstone assignments for the fall semester.
Pre-course survey | Qualtrics survey distributed by the teaching team to students, preceptors, and faculty advisers to create a shared understanding of the team members' expectations for the Capstone experience. | Individual | TT | 0% |
Weekly updates | Email sent by the student team using a template prescribed by the teaching team to create communication efficiencies and systematically keep the teaching team, preceptors, and faculty advisers updated on students' project work. | Group | TT | 10% |
Teaching team check-in meeting facilitation | Thirty-minute meeting facilitated by the student team to build community with, update, and receive support from the teaching team. | Group | TT | 10% |
Team charter | Microsoft Word document following a template ( ) provided by the teaching team used to promote authentic relationships between Capstone students, their preceptor(s), and their faculty adviser by clarifying expectations for working together. | Group | TT | 10% |
Work plan | Microsoft Word document following a template ( ) provided by the teaching team that clarifies the Capstone student team's scope of work by outlining the project deliverables, their steps, and their timeline. | Group | TT | 10% |
Project Summary Visual and Script | Power point slide and accompanying narrative text used to explain the team's project work and its intended impacts in preparation for being on the job market. | Group | TT | 5% |
Mid and End-of Semester Evaluations | Qualtrics surveys administered by the teaching team to students, preceptors, and faculty advisers to reflect on accomplishments and challenges and assess roles, responsibilities, processes, and deliverables. | Individual | TT | 0% |
Project management | Assessment of teams' management of Capstone project relationships, processes, and tasks. | Group | TT, P, FA | 35% |
Project participation | Assessment of individuals' contributions to the Capstone project. | Individual | TT, P, FA | 20% |
TT, Teaching Team; P, Preceptor; FA, Faculty Adviser.
Capstone assignments for the spring semester.
Weekly updates | Email sent by the student team using a template ( ) prescribed by the teaching team to create communication efficiencies and systematically keep the teaching team, preceptors, and faculty advisers updated on students' project work. | Group | TT | 10% |
Teaching team check-in meeting facilitation | Thirty-minute meeting facilitated by the student team to build community with, update, and receive support from the teaching team. | Group | TT | 10% |
Mid and end of semester evaluations | Qualtrics surveys administered by the teaching team to students, preceptors, and faculty advisers to reflect on accomplishments and challenges and assess roles, responsibilities, processes, and deliverables. | Individual | TT | 0% |
Deliverables | Tangible products produced by the student team that are mutually beneficial to students' professional development goals and partner organizations' needs. | Group | TT, P, FA | 35% |
Project management | Assessment of teams' management of Capstone project relationships, processes, and tasks. | Group | TT, P, FA | 20% |
Project participation | Assessment of individuals' contributions to the Capstone project. | Individual | TT, P, FA | 20% |
Exit interview and prep sheet | Interview between student and faculty adviser to assess the student's synthesis and demonstration of foundational and concentration competencies. | Individual | FA | 5% |
This study was exempted by UNC Chapel Hill's Institutional Review Board (IRB 21-0510) as it fell under the exemption category of “educational setting,” which includes research on instructional approaches and their effectiveness. To abstract and analyze data on the number of students who have completed Capstone, hours they dedicated to Capstone activities, and deliverables they produced, two authors referenced course records starting in 2009. The teaching team collects students' and preceptors' perspectives on Capstone through mid- and end-of-semester evaluations using Qualtrics. Gillings administers end-of-semester course evaluations that provide additional insights into student outcomes.
Core aspects of Capstone (e.g., program aims and our staffing model) have remained constant over the past 13 years. However, a variety of lessons learned and external conditions have led to program changes. Use of class time and project recruitment, selection, and matching processes have evolved to further promote health equity and maximize mutual student and community partner benefit. The EQUITY concentration joined Capstone in 2020, which led to changes in team composition. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a transition from in-person to a remote course format in academic years 2020 and 2021, introducing the opportunity to work with organizations across the nation.
To present qualitative findings that reflect our most current programming, two authors analyzed data from academic years 2020 and 2021. Ninety-eight students and twenty-two preceptors participated in Capstone during that time. The teaching team received a 100 percent response rate to their mid and end-of semester evaluations completed by students and preceptors and a seventy-two percent response rate to the Gillings-administered student course evaluations during academic years 2020 and 2021.
To identify key outcomes for students and preceptors, two authors completed a thematic analysis of evaluation responses ( 27 , 28 ). For students, they analyzed eighty-eight qualitative responses to the Gillings' course evaluation question, “What will you take away from this course?” Next, the two authors familiarized themselves with the data and inductively created a thematic codebook. To ensure consistent code use, they simultaneously coded approximately twenty-five percent of transcripts, coded remaining transcripts separately, and flagged any transcripts that required further review. To identify key preceptor outcomes, the two authors analyzed the twenty-two responses to the spring end-of-semester evaluation question, “Please describe how, if at all, your organization benefited from hosting a Capstone team.” They reviewed the responses to inductively create a codebook and then worked together to apply codes to all quotations to identify thematic groups.
Since its inception in 2009, 574 students across 127 teams have completed the Capstone program, provided over 103,000 h of in-kind service, and produced more than 635 deliverables with our partner organizations. Between 2020–2022, ninety-eight students completed the current version of Capstone, provided 35,280 h of in-kind service, and produced eighty deliverables. Through our thematic analysis of course evaluation data, we identified two overarching themes for student outcomes: skill development and satisfaction.
Skill development, students' greatest takeaway from Capstone, was reflected in fifty-three percent ( n = 47) of students' qualitative evaluation responses. Students directly named interpersonal skills (e.g., communication, teamwork, collaboration, conflict management, facilitation, community engagement, coalition building) the most. They also commented on acquisition of technical skills (e.g., project management; content development; and data collection, analysis, and reporting). In most cases, students named a mix of skills in their responses. For example, one student said they will take away:
Skills developed on the project, including survey design and implementation as well as strategies for engaging with community advisory board authentically and successfully. Shared skills among team will stick with me as well – project management, inter–team communication, strategies for setting clear expectations and holding each other accountable.
Skill development helps achieve Capstone's course aims of increasing students' capacity to address public health issues and promote health equity while enhancing their preparedness and marketability for public health careers.
Twenty-four students commented on their satisfaction with the experience when sharing key takeaways. Seven students expressed dissatisfaction, primarily with course assignments, while seventeen others remarked on their satisfaction with the experience, particularly the applied format of the course. For example, one student shared,
This Capstone project really was special. Having a community partner that demonstrated how helpful these projects would be and work with us to shape the deliverables was such a unique process. I wish we had more community–focused classes like this one.
In alignment with Capstone's objective of strengthened campus-community partnerships and CEPH ILE goals, these Capstone partnerships afford students the opportunity to see the impacts of their learning and create meaningful work that benefits external constituents.
Over the past 13 years, we have partnered with seventy-nine organizations representing a variety of sectors including healthcare, social services, education, and government. Twenty-five (31.6%) of our partner organizations have hosted multiple Capstone teams. Based on the twenty-two preceptor responses analyzed for this paper, two authors identified four major themes within community partner benefits: deliverable utility, enhanced capacity, broad impacts, and more inclusive processes. Sixteen (72.7%) preceptors said that they benefited from the deliverables (e.g., toolkit, communication tool, datasets, evaluation plan, report, oral history products, protocols, presentation, report, curriculum, manuscript, engagement plan) produced by their team. These findings reflect Capstone's course aim of creating new or improved public health resources, programs, services, and policies.
Fifty-seven percent ( n = 12) of preceptors noted that project outcomes would not have been possible without the support of a Capstone team. The resources teams developed increased partner organizations' capacity to further their work. For example, a preceptor shared:
The Capstone team provided us with SO many hours of highly skilled person power that we would not otherwise have had. We now have a draft of a thorough and high quality [toolkit], which I don't think could have been created without their labor, given the resource constraints of [our organization]. This toolkit will serve as a tool to start conversations with many […] stakeholders in the future. I think it will also serve as a model for other states.
Not only can students' in-kind service and the work they produce help increase the capacity of our partner organizations, but also the Capstone project work can have long-term and far-reaching impacts for public health practice at large. Indeed, preceptors ( n = 8) reported impacts that extend beyond the partner organization. For example, another preceptor noted,
[Our organization] will use the presentation and report that the Capstone team produced for the next decade. Not only will [our organization] benefit from advancing our strategic priorities and deepening our partnerships, but we believe this report will be used by other agencies across the county to advance behavioral health priorities in need of support.
This is an example of how Capstone can yield new and improved public health resources, programs, services, and policies that have lasting impacts beyond those directly benefiting our partner organizations.
A final theme that emerged was organizations' increased ability to implement more inclusive processes. Four preceptors commented on expanded commitment to equity initiatives as illustrated by the following quote:
The work the team did for [our organization] is work that we've talked about doing for several years - but we never had the time. The protocols are important for injured children, so we're grateful for the team's work. We also have never addressed social equity as a group. Working with this team has prompted us to take a look at our practices. The evaluation plan the students developed will provide a mechanism for us to assess and trend our implementation of the protocols and our efforts to reduce inequities in trauma care.
This example demonstrates how Capstone's commitment to working from a social change orientation can impact our partner organizations' cultures. Overall, these findings illustrate the myriad community partner benefits present within Capstone.
These results show that Capstone mutually benefits community partners and students. Overall, students gained skills in collaborating with communities and contributed to collective capacity to improve public health practice and tools for promoting health equity. Our finding that skill development was a key student outcome aligns with Mackenzie et al.'s ( 13 ) and Gupta et al.'s ( 8 ) evaluations of similar service-learning courses. Among skills developed, both studies cited teamwork and professional development skills as key components ( 8 , 13 ). Mackenzie et al. ( 13 ), Derreth and Wear ( 25 ), and Sabo et al. ( 12 ) also report additional student outcomes that were not explicitly measured in our evaluation, including a deeper commitment to work with local communities, a deeper commitment to engaged scholarship, and stronger relationships with faculty.
In our evaluation, community partners benefitted through useful deliverables, enhanced capacity to do more public health work, impacts beyond the scope of the project, and more inclusive and equitable processes. Like our study, Gregorio et al. ( 23 ) found that their students' work products were very useful. Moreover, the Mackenzie et al. ( 13 ) study cited that students were able to offer additional capacity to organizations by “extending the[ir] reach,” which reinforced our main findings of enhanced capacity and impacts beyond the scope of the project. While not all service-learning course evaluation studies included data from community partners, our results aligned with those that did.
After 13 years, we have identified several lessons learned about implementing a critical service-learning ILE. First, despite proactive planning efforts, the teaching team has learned to expect challenges related to project scope and relationships. The solicitation and refinement of projects and partnerships starts 9 months before the beginning of Capstone. Through extended individualized support and engagement, the teaching team hopes to build trust with community partners and collaborate in shaping and strengthening their project proposals. While there are benefits of this level of engagement, no amount of planning completely insulates projects from the unforeseen challenges of community-engaged work. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted how Capstone could engage with community partners, their priorities, and their staffing. In particular, preceptor turnover creates numerous challenges for team morale and project ownership, satisfaction, and impact.
Second, Capstone course assignments are designed to maximize positive experiences for students and community partners and to uphold the principles of critical service-learning, but students are often frustrated with them. The teaching team refers to the workplan and team charter as the “guardrails” of the Capstone. They exist to clarify expectations, promote power sharing and authentic relationships, and reinforce Capstone's commitment to social change. The teaching team has observed that teams who invest deeply in these documents are the least likely to encounter significant interpersonal and logistical setbacks during the experience. Despite the teaching team's messaging about the importance of these structures for mutually beneficial experiences, students routinely assert that the start of Capstone contains too much “administrative” work. While the teaching team continues to respect and incorporate students' critical feedback, they have learned to expect a certain amount of student dissatisfaction at the start of the experience.
Third, the Department has learned that having the appropriate amount of staffing and material resources to support projects is essential to ensuring positive impacts. Limiting partners to only those with material resources is one way that funding models both within public health and the non-profit sector often exclude organizations with more explicit social change agendas. Therefore, to maximize student learning and community partner benefit while minimizing community partner burden, Capstone has a high university-staff-to-project ratio and covers project expenses. To fund Capstone, the Department uses a combination of state resources and field fees. There is an enduring tension, especially because resources are scarce, to scale back spending on courses like Capstone. For experiences like these to sustain and grow, additional resources, not fewer, are needed.
Finally, programs like Capstone must adapt to shifting social, political, economic, and educational landscapes to ensure sustained positive impacts. For example, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the teaching team limited the eligible pool of Capstone community partners to those within a forty-mile radius of UNC-CH. The pandemic resulted in the teaching team broadening community partner eligibility criteria and now Capstone works with community partners across the nation. Capstone's expanded reach is aligned with the new vision for Public Health 3.0 where public health professionals are expected to “engage multiple sectors and community partners to generate collective impact” while improving social determinants of health ( 29 ).
Public Health 3.0 ( 29 ) looks to promote health, equity, and resilience. With more community partners working on projects that explicitly tackle upstream factors like education, housing, and poverty in addition to health, Gillings will need to update its MPH training program to ensure that students enter their ILEs with the skills needed to meet these challenges. Below we describe ongoing quality improvement efforts internal to the Capstone program to strengthen outcomes for students and partner organizations.
The teaching team hopes to continue to enhance student preparedness and marketability for careers in public health. Much like other experiential learning models that report benefits to career readiness, professional leadership, and confidence ( 15 , 18 ), students report a host of positive outcomes from their Capstone experience that imply preparedness and marketability. Students note the breadth and depth of technical and interpersonal skills gained, as has been reported elsewhere ( 13 , 30 ). These reports of enhanced preparedness align well with findings that among undergraduate seniors seeking employment immediately after graduation, students whose course history included service-learning and capstone courses experienced greater odds of starting a new job compared with those who did not engage those high-impact practices ( 31 ). In recent years, the teaching team has offered skill-building workshops, as replicated in other programs ( 3 ), to coach students on how to present their Capstone work on résumés and how to talk about their projects during interviews using sample scripts. To simulate job applications and increase engagement with partner organizations, the teaching team will consider inviting preceptors to review and provide feedback on students' résumés and project description scripts.
The teaching team also aims to further strengthen community partnerships. One way to maximize Capstone's benefit for community partners is to adapt recruitment strategies so that the teaching team reaches more organizations for whom the Capstone experience would be most impactful. This may mean further refining the application process to lessen the time burden on potential partners and disseminating the call for Capstone projects through different channels. To enhance the experience of selected community partners, the teaching team plans to implement more preceptor-specific programming such as check-in meetings and skill-building workshops to build community and encourage collaboration among community partners.
Finally, there is a clear need for a comprehensive Capstone evaluation. The teaching team has yet to administer surveys, interviews, or focus groups that explicitly evaluate course aims and the elements of critical service learning. Furthermore, our understanding of the long-term impacts of Capstone is currently limited to anecdotal information from exchanges with former students and preceptors. By conducting a strategic evaluation, including modifications to existing course feedback opportunities and an additional alumni survey moving forward, we can better assess how Capstone is achieving course aims, operationalizing the elements of critical-service learning, and having long-term impacts.
Capstone's model can be adopted or adapted by individual faculty or by schools of public health. We welcome faculty members or program and school leaders to contact us to further discuss what this might look like. In general, though, we recommend that the following core components remain consistent:
As shown in Figure 1 , program staff work on Capstone activities year-round and recruit new community partners while managing a current cohort of preceptors. Clear job descriptions with timelines will be helpful in negotiations and will assist with sustainability as different faculty and staff cycle through leading this kind of experience.
Our description and analyses have many strengths. First, the detailed and transparent information contained in this paper will allow interested faculty to replicate and benefit from best practices found in Capstone. We openly share our course materials in the Supplementary material section and invite others to adopt or adapt these resources for their own use. Second, our results illustrate the benefits of Capstone and highlight mechanisms for ILEs to be transformative for students and community partners alike. Lastly, all authors on this paper have been members of the Capstone teaching team, students enrolled in the course, or both. This uniquely qualifies us to write this paper and share lessons learned with others in the field to advance public health training and practice.
As noted above, our evaluation of Capstone has some limitations. First, we designed our evaluation and analyzed data retrospectively. Therefore, evaluation tools were not explicitly aligned to our four program objectives or the elements of critical service-learning. Second, we narrowed in on qualitative data from the past 2 years instead of the past 13 years because of changes implemented in 2020. To present reflections and feedback on the current version of Capstone, we had limited data to analyze.
By applying elements of critical service-learning to an ILE, Capstone is uniquely positioned to contribute to the development of public health leaders and positive community change. Community partners' project visions undergird the project selection and the course structure, which emphasizes authentic relationships, mutually beneficial processes, and practical synthesis of applied public health competencies. Through 13 years of experience, we have developed an ILE that is nimble enough to benefit community partners and rigorous enough to satisfy accreditation requirements. Capstone is a promising culminating experience practice for training skilled, collaborative public health practitioners and effecting community-driven public health change.
Author contributions.
ML developed the course and its content along with peer colleagues, wrote the abstract along with the learning environment, program evaluation, and results sections. ML and LS conducted the thematic data analysis. MC and LS completed a literature review, drafted the introduction and pedagogical framework section, and provided continual editing. EC wrote the discussion section and provided overall guidance for manuscript preparation. DE provided guidance, structural editing, and formatting. BP provided line edits. All authors contributed to the conception of the paper, manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version.
We are grateful to the 579 students and seventy-nine community partners we have learned from and with over the past 13 years. Many thanks to the editors and reviewers of this article for their comprehensive and helpful feedback including Laura Linnan, Beth Moracco, Kelsey Accordino, and Naya Villarreal. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Jo Anne Earp.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1129330/full#supplementary-material
The Appoquinimink School District offers 24 career pathways in its high schools, culminating with an immersion experience in the senior year for students. The district suggested these students to profile for their capstone projects.
“A unique aspect of an Appoquinimink education is the completion of the capstone portfolio,” a page on the district website says. ‘This work requires teens to identify a problem or challenge related to their pathway, then spend 50+ hours researching the issue in order to identify possible solutions in a process that includes mentorship opportunities with industry partners.”
Spreading positivity and researching road design
Friends Jordan Earl and Grason Jess, both Odessa High seniors, worked on separate capstones with criminal justice teacher Jill Kotowski.
Earl turned his commitment as a camp counselor for the Delaware CHANCE Foundation into a capstone project that spread positivity in the summer camp and after it ended.
One impactful relationship developed with a camper who was bullied and bullied others.
“I had a straight talk with him, and it was a heart-to-heart thing, because he felt way out of character than the other kids. And I said ‘There are always going to be bullies in your life. There are always going to be people who want to put a name on you. You have to have a strong mindset and be able to push through it. When you believe in yourself, others around you will look up to you. And you have to uphold yourself to a higher standard because you have to be a leader.’”
Earl and this camper have kept in touch, with Earl praising the camper for getting good grades, staying out of trouble and making their school basketball team. The last achievement speaks deeply to Earl, a point guard on the Odessa basketball team.
He took part in the Governor’s Summer Fellowship Program, and as part of that, he was placed with the foundation, named for its key focuses: character, honor, attitude, nurturing, care and education.
The right mindset recurred when he was asked to elaborate on mental health when he participated in the SL24 Memorial Basketball Classic, which honors Sean Locke, who lost his battle to depression a few weeks before his 24th birthday.
Earl, who plans to major in criminal justice, presented his capstone multiple times, sharing his concerns about how multiple issues affect the health, learning and behavior of children. “We – as a society and leaders in society – have to be better. Not just in life, but wherever you go. Like when you’re in a place where you feel uncomfortable and you feel like you’re in trouble or in danger, you have to be better. And you have to offer a helping hand to those in need. Because you don’t know what another person’s going through and what troubles they face.”
Jess said he connected with Matt Lichtenstein, a family friend who works at the Delaware Department of Transportation, to “basically work as an intern” in DelDOT’s legal department. That internship boosted his goal of a career in environmental law (starting first by studying political science at Hofstra), and one highlight was being in the courtroom for a case involving a candidate’s road signs.
For his capstone, “I wanted to connect my presentation to what I learned so I researched pieces of infrastructure that reduce car accidents,” he said, concluding that longitudinal rumble strips, roundabouts and highway divider medians are the most interesting.
His research affected how he drives. “I started to pay more attention because I did all this research on roads,” he said. “When you’re driving, you pay attention to the road but not necessarily all the features of it.”
Excessive testing, building a website
Appoquinimink High senior Sarah Steeves was surprised by the amount of testing going on for the second-graders that she was observing at Bunker Hill Elementary. And she worried about the effects.
Her education and leadership capstone last fall was guided by teacher Lindsay Myers. Steeves is doing a digital design capstone this spring, with teacher Aileen Murray, to build a website.
One issue was anxiety: caring less and less about all the tests. Another was the focus of the tests: whether they helped instill knowledge that prepares them for college or for life (or both).
“Anxiety exists in every age,” she said, but mainly in elementary schools. She saw a lack of focus, misunderstandings and cheating during her time with the pupils, which ran for about 90 minutes three afternoons a week. “Test anxiety is constant anxiety in test situations that can get serious enough that it can misrepresent comprehension of the material,” she wrote in her PowerPoint.
Her research on the effect of excessive testing led her to suggest three ways to improve the situation:
• Lesson plans that help with educational development, not just teaching to the test.
• Alternative assessments, such as observations, projects and group work.
• Advice in taking tests, including tips on sleep and nutrition.
Steeves, who plans to major in elementary education at the University of Delaware or West Chester University, is now working on her second capstone, to build a website for Sarah’s Stuffies, which are whimsical animals that she crochets.
Studying the ‘warrior gene’
Middletown High senior Laila Alston used a virtual neuroscience internship at Johns Hopkins University and an in-person immersion program on neuroscience and law at Columbia University in New York last summer to further her chosen career in neuroscience. Teachers Debra Otto and Colleen Barrett mentored her allied health capstone.
She titled her presentation: “Malnourishment & Violent Criminal Behavior in Male Adolescents: The Warrior Gene.” That gene is technically known as MAO-A.
She said she was inspired to study malnourishment from hearing about the childhood of her parents, who grew up poor. “A simple sandwich is two slices of bread, a slice of cheese and a couple slices of lunch meat,” she said. “For my parents, it was one slice of bread that they folded in half, a slice of cheese and pepper. They used pepper to mimic the taste of lunch meat because it was very expensive.”
“A lot of my research was qualitative,” Alston said. “There was some quantitative data, but that wasn’t really my target. I wanted to make an emotional appeal. There are some logical appeals to my research, but my focus was on making people aware of those who are in poverty so that they can donate to food pantries and things of that nature.” That’s why she gave her presentation about five times.
“I saw on people’s faces that they were truly able to learn a new perspective and they want to learn more about the problems of adolescent males’ environment. This is a topic that I want to make a career out of, not specifically dealing with malnutrition but dealing with the environmental and genetic factors of adolescents in poverty and violent crimes.”
Celebrate recovery - a christ centered program, debtors anonymous, native plants of summer 2024, paintings from the collection, summer u-pick adventures at milburn's, chiropractor in dwarka, current edition, read it now.
How can we make sure our students are workplace-ready? Capstone projects may hold the key, writes Ardy Cheung
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Capstone projects are an impactful and practical way to ensure students emerge from university workplace-ready. Students apply learning from their academic studies to live business briefs provided by industry.
With concerns from employers on declining career readiness and a widening gap between education and employment skills , how can universities ensure that initiatives like these prepare students for the workplace? Here are three tips on bridging the gap between academia and industry, or sponsors, via capstone projects:
This is the most important point to establish from the beginning. Does the sponsor’s project brief align with the curriculum? Spotting synergies between business needs and course content is the foundation for sourcing and establishing potential collaborations.
In addition to relevancy, does the project offer opportunities for students to develop industry skills and knowledge? Although undertaking research is typically part of the process, students should also have opportunities to make connections with networks outside academia. Crucially, they can then present business recommendations to sponsors and stakeholders as a result of their research. This is what differentiates capstone projects from traditional research projects.
Having regular touchpoints and opportunities to meet and present in sponsors’ offices is great workplace practice for students, in addition to helping them feel more immersed in the project.
Finally, is the project exciting for students? Forward-looking topics (such as sustainability, AI and technology, and the social and technological changes in the post-pandemic workplace) are perfect for students because they will be a part of their future – and where they can make the most difference.
It may also be tempting to prioritise projects from large multinationals, especially as students are usually keen to add brand names to their CV. However, prioritising project fit over employer brand allows students to discover the hidden SME sector, which makes up three-fifths of employment and half of the UK’s private sector turnover. Moreover, because SMEs have fewer resources than multinationals, they benefit even more from gaining access to university talent and often have less bureaucracy for students to navigate.
While sponsors offer capstone projects with a business need to solve challenges or develop new initiatives, it makes a huge difference when they have a coaching or mentoring mindset in their approach with students. Set the expectation that in working with students (as opposed to working professionals), sponsors play a valuable role in supervising and training students to succeed. Remind them that for some students, this may even be their first experience of a professional role in industry.
Capstone projects are part of the curriculum and students will need to meet academic requirements and deadlines, so sponsors should be understanding and flexible. Students are typically assigned an academic coach too, who will guide them to apply their learning and deliver a final presentation or report to their sponsor. A business presentation – which typically emphasises concise communication, solutions and outcomes – is very different to an academic presentation, which needs to reflect depth of understanding, research methods and critical analysis. Discuss incorporating this guidance with the sponsor and academic coach to make sure students balance or target their approach with different audiences, developing these often-overlooked soft skills for the workplace.
Working with careers consultants to include mechanisms for students to track and reflect on their experience is equally important to help them articulate their capstone experience in future job applications and interviews. This can be via induction sessions or resources on working with sponsors or post-project with short statements and feedback forms.
Capstone projects allow students and sponsors to engage closely over a period of time, typically with a dedicated supervisor, but also with stakeholders across the organisation with an interest in the brief. Encourage students and sponsors to actively build a relationship and stay connected after the project. Sponsors might have recruitment opportunities or be able to support students into the industry by introducing contacts and offering careers advice and mentoring. It can be a great starting point for students in building their professional networks.
Celebrating success at the end of projects, such as holding a thank you event or a capstone projects showcase, can be a wonderful way to conclude the experience for all parties, facilitate networking between students and sponsors and communicate appreciation for their commitments.
Capstone projects bridge the gap between academia and industry, helping us work together to cultivate the key skills and talent needed. Interdisciplinary projects, which combine students from different subjects – or even schools – can foster innovation, diversity of thought and develop students’ cultural sensitivity (especially attractive to global employers). By developing high-quality collaborations such as capstones, working with industry to develop student success and guiding students to build relationships, we can play a powerful role in ensuring students’ career readiness.
Ardy Cheung is employer relations manager in the department of management at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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From University of Canberra students exploring how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can make home care services more empowering, to creating a management system for a social enterprise for women from migrant and refugee backgrounds, the recent Capstone Project Expo highlighted how technology and systems can be effective catalysts for social impact.
The Expo is the culmination of the Capstone unit, which sees undergrad and postgrad students at the School of Information Technology and Systems (ITS) – part of UC’s Faculty of Science and Technology – dedicate a whole semester to one project, which reflects real world problems and challenges.
Each project is sponsored by an industry partner or University academic; at the end of each semester, the top projects are spotlighted at the Expo, held this year at the Ann Harding Centre.
“The Capstone Project Expo is one of the biggest ITS events showcasing the skills of our excellent students and celebrating their achievements,” said Assistant Professor Richa Awasthy, one of the Capstone unit convenors.
“It brings our students together with academics and industry practitioners within the ACT region and beyond, providing networking opportunities and leading to future collaborations – creating an environment aligned with UC’s spirit of Galambany, within which all work together to turn their ideas into impactful reality.”
She added that the Capstone unit was a valuable early testing ground and incubator for new ideas, in which students can demonstrate their capacity for developing something valuable.
This year, students presented on a wide range of topics and applications, including EmoSense, an emotion-recognition app that analyses brainwaves; the applications of virtual and mixed reality in mental health care and rehab; and understanding and improving the effectiveness of ISEQ, the student experience questionnaire.
The opportunity to work for and with industry partners is one of the Capstone unit’s biggest draws. This enables students to formulate and test innovative solutions to real world problems; work with and learn from industry, and inform industry processes; and build valuable interpersonal and communication skills.
“The students have demonstrated teamwork, managed projects, and responded to changing customer requirements to deliver expected project outcomes. Within this unit, we see them being transformed into professionals ready for the workforce, through their engagement with industry practitioners and academics,” Assistant Professor Awasthy said.
This year’s Expo saw William Friend, Kate Hanbury, Dannyra Heng and Jack Kitto take top spot in the Best Poster category. The team also scored the People’s Choice Award, which was sponsored by Microsoft. Presented for the first time this year, the latter was based on a real-time audience vote.
The group created a kitchen management system to improve operations for Her Kitchen Table (HKT), a social enterprise offering home-cooked meals from women from migrant and refugee backgrounds in Canberra. The project was sponsored by Nazia Ahmed from The Social Outcomes Lab, parent company for HKT.
The best project category was won by Chris McCourt, Quang Pham, Adrielle Delos Santos and Oliver Witrzens, whose project was titled “A grainy image: provenancing of river sediments by machine learning analysis of sediment images”. This project was sponsored by Associate Professor Jurian Hoogerwerf and Dr Girija Chetty, the School of ITS and the ACT Government.
Taking out the Best Presentation category for their work on empowering generative AI in home care services were Jyotsna Gaur, ABS Hasan, Huynh Nguyen and Somya Shukla, their project sponsored by Adjunct Professor Tony Kwan and Hope Holistic Care.
“Our focus was to build an AI-driven chatbot to help staff in home care services to address queries quickly and effectively, and we were keen to develop a multilingual model as well,” Ms Gaur said, in her presentation.
The judging panel comprised of Jenalle Bushby (Australian Computer Society, ACS), Yvonne Soper (Careers UC) and Dr Carlos Noschang Kuhn (Research Chair in Open Source Technologies at the University).
“The ACS is very much about providing support to students, and this event is always a great opportunity to do so,” said Ms Bushby, who also encouraged University of Canberra students to take advantage of the 12-month complimentary membership provided by the ACS as part of the organisation’s Professional Partnership Program with the University of Canberra.
“It was a privilege to evaluate the students’ work and witness their innovative ideas with support from their professors and industry mentors. We’ve seen how much hard work has obviously gone into every team project, and the teamwork they have displayed is very valuable,” she said.
Ms Bushby cited the communications skills demonstrated by the student groups as particularly important, allowing them to bridge the knowledge gap with stakeholders who didn’t come from an IT background.
Project sponsor Drew Horsell, Founder and Managing Director of Horsell, agreed – and commented that the fresh ideas and diversity in the room at the Expo were particularly heartening.
“In the approach to using technology to solve the problems and challenges of society, we truly need the kind of inquisitive minds and rich diversity that I see in this room,” he said, addressing the student groups.
“Please continue to ask questions, challenge the status quo, and make old guys like me think differently!”
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e-Pilot Evening Edition
City politics | what’s next for the virginia beach convention center area and moca property input sought..
Virginia Beach is spending nearly $300,000 to study land around the convention center and the economic impact of the area known as central beach.
Renaissance Planning held its first public session Monday, and the second one will start at noon Tuesday at the Convention & Visitors Bureau office on 22nd Street.
“A big concern of mine is affordable housing,” said Melissa Lukeson, who along with several other residents and business owners attended Monday’s session.
Participants were invited to list their priorities on sticky notes placed on placards.
Open space was one of Mark Stevens’ areas of interest.
“I want to keep what we started here in the ViBe and keep it inviting,” he said, referencing the city’s arts district.
Renaissance Planning will create a strategic report for the central beach area that will consolidate multiple land, housing and transportation studies commissioned by the city over the past decade.
Six studies over the past 19 years all concluded that the Virginia Beach Convention Center needs a headquarters hotel and a bigger, mixed-used project that can go along with it, according to the city.
“This is a culmination of all the efforts that have taken place,” said Joe Strayer of Renaissance Planning.
This latest study will analyze compatible uses for the district and will include input from surrounding residential stakeholders including the historic Seatack neighborhood and the ViBe Creative District.
It will also include a plan for key pieces of city-owned land in the central beach area including the convention center parking lots and the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art property. The museum plans to relocate to Virginia Wesleyan University. It will also look at potential private redevelopment of the Colony Mobile Home Park on Virginia Beach Boulevard.
Strayer said the area is ripe for a plan with a focus on residential needs while also accommodating tourists.
“The network is there, we just have to activate it with the right uses,” he said.
At the request of the city, the consultants will also analyze a recent proposal for a mixed-use project across from the convention center. In 2022, Capstone Development was the only respondent to the city’s request for ideas to include affordable housing and a convention center hotel. The Capstone proposal calls for the city to fund the project’s parking garages, which could have up to 3,500 spaces, more than four times the spots that exist in the convention center lots now.
Members of the Resort Advisory Commission, which makes recommendations to the City Council, had previously expressed concerns about the proposal and a desire for a broad study of the 19th Street corridor.
In addition to the central beach plan, the city has hired commercial real estate firm CBRE to provide an economic impact and infrastructure analysis of the area and the Capstone proposal. It will be completed by the end of the summer.
The final report on central beach will likely be presented to the City Council in October.
Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, [email protected]
What: Central Beach Small Area Plan public engagement session
Where: Virginia Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau, 600 22nd St., 2nd floor
When: Tuesday, Noon to 4 p.m.
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The capstone project ideas on healthcare quality improvement, PICOT questions examples, evidence-based practice project ideas, research paper topics, and research questions in this article are a valuable starting point for nurses and healthcare professionals seeking to make a meaningful impact on the quality of care delivered to patients. FAQs. 1.
15 Pediatric Nursing Capstone Project Topics. Providing top-quality care to children is imperative for healthcare facilities. If writing a project on this topic, these are the ideas to use: Sleep Apnea in Children. Managing Service Quality and Cost in Private Pediatric Healthcare Facilities.
Nursing Leadership Capstone Project Ideas. Studying nursing project ideas regarding leadership fosters a supportive and empowering environment, drives innovation, advocates for patient-centered care, and facilitates professional growth to ensure quality healthcare delivery and positive outcomes. Nurse mentorship program.
Most nursing students prefer undertaking a capstone nursing course. A capstone project is an individualized research project on a specific nursing topic of your professional or personal interest. It is usually completed within between 4 to 12 weeks, depending on the nursing school and the program you are pursuing.
Capstone Project Ideas on Mental Health. There's a lot you can write on mental health in your nursing capstone project. You can focus on different mental health problems, dive deep into PTSD, depression, eating disorders, disruptive disorder, anxiety, and panic attacks to mention just a few examples. Following are some ideas linked to mental ...
Explore EBP nursing project ideas that can transform healthcare and elevate your nursing practice. ... Here's a glimpse of some inspiring nursing capstone project ideas: Educational Empowerment. Craft a cutting-edge educational program tailored for nurses, focusing on specific topics such as pain management or wound care. ...
Completing Your Nursing Capstone. Capstone formats and completion times widely vary between programs. Students at Luther College and Purdue University Northwest complete their capstones in 4-5 weeks, while Ferris State University specifies a timeframe of 30 hours of online classes and 90 hours of applied project work.
An example of how one DNP student followed this 5-step evidence-based process to develop a change project with the goal of increasing vaccination among healthcare personnel working in a college: Step 1. A change project was initiated to increase influenza vaccination among healthcare personnel at a college. Step 2.
Step 7: Presentation. Often, nursing capstone projects also require an oral presentation upon completion. This is your chance to share your work with your peers, faculty, and sometimes even professionals in the field. Ensure to rehearse thoroughly, know your content, and be ready to answer questions.
Capstone Nursing Project Ideas for Women's Health. Women's health nursing is a research area that covers a variety of narrow ideas. If you're interested in researching ideas related to the reproductive health of women, maternal health care, or women's disease prevention, here are some capstone project nursing ideas to consider:
These nursing capstone projects provide students with an opportunity to address real-world healthcare issues, make a positive impact, and demonstrate their readiness for the profession. In this blog, we will explore 27+ intriguing nursing capstone project ideas, covering various fields within the nursing profession.
2021 Capstone Projects; ... Although many think these ideas of technology and compassionate or humanistic healthcare are competing, the integration of AI into medical practice can ultimately serve to make healthcare more compassionate. Deep learning algorithms offer the potential to increase accuracy and efficiency in diagnosis and treatment ...
Psychology Capstone Project Ideas. If you're working on your psychology capstone project, we encourage you to explore our guide on how to write a psychology case study. Investigating the impact of mindfulness practices on stress reduction. Designing and implementing a mental health awareness campaign.
5 Healthcare Management Capstone Ideas. Better Health Services for Veterans. Seamless EMR/EHR Adoption. Streamline Disaster Drill Procedures. Improve Incident Reporting. Increase Hospital Nurse Retention. Coming up with unique capstone ideas for healthcare management can be tricky. Capstone projects, the crowning achievement of the healthcare ...
Capstone Project Examples. Below, we've listed 150 capstone project examples in various fields. Think of all of these focus questions and ideas as jumping-off points. Some are very broad, while others are much more specific. Your capstone project will most likely fall under the "specific" category (see "feasibility and scope" above ...
15 10 Political Science Capstone Project Ideas. 16 10 Best Capstone Project Ideas in Economics. 17 10 Sociology Capstone Project Ideas. 18 Capstone Writing: 10 Essential Steps. The long path of research works ahead, and you can't find any capstone project ideas that would be interesting and innovative. The task can seem even more challenging ...
You will put the entire project together via an Executive Portfolio. Brainstorming and paper work starts in Capstone I (see Table 1). Once you start the capstone project - you will be developing your own workplace/schedule with your mentor to complete the project. In this timeline you will draft goals and objectives to complete in your project.
The year 2024 marks a dynamic era in nursing. Technology surges forward, healthcare disparities persist, and patient-centered care reigns supreme. This landscape presents exciting opportunities for impactful capstone projects. Here are 20 ideas to ignite your passion and contribute meaningfully to the profession:
Here are some examples of what programs might require a capstone project: Master of Public Health programs often require a Capstone because it provides an opportunity for students to work on public health practice projects that areas of Public Health that are of specific interest to them. A capstone allows the student an opportunity to ...
Capstone Project: Nice Healthcare: Predicting Nice healthcare utilization. Industry Mentor: Nice Healthcare. Yuan Lian. Capstone Project: Next Generation Data Commons. Industry Mentor: ICF International. 2021-2022 Graduates. Ahson Saiyed. NLP Engineer/Data Scientist at TrinetX.
The capstone project ideas we have collected range from web applications, mobile applications, machine learning, and data-driven technologies that might provide an important and impactful role in the field of nursing, healthcare sector, and allied health sciences.
2 Capstone Education Project Implementation & Evaluation Report Background Overview The current capstone education project addresses the critical issue of food insecurity within a population of low-income families residing in underserved communities. In the pursuit of community health, a collaboration between the Treasure Coast Food Bank and myself focused on addressing food insecurity in the ...
The EPH 682 Capstone Project course is the second required course in the MPH Capstone Program that is completed after the EPH 680 Field Experience. The Capstone Project is a pre- approved, integrated learning experience (ILE) that provides students with an opportunity to apply public health field work, academic
The healthcare capstone project is a culminating project meant to offer students a chance to use the skills and knowledge they have amassed throughout the program. When tasked with this paper, you can turn to healthcare capstone project examples for inspiration. Such a task requires you to work with existing problems in the real world.
This paper describes key promising practices of Capstone, specifically its staffing model; approach to project recruitment, selection, and matching; course format; and assignments. Using course evaluation data, we summarize student and community partner outcomes. Next, we share lessons learned from 13 years of program implementation and future ...
The Appoquinimink School District offers 24 career pathways in its high schools, culminating with an immersion experience in the senior year for students. The district suggested these students to profile for their capstone projects. "A unique aspect of an Appoquinimink education is the completion ...
Capstone projects allow students and sponsors to engage closely over a period of time, typically with a dedicated supervisor, but also with stakeholders across the organisation with an interest in the brief. Encourage students and sponsors to actively build a relationship and stay connected after the project. Sponsors might have recruitment ...
From University of Canberra students exploring how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can make home care services more empowering, to creating a management system for a social enterprise for women from migrant and refugee backgrounds, the recent Capstone Project Expo highlighted how technology and systems can be effective catalysts for social impact.
Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a collection of conservative policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government in the event of a Republican Party victory in the 2024 presidential election. It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of merit-based federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to ...
The Capstone proposal calls for the city to fund the project's parking garages, which could have up to 3,500 spaces, more than four times the spots that exist in the convention center lots now.