Senior Year Capstone

Students are required to take a Liberal Studies capstone course in their major field during their senior year. Some Liberal Studies capstone courses may be offered jointly for students in related majors and fields of study. These courses provide students with an opportunity to integrate their major area of study with broader issues raised in their general education program. The Liberal Studies capstone experience allows students to see the relationship between the ideas, perspectives, and substantive areas of scholarship and creative work within their major field and those learned through significant aspects of their course work in the learning domain courses and other courses and experiences of the Liberal Studies Program.

A liberal studies capstone course can meet both major field and liberal studies requirements. Students who complete one course to fulfill both major field credit and liberal studies credit, will complete an additional domain elective (from outside the major). The third language course of the modern language option can fulfill this domain elective.

Because the course is offered through the major field department, students must receive a grade of C- or better in this course.

Learning Outcomes and Writing Expectations
Approved by the Liberal Studies Council, Spring 2006

The Original Goals of the Liberal Studies Capstone Course:

In various ways, DePaul University tells undergraduate students that relatively more specialized learning in the major is best pursued in the broader context of relatively more general learning in the Liberal Studies Program. As students move toward completion of requirements in the major and in Liberal Studies, they have the opportunity to consider the relationship between these components of their university education. The Senior Year Capstone course is an opportunity for students to attend explicitly to connections between these specialized and general learning experiences. The Capstone course has two goals:

1. To consider and explore possibilities for integrating the primary goals of students' major programs with the central emphases of the Liberal Studies Program: reflectiveness, value consciousness, critical and creative thinking, and a multicultural perspective.
2. To provide students with opportunities to draw selectively on the wide range of different Liberal Studies courses they have taken, in ways that will illuminate what they have learned in their major programs.

Along with these Liberal Studies goals are the more specific Capstone goals:

1. To pull together the work of their major
2. To combine the work of their major with other Liberal Studies courses and concepts

In this light, the Capstone Committee has created the following set of measurable learning outcomes.

Measurable Learning Outcomes:

1. Students should be able to apply a theory or concept from a discipline outside their major field to an analysis of a particular issue relevant to the major.
2. Students should be able to apply one or more theories or concepts from courses within their major to an analysis of a particular issue relevant to the major.
3. Students should be able to identify underlying values of their major field, compare/contrast them with those of one or more disciplines outside the major, and analyze the consequences of those differences or similarities.
4. Students should be able to identify the multicultural perspectives of their major field, compare/contrast them with those of one or more disciplines outside the major, and analyze the consequences of those differences or similarities.

Writing Expectations:

All capstone courses must require a total of at least 10 pages of written material. These ten pages do not have to be contained in a single assignment but may be the cumulative work of multiple assignments. All of the below guidelines for writing expectations in Liberal Studies courses must be adhered to:

We believe that writing should be an important part of all Liberal Studies Courses. Writing helps to promote the learning outcomes of the program as a whole, and its various components, by structuring opportunities for students to:

1. devote time to the task of studying outside of class
   
2. reflect in detailed ways about the ideas, practices, texts (broadly defined), and other experiences associated with the course
   
3. communicate those reflections in ways appropriate both to the discipline(s) represented in the course and to conventions of academic and professional discourse
   
4. practice constructing arguments and using evidence appropriate to the discipline(s) represented in the course
   
5. receive timely feedback on their work and, where appropriate, have the opportunity to revise

We welcome the fact that writing will take different forms among the various components of the Liberal Studies Program. Depending on the course content, students may write summaries, analyses, essays, lab reports, reflections, proposals, research papers, editorials, problem sets, computer code and explanations, etc., etc. At the same time, writing in Liberal Studies courses should adhere to the following guidelines:

1. At least one writing assignment in each course should be completed outside of class.
   
2. Assignments should be structured in ways that help students learn and reflect on course content.
   
3. Required writing for the course should be substantive enough to provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their progress in mastering one or more learning outcomes for the course.
   
4. Students should have the opportunity to receive timely feedback on their work more than once during the term.