The capstone course creates opportunities for reflection, assessment, integration and demonstration of competence to unify and support the individual's experience in the Master's of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies program. Individuals must have the proposal for the capstone project approved by the Graduate Studies Council prior to enrolling in the capstone course.
Capstone project topics might be drawn from a student's personal or professional domain. The research project begins at the end of the first year as students are challenged to search for a topic. Then they develop a formal research proposal. The work continues throughout the second year, culminating in a public presentation before fellow students and faculty.
Recent capstone titles include the following:
- Signers Theater: Building American Sign Language Fluency through Deaf Mentorship
- African American Youth: What Motivates Them to Vote?
- Fictional Truths: On Meaning and Truth in Fiction
- America's Depression: An Oral History
- Toward New Approaches to Enhance Critical Thinking in the Teaching of Writing in High School
- Seeking Ecological and Socio-Political Balance in Parks and Recreation Policy
- Teacher Methodologies, Student Attitudes and Government: The Effect on Foreign Language Study (A Comparison of the United States and Europe)
- Inspiration for the Textile Artist: Impetus from Within or Response to Cultural Prompt?
- Rhetoric, Religion and the Supreme Court on Abortion
- Alzheimer's and Anticipatory Grief: The Caretakers' Long and Ponderous Journey of Invisible Mourning
- How Does the Belief in After Death Communication Assist the Bereaved in the Grieving Process?
- The Evolution of Handcrafting from a Male Dominated Trade to a Female Leisure Past Time
- Use and/or Misuse of Credit Cards Among Young Adults: Evaluation of Marketing Appeals
- Profile of an Imagemaker: Ezra Jack Keats; Exploring the Power of Images in Picture Books
- Children as Witness to Bullying: Can Art-Making Raise Empathy in the Classroom in Students and the Artist?
- The SMART Program: A Fuel Stop on the Road to Self-Sufficiency
- Requiem for a Castrato
- The Communication of Social Identity Through Media Images: A Survey of Appalachian Students and Perceptions of Mediated Images of Appalachian Culture
- Vanishing Act: The Mobile Phone and the Sudden Disappearance of Space, Time and Decorum
- The Machinery of the Gods: Mechanisms of Religious Propagation