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Requirement
At least one course in a student's program must include a capstone experience in that it widely integrates knowledge and skills from either the student's overall program or the student's major program.
Rationale
Students graduating from Randolph-Macon College should possess more than simply discrete bits of information and a disjointed set of skills. Educated persons both achieve a depth of understanding in one or more subject areas and see connections and relationships among various disciplines and types of knowledge. By participating in the capstone experience, each student should draw together principles from various courses of study and should examine a topic or tackle a project of special interest using skills and abilities acquired from several courses. Students will emerge from the capstone with a more coherent understanding of their educational experience, a better understanding of their own intellectual growth, and with the tools needed by educated people to be competent lifetime learners.
Goals
The goal of the capstone is to provide a culminating experience in which students will widely integrate, extend, critique, and apply knowledge and skills from either the student's overall program or the student's major program.
Learning Objectives
The capstone will be designed and implemented within existing major departments and programs and, to the extent practical, minor programs. Departments may wish to consider working with other departments to develop and implement an appropriate multidisciplinary capstone. The capstone should:
- Incorporate the use of skills emphasized in general education courses, such as reading skills, speaking skills, critical thinking, and using information resources.
- Draw together prior knowledge and skills gained by students within a major.
- Make use of prior experiences within a major to provide opportunities to create new configurations of knowledge and/or to use existing skills in a creative way.
- Facilitate the transition from college to life beyond.
Criteria
Any culminating experience that a department or program wishes to designate as a capstone shall be acceptable, provided that it addresses at least two of the objectives listed above and that it occurs in the student's senior year, unless the capstone includes an off-campus component, in which case the capstone should culminate in the student's senior year.