Junior/Senior Capstone Projects

Strategy • Examples • Background • Next Steps • Available Resources

STRATEGY

The Bonner Program provides a clear pathway for students to complete a capstone project that serves a civic purpose. These community engaged capstones enable students to build the capacity of local organizations or to promote awareness and action on pressing social issues. With intentional curricular integration, capstones can carry academic credit and help students meaningfully connect their coursework, Bonner service, identities, and career interests.

As a Foundation and Network, we aspire to integrate community‑engaged capstone projects—our version of “Signature Work”—into the experience of every Bonner Scholar and Leader. We are also working with campuses in our network toward a bold goal: engaging 20–25% of all graduating students in a community‑engaged capstone that applies their learning to real issues in partnership with communities.

Throughout the past decade of work to integrate engaged Signature Work within the Bonner Program, most institutions have found it effective to support students in their capstone planning over multiple years. Through conversations with their community partners or constituents, students refine their plans in their third year, with implementation typically starting in the second semester and continuing through the senior year. Ideally, students are able to link their capstones with their existing courses, majors, or integrative requirements so that they also earn credit while advancing community‑defined priorities.

signature work

The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) defines “Signature Work” as a culminating educational experience—such as a capstone—in which students integrate and apply their learning to a significant project with meaning to both the student and society (2015).

For the Bonner Network, Community‑Engaged Signature Work takes the form of:

• Capacity‑building projects that respond to community‑identified needs

• Community‑based research and assessment projects

• Social action and policy change initiatives led with community partners

These projects are designed and carried out with community partners, shaped by local context and issues. They invite students to apply what they have learned across their college experience and to help communities address social, economic, and environmental challenges in areas such as education, health, food security, college access, and more. Students may work individually or in teams. In all cases, capstones challenge them to analyze complex problems, collaborate across differences, and practice social innovation—while producing tangible value for community partners. Watch the “Bonner Capstones” video to learn more.

EXAMPLES

Across the Bonner Network, students are finding a “sweet spot” where their civic passions, academic learning, identities, and career goals intersect. To promote adoption of the capstone, the Foundation and Network provided some early examples from student leaders, who also as interns then reflected on and refined their learning to shape a curriculum and best practices. These examples demonstrate how community‑engaged capstones can connect disciplinary expertise—from public health to computer science—to community‑defined questions.

• Kai Mangino, a student at The College of New Jersey, worked in the Trenton, NJ area with PEI Kids, a youth development program. A Psychology major, she begin to notice that some students seemed to be struggling with the ill effects of stereotypes or negative experiences that they had, often tied to their racial and ethnic backgrounds. For her capstone, she decided to focus on research about the negative affects of racial micro-aggressions. She aspires to take this work into a post-graduate career in Clinical Psychology, but she also hopes to produce a set of lessons and curriculum to share with PEI Kids and other agencies. As a Bonner Foundation National Intern, Kai also helped to write the new 8-part Capstone Curriculum designed to help students do these projects, which you can find here.

• Katie Beck, a student at Allegheny College worked in the Meadville, PA area with the Bethel AME Church, an important institution. She also learned that the church had played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement, often providing refuge for African American residents. A Theater Arts major, she spent her junior summer interning with an organization in California that used Theater of the Oppressed strategies to engage migrant workers in writing and producing a play about their struggles. For her capstone, she collaborated with the Bethel AME Church to use oral histories to gather and write these important stories of its heritage and the history of Meadville. She used the histories to write a play, which she then directed and produced, engaging Meadville youth and residents as the actors. This capstone led Katie to pursue post-graduate work in this field, founding a community theater company. Read Katie’s article on her capstone from the AAC&U publication here.

Ten years later, network adoption of the engaged capstone is well underway, with most seniors completing community engaged capstones, as well as sharing their four-year reflections through a culminating Presentation of Learning (another high-impact practice). Thus, you can now find these and other examples on the Bonner Wiki.

Capacity‑Building and Program Design – Capital University

At Capital University, every Bonner now completes a community‑engaged capstone in their senior year. In 2021–22, eleven seniors designed projects that strengthened local partners’ capacity in areas such as research, communications, and volunteer management.

Projects included:

• Examining how the Freedom School’s social justice model could inform recruitment for campus access models like the Bonner Program

• Designing a recruitment structure to expand the program’s reach and sustainability

• Developing a business model for a community center in the Mid‑Ohio Valley region

Each project produced concrete deliverables—research reports, implementation plans, and organizational models—that community partners could immediately put to use.

Community‑Based Research and Social Innovation – High Point University

At High Point University, all Bonner Leaders complete a community‑engaged senior capstone through the Civic Responsibility and Social Innovation minor. Over two semesters, students draw from their work at Bonner sites to design and implement projects that address specific local issues.

Recent examples:

• Safe Stop: A student created a curriculum and materials to teach young people how to navigate encounters with law enforcement, in collaboration with schools and community partners.

• Get Registered: A student built a process to help VITA tax‑prep clients register to vote, including outreach materials, a project timeline, and assessment tools.

• Medication Sheets: A capstone at a community clinic produced clear tools to translate doctors’ shorthand, helping volunteers support patients more effectively.

These capstones leave behind guides, curricula, and systems that continue serving the community beyond a single academic year.

Health, Education, and Justice – College of Charleston

At the College of Charleston, graduating Bonners complete year‑long capstones that integrate their service and academic work. In one cohort, six seniors:

• Analyzed social determinants of health in cancer care for the American Cancer Society

• Conducted thematic research on chronic diseases among older adults

• Studied meat consumption, antibiotics, and early‑onset puberty and adapted health curricula for youth

• Evaluated youth health interventions in an after‑school program

• Used data visualization to illuminate racial disparities in school‑based arrests and support local advocacy

Connection TO COMMUNITY IMPACT

For community partners and neighborhoods, capstones work best when they are:

• Co‑designed with staff at the organization

• Focused on a clearly defined question or need

• Scoped to produce a tangible product or change by the end of the project

Because Bonner is a multi‑year, developmental program, students come into capstone planning with significant site history and relationships. Many have already spent two or three years at their primary site. Capstones give them a structured opportunity to:

• Move from direct service to capacity‑building, research, or system‑level work

• Produce tools, processes, and knowledge that remain in the community

• Document impact in ways that support partner decision‑making, fundraising, or advocacy

Campuses like Siena College and Stetson University show what this looks like when partners are involved early. Students begin talking with partners about project possibilities in the sophomore year. Staff and faculty help them identify a “sweet spot” where:

• Their academic fields and skills

• Their identities and career goals

• The partner’s most pressing questions or needs

come together in one focused capstone.

Connection to Campus and Institutional Impact

For staff and faculty, community‑engaged capstones are not just a program add‑on. They are a lever for curricular and institutional change. Research on high‑impact practices and community‑based learning shows that experiences like community‑engaged capstones are linked with gains in academic performance, integrative learning, sense of belonging, and civic outcomes. Within the Bonner network, the 2019 Student Impact Survey found that seniors who completed culminating projects connected to service reported especially strong gains in academic integration and civic engagement, along with positive correlations with social integration and tenacity.

To make capstones possible at scale, campuses often:

• Develop course sequences, minors, or certificates that embed community engagement and integrate with Bonner

• Create junior/senior seminars (credit‑bearing or co‑curricular) that guide students through project design, research ethics, and reflection

• Clarify expectations and supports for faculty mentors of community‑engaged capstones

• Build shared infrastructure for partnership management, transportation, risk management, and assessment

Many Bonner campuses have also coupled Bonner capstones with existing institutional requirements (such as senior comps, theses, or honors projects) so that students can align one strong project with multiple expectations.

Connection to Higher Education Impact

National studies of college graduates have highlighted a small set of experiences that are most closely associated with post‑graduate well‑being and workplace engagement, including:

• Having at least one professor who cared about them and made them excited about learning

• Having a mentor who encouraged them

• Working on a project that took a semester or more to complete

• Having an internship or job where they could apply what they learned in the classroom

• Being deeply involved in meaningful extracurricular activities

Through the Bonner High-Impact Initiative, twenty-four institutions leveraged these insights to work on scaling pathways and capstones. Through this experience, these institutions embedded engaged, experiential learning in their majors, minors, and other cohort programs. As a result, the network has fostered the development of integrative pathways tied to capstones, supporting more students—especially low‑income and first‑generation students—to experience these powerful combinations. Many of these institutions – like Emory & Henry with its Project Ampersand and Allegheny College with its Unique Combination – have become known for their innovative approaches to educating students more effectively.

RESOURCES FOR STAFF AND FACULTY

For staff and faculty looking to start or deepen this work, the Bonner Network Wiki includes:

• The 8‑Part Bonner Capstone Curriculum, offering a semester‑by‑semester workshop series from the first year through the capstone year

• Guides on developing capacity‑building projects and aligning them with partner needs

• Campus examples illustrating both preparation structures (Siena, Stetson, Colorado College, Macalester) and project models (Capital, High Point, College of Charleston, and others)

• Materials for faculty learning circles and reading groups focused on community‑engaged capstones and Signature Work

These resources are intended to be adaptable: campuses can start with a small cohort of Bonners and one or two departments, then grow toward broader, campus‑wide implementation over time.

Models for Change

From an implementation and change‑management perspective, campuses in the Bonner Network have pursued a few common models for integrating community‑engaged capstones:

1. Co‑Curricular and Faculty Advising Connections

   Strengthening Junior/Senior Bonner structures and Senior Presentations of Learning to support a more integrative project, often with faculty co‑mentors and e‑portfolios.

2. Integrative Courses or Requirements

   Creating structured senior seminars or capstone courses (sometimes as part of a minor or certificate) that walk students through designing, implementing, and reflecting on their capstone.

3. Coupling with Existing Capstone Structures

   Connecting Bonner capstones with required comps, theses, or other institutional capstones through advising and policy alignment.

4. Hybrid and Pathways Models

   Linking Bonner capstones with interdisciplinary pathways (for example, Poverty Studies or Leadership programs) and with undergraduate research fellowships or practicum courses.

Across approaches, campuses report focusing on:

• Involving students as colleagues and peer leaders

• Engaging partners in identifying research questions and project needs

• Engaging faculty as mentors, co‑educators, and co‑researchers

• Building team‑based project models that share leadership

• Bridging Student Affairs and Academic Affairs structures

Bonner’s web‑based reporting and feedback systems document the range of capstone projects completed and to gather evidence of their impact at both the campus and national levels.

AVAILABLE  RESOURCES

We have found innovators across higher education, in our network and beyond, that let us know what is possible. Campuses like Worcester Polytechnic Institute are engaging students in real-world projects with a focus on engineering but often with a civic bent. Within our network, Earlham's EPIC pathways, Emory & Henry's Project Ampersand, and Guilford's aspirations to integrate civically focused problem-based learning inspire our commitment to move in this direction. Programs like Siena College and Stetson University, which have already implemented Bonner Capstones for more than four years, have also showed there is a way to make this happen.

On the Bonner Network Wiki, you can find resources on Community-Engaged Capstones, including:

• The new (as of 2018) 8-Part Bonner Capstone Curriculum, which provides a simple structure to build the expectation into the cohort experience over four years, with easy activities that prepare students to help identify community defined projects that they can take on

• A suggested structure for a faculty learning circle or reading group to build campus literacy and investment in the concept, as well as promote the change process

• Recommended articles and scholarship for the learning circle or campus education

• Other presentations and handouts from workshops at Bonner meetings

• The Fall 2016 Issue of AAC&U's Diversity & Democracy publication, which the Bonner Foundation did in partnership with AAC&U to promote the initiative. The graphic below, which can be found in the issue, illustrates the connection between scaffolded coursework and experiential learning with typical majors and general education components. When faculty and administrators involved in curriculum reform efforts intentionally include these experiences, many students can be involved in applying their learning while contributing to the wellbeing of their local, national, and international communities.