Students Celebrate Capstone Turn-In

The annual Capstone turn-in ceremony is, in the paraphrased words of Professor Robert Wexelblatt, the best half-hour at CGS.  It is a near-completion of a task that takes 1,000 hours of intensive work and that draws on all the threads of the two-year CGS experience. It is a time of relief, of closure, of thanks to the faculty team, and recognition of student achievement.

The Capstone project is a 50-page research paper that requires students to work as a team, research a real-world problem, synthesize data, and defend their ideas in an oral defense. The concept of a Capstone project is older than, and certainly not unique to, the College of General Studies at Boston University. A final research project has historically been considered the culmination of a liberal arts education. In addition to the historical and academic meanings of the term, there is an architectural sense to the word “capstone.” A capstone is the final block that is placed on top of a construction project to tie the whole structure together. Further, in the language of the building industry, each layer of brick is called a “course.” Therefore, it is appropriate to use the word “capstone” for our final project at the College, since it will be the final stage of CGS students’ education here—the last course that caps two years of study.

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