[With this week’s
final papers and exams comes the end of another semester at Fitchburg State
University, and with it a series of semester recap posts, this time focused on
inspiring student work and ideas! Please share your own semester reflections in
comments, and/or your spring plans and goals leading up to a predictive weekend
post!]
As I highlighted
in my
fall preview post, the IDIS majors in my Capstone course spent the semester
working on their Capstone Projects, culminating work where they combine their
multiple disciplines of study to produce an in-depth investigation or idea of
their own. Here are three of the resulting projects, each of which give me hope
for the future in both specific and general ways:
1)
A Safer Cap: One of the more interesting but
challenging combinations faced the student whose disciplines were Exercise
& Sports Science, Business, and Computer Science. He came up with a really
interesting multi-layered project, an investigation into current safety
measures in baseball caps (not batting helmets, but the caps worn by players in
the field) complemented by a proposal for a new, safer such cap to help prevent
concussions and head injuries (especially for younger players). There are few
more significant issues
facing our young people than head injuries in youth sports, and whether
this particular proposal can come to fruition, I’m certainly confident that
this student will contribute to that evolving conversation in meaningful ways
in the years ahead.
2)
An ASL Plan: Two of the most common disciplines
among the students in this Capstone section were Psychology and Education, but
each student found unique and individualized ways to link those disciplines and
their other interests and develop projects as a result. Perhaps the most inspiring
was this project, in which a student combined those disciplines with her interests
in Disability Studies and Deaf
Studies to create a multi-part proposal for educational, treatment, and American
Sign Language plans (both within classrooms and in the home) for deaf students
and their families. This student is hoping to pursue these interests in
graduate school and in a career beyond, and her project reflects just how much
she’ll be bringing to that vital work.
3)
An Inspiring Montage: Getting the chance to work
with students with all these different disciplinary experiences and interests
was a wonderful part of teaching the IDIS Capstone, but I’d be lying if I didn’t
admit that I was very glad that one of the 11 students combined Art, English
Studies, and History in a very AmericanStudies-like project. And a literally
inspiring one, as she created both a tumblr page and an art project assembling
inspiring quotes and voices from both literature and history that had
influenced her own perspective and growth. This may have been the project that
was closest to what I might have created if I took this class, but I found it
most inspiring because, like so many of its counterparts in the course, it
demonstrated how much these students will bring to their next steps and
futures.
Next recap
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other reflections or predictions you’d share?
No comments:
Post a Comment