September 2014.
M. Gardley, K. Moore, R. Schneider
First of all, your capstone
project is a “culminating experience” for your concentration. What that will
mean is ultimately up to you. The project puts a cap on the four years you have
spent studying in TAPS and expresses something meaningful for you about that
experience.
Your project may be a play
you write. It may be a production you mount, a dance you choreograph, a
research paper you undertake or an annotated bibliography that defines a field
of inquiry you want to invent. It can be a role you prepare for, a production
you design. It can even be virtual – a map for such a project -- if it is not
ultimately realized as, say, a produced play. It may be your honors thesis or
something you are working on in a class, such as a solo show, that you want to
mark and acknowledge as “culminating.” It may be something entirely other! In every case you should be able to articulate
why and how it is, for you, a culmination of your TAPS efforts and experiences.
Capstone projects are not
adjudicated by department faculty. You are not graded or evaluated. You are
simply mentored toward finding a way to express, by virtue of an event or a
document or some other manifestation, something that rounds out your experience
as a concentrator and points to the best of your education.
In senior seminar, you will
share a project proposal with your peers and give periodic updates on your
progress. The project may be realized in either Fall or Spring of your senior
year. You are encouraged to seek out an advisor from the faculty. Your proposal
will not be accepted or denied – it is yours to make of what you will. We trust
that at this senior point in your explorations, you are the best judge of what
your own “culmination” will be. And we
trust, too, that you will be the force that sees your project through.
During the exit interviews at
the close of senior seminar, you will be encouraged to discuss your culminating
project with the faculty you invite into conversation. Before graduating, you
will also meet with the concentration track advisor to report on the project.
You can submit a written report on what you learned through the experience, or
you can relate that report orally. Again, the project is yours to determine and
yours to see through. The faculty are here to help you, in office hours or by
appointment, but the relationship is yours to determine. While the project is entirely yours, please
note that a faculty member’s knowledge about your capstone project may be
useful in the event that you request letters of recommendation after you
graduate. While your capstone will not represent all of the good work you’ve done, completion of your project does project
some idea of how you’ve integrated your TAPS educational experience into your
emerging practice or scholarship and how you have taken your concentration
seriously as a whole.
In some ways, the best
audience for your culminating experience will be your peers. To that end,
senior seminar is designed to encourage feedback and encouragement between you
as a cohort of concentrators. After senior year it is that cohort, and future cohorts
you will find, who will be your colleagues. The culminating experience is an
opportunity to make work for them (and for you).
So: Advisor encouraged, not required. Final
written report encouraged, not required. Depth of project and level of commitment:
up to you! We look forward to you taking pride in this project, and to us
taking pride in you!
