Capstone projects give graduating ALES students a market edge

Solving real-life problems hones skills employers seek

Helen Metella - 26 May 2016

As if graduating students aren't already stressed by job hunting, there's the prospect of the work itself. What will it be? What will the boss want? Is there a way to prepare?

Such anxieties are reduced in ALES, the only faculty at the University of Alberta that requires every undergraduate student to complete a capstone project.

A capstone is a culminating assignment in which students working in teams solve a challenging practical problem in their field by drawing on everything they've studied to date. The project emphasizes critical thinking, and must have substantial scope. It also demands ethical and professional conduct from students, and includes oral and written communication.

For fourth-year Nutrition and Food Science majors Rim Bzeih, Olivia Thompson and Cara McLean, the goal of their capstone course was precisely what a professional position might demand: develop the prototype for an actual food product.

They created an exceptionally cheesy tasting, yet vegan, zucchini chip. It required umpteen slightly different iterations, testing not only their food technology skills but their perseverance and confidence.

"It was a bit scary at the beginning when we failed several times and we thought we weren't going to be able to do it on time," said Bzeih. "I learned that patience is something highly needed in my field and that group work makes better ideas and results."

Paying heed to the many required non-technical steps - from quality inspection and hazard analysis, to marketing and scale-up - deepened the learning.

Thompson was promptly hired as a product development technologist for the Government of Alberta, and believes that the capstone course was instrumental in her landing the job.

"It really mimics the problems occurring in the industry we're going into and sets us up for what employers will expect of us in the future," said Alyssa Cloutier, a land reclamation major in the Environmental & Conservation Sciences program.

For Cloutier's capstone, her team decommissioned and reclaimed a hypothetical landfill site contaminated by oil field waste. The work, which unfolded over one semester during 13 classroom hours per week plus an equal amount of non-class time, started with the students developing a plausible problem scenario.

Through research on similar sites and feedback from their professor, they established how the problem came to be, how bad it was, who and what it was affecting, and outcomes if left untreated. Then they proposed a fix, informed by consultations with industry professionals and the budget they developed.

"They get amazing extra value out of creating the problem first, because until you understand the problem and its intricate details you can't start solving it," said Anne Naeth, the professor of Land Reclamation and Restoration Ecology who teaches this capstone course.

As a former associate dean (academic), Naeth helped create the capstone guidelines for all ALES programs in the early 1990s, and can delineate their umpteen benefits.

First, tackling problems through teamwork offers every student an opportunity to excel and much differently than by memorizing facts for an exam or writing a term paper. Shouldering responsibility for team positions helps them realize their full potential, said Naeth.

"I had a team say to me one year, 'None of us have ever had an A in anything and we want to get an A. How can we achieve it?' They all got their A, but they all worked so hard."

Capstones call on both technical and social skills, a combination sought after in applied science jobs.

"Most of the work we do is not a solitary science," said Naeth. "So much of what we do is interdisciplinary. We have to work with people, and if we don't work with them we have to deal with them, solving their problems."

Indeed, some projects will catch the notice of more than potential employers.

This year, Animal Health Science students working under instructor Paul Stothard produced 12 research-supported, consumer-friendly posters on animal health care. They will be posted around the city by Edmonton's Alberta Helping Animals Society, an organization that provides veterinary services to low income individuals, with a goal of preventing issues that can lead to veterinary bills.

Such outreach summarizes the value of capstones, said Stothard.

"Students make connections that can lead to employment, have the opportunity to develop their professional skills, and get a taste of the real world."