Search Courses
You may search for a Senior Capstone course by selecting a THEME or TERM from the menu at the left. You may also search by entering a part of the title or the instructors name in the box below. For concise listings of all 2021-2022 Capstone offerings, review our Capstone Capsule. If you need assistance, contact the Capstone Office/University Studies at 503.725.5890.
Please refer to the PSU Class Schedule regarding the days, hours, and meeting location. For information about when the new class schedule is available or when you can register for the new term, follow this link: When to Register.
NOTE: Due to the intensive nature of Capstones, students must receive permission from the course instructor prior to the first day of class if they are going to miss the first class session. For on-line Capstones, students must demonstrate active participation during the first week of the term. All Capstone courses factor in student attendance and participation into the final grade which is deeply impacted by missing the first week of the term.
NOTE: "Sustainability" tagged courses will NOT automatically count toward the Sustainability Minor. Students must seek approval from Joseph Maser, Ph.D. in the Environmental Science & Management department to count any Capstone toward that specific minor.
SEARCH BY Title or Instructor: Enter a single word from the title of a Capstone, "gardens", "justice", "literacy", etc., the Course Registration Number (CRN), or a professor's first or last name in the box below.
Instructor Name: Jenna Padbury
This course will be offered Summer 2019. Rolling Deadline Application apply early to guarantee a spot. Final Deadline March1st During a 18-day international service-learning experience in Turrialba, Costa Rica you will learn about and be immersed in Costa Rica’s culture. In Turrialba, you will serve daily in a community-based setting such as a school, national park, or social service organization. Late afternoons will be spent studying Spanish and participating in critical reflection....
International Capstones Global Perspectives Education-Youth Gardens
Instructor Name: Pedro Ferbel-Azcarate
CRN: 81214
Natural Food Industry and Cooperative Business Model This Capstone investigates sustainable food systems from producer to consumer, with a focus on the business practices of food cooperatives. We will work with our community partner People's Food Cooperative on projects related to health and nutrition, farmers markets, local and equitable food distribution, food justice and ethical business practices.
Class Specific Learning Goals
Introduce students to the complexities and challenges of...
Summer 2019
Business-Engineering-Technology Community Health
Instructor Name: Jack Corbet
Increasingly, migrant workers in Oregon and other western states are arriving from southern Mexico, especially from the indigenous communities in the southern state of Oaxaca. Migration impacts the health of this population in complex ways, and challenges health care systems on both sides of the border. This Capstone course takes students to Oaxaca, Mexico to study the cultural, economic and social forces that impact health in both sending and receiving communities. We focus particular...
Education-Youth Community Health Research Global Perspectives International Capstones
Instructor Name: Sally Eck
CRN: 63519, 80908
Women’s Oral Narratives In this course, we will be working with our community partner, the local non-profit organization; the IPRC, Independent Publishing Resource Center. Our project is to coordinate a series of *rap sessions* with local teen girls about current issues in their lives. We will use these group conversations to encourage the girls to become a part of our ZINE project - where they will write, edit, and publish a grassroots, mini-magazine with our class. In preparation for this...
Fall 2021Fall 2022Spring 2021Spring 2022Spring 2023Spring 2024Summer 2021Summer 2022Summer 2023Summer 2024Winter 2021Winter 2022Winter 2023Winter 2024
Education-Youth
Instructor Name: Tracy Dillon
CRN: 81141, 81188
A grant is a proposal that seeks funds to solve a problem and normally is directed by a nonprofit organization [IRS 501(c)(3) designation] to a federal, state, or local government agency, a foundation, or a corporation.
Each term, partners for this capstone change. You will be writing on behalf of a nonprofit that promotes or engages in sustainability in some way. Specifics about these partners and their funding needs are provided in the Course Learning Modules on the Home Page. Read the...
Summer 2019Summer 2020Summer 2021Winter 2020
Sustainability Grantwriting
Instructor Name: Mitch Cruzan
The Nature in the Neighborhood (NITN) project grew out of the needs expressed by PSU students who desired avenues of involvement in local environmental issues, and the needs of local resource management agencies (THPRD, METRO, Portland Parks) that lacked resources to develop inventories and surveys of natural resources in the Portland area. This summer this capstone has be redesigned to serve majors in Biology and ESR. The course content and goals will assume students have an adequate...
Community Health Sustainability
Instructor Name: Zapoura Newton-Calvert
This summer, we will be working as tutors/mentors with the 6-week summer program Upward Bound on the PSU campus. We will be part of the summer session of this college preparatory program offering assistance to approximately 90 low-income and first generation high school students. 98% of participants ultimately graduate from high school, 95% of participants enter college after high school graduation, and 80% of our high school graduates since 200 are still in college or have graduated.
...
Summer 2021Summer 2022Summer 2023Summer 2024
Education-Youth
Instructor Name: Sam Gioia
Course Description:
Middle School Equity & Inclusion is a hybridized capstone offered each Summer. Through text and community engagement PSU students will observe and reflect on race, language, and class privilege as they are encountered by immigrant children and their families.
Online reading and discussion will orient students to the context of language, culture, and English language learning and migrant education. The classroom discussion will explore the role of race in each of our...
Summer 2021Summer 2022Summer 2023Summer 2024
Global Perspectives Education-Youth Community Health
Instructor Name: Sam Gioia
CRN: 44199
Through community experience and classroom, education capstone students will learn about the academic needs and cultural adjustment of African refugee youth. Students will either support the children in a classroom setting 3-4 hours per week, or lead an after school homework club from 3-5:15 either Mondays and Wednesdays or Tuesdays and Thursdays starting the second week of class. PSU classroom education will address the historical and cultural dynamics of African refugees, contemporary...
Global Perspectives Education-Youth Online or Hybrid Courses
Instructor Name: Cindy Koonz
CRN: 63528, 80901
Linking the Generations, Communication, Aging and Society Students will engage with older adults to complete a variety of life history projects. Students will address their assumptions and stereotypes toward the aging population and will reflect upon personal barriers and successes in the intergenerational communication process. Communication issues will be addressed in the areas of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intercultural communication. In addition to the community work, the course...
Fall 2021Fall 2022Fall 2023Spring 2022Spring 2023Spring 2024Summer 2022Summer 2023Summer 2024Winter 2022Winter 2023Winter 2024
Research Disabilities Community Health Hybrid or Fully online Online or Hybrid Courses
Instructor Name: Barry Messer
CRN: 81663
This course addresses the health of cities with respect to the community stewardship of its watersheds. Students are challenged in a learning and community development process of discovery and direct involvement. The essential elements of the Capstone focus on the factors that can contribute to the health of Portland's watersheds. Students work with the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services and a neighborhood group on projects that may include "hands on" activities and/or community outreach...
Research Community Health Sustainability Retired-course
Instructor Name: Eden Isenstein
In this class, students will learn about the dynamics of sexual assault as they practice using theater as a tool for social change. Students will develop a short play about sexual assault and its prevention based on classroom readings, discussions, prior learning, and lived experiences. This play will then be performed for various campus audiences based on the Theatre of the Oppressed Open Forum model, in which audience members are invited to stop and shift the action by joining the play,...
Arts Education-Youth
Instructor Name: Catherine Howells
CRN: 63523
Portland's Water: History and Challenges. Water is life. Imagine, just for a moment, a world without your tap water. Picture Portland after seven days of empty taps and dry fountains—households struggling, communities in crisis, and daily life at a standstill.
The Portland Water Bureau (PWB) ensures this does not happen by providing safe, clean water to all of our taps 24/7. Join our class for an exclusive tour of the pristine Bull Run watershed and learn from PWB's water infrastructure experts...
Fall 2021Fall 2022Fall 2023Spring 2021Spring 2022Spring 2023Spring 2024Summer 2021Summer 2022Summer 2023Winter 2021Winter 2022Winter 2023
Sustainability Research Community Health Business-Engineering-Technology
Instructor Name: James Hillegas
Documenting Sustainability in the Pacific Northwest In 1989, the World Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainable development as "[development that] meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations." As the 21st century progresses, the concepts of sustainable development and sustainability have become increasingly complex. Partnering with Northwest History Network, this class will explore the idea of sustainability by looking at its...
Sustainability Research Retired-course
Instructor Name: Laurel Singer
CRN: 81699
Convening Diverse Groups to Resolve Community Issues Creating sustainable solutions to the most critical and pressing issues confronting our communities is only possible when diverse stakeholders are able to come to together to collaborate. This course is designed to give students an opportunity to gain essential knowledge and skills to work effectively in collaboration with others, and to understand how that same collaborative process is successfully being used to solve our most pressing...
Sustainability Global Perspectives Community Health Education Youth
Instructor Name: Colleen Kaleda
Refugee Support and Education: Paving the way to Citizenship This course will delve into the modern refugee experience through direct contact with refugees served by two Portland nonprofits: Refugee and Immigrant Support and Education (RISE) and the Immigrant Refugee Community Organization (IRCO). Students will work as volunteer teaching assistants in a classroom setting in Portland and Vancouver, WA community centers where refugees attend RISE pre-citizenship classes; students will also work...
Global Perspectives Education-Youth
Instructor Name: David Osborn
CRN: 64057
Forests, Narratives and Social Movements
Social movements have shaped the world we live in and are one of the most important sources of social change. They often organize to address issues of inequity, oppression or prejudice in local, regional, national and transnational spheres. They arise to address factual situations: the number of people without health care, levels of air pollution, racial profiling, unemployment, deaths in war or the destruction of the environment. However, facts alone...
Spring 2020
Sustainability Activism social movements Ecology Leadership Sociology
Instructor Name: Patrice Morris Ball
CRN: 43671, 63544
Design and Edit Organ Donation Outreach Materials
Students will work with the nonprofit agency Donate Life Northwest (DLNW) while learning about their mission to save/enhance lives through the promotion of organ, eye, and tissue donation. Students will design/edit promotional documents (digital, video, electronic or for print), while integrating knowledge from their own field of study, familiarity with today's popular culture, and the community partner’s mission to increase registration of...
Fall 2021Fall 2022Fall 2023Spring 2021Spring 2022Spring 2023Spring 2024Winter 2021Winter 2022Winter 2023Winter 2024
Research Global Perspectives Community Health Hybrid or Fully online Education-Youth Online or Hybrid Courses
Instructor Name: Conrad Schumacher
CRN: 63533
Teaching Art and Social Change The working Thesis for this class is that for Art, or indeed anything/anyone, to effect change in a society the work/ideas must be palatable to the majority, real and tangible in terms of outcomes and sustainable over time. We never get far when we try to change using hate, anger, force or such "clubs."
This course is open to anyone intrigued with the questions raised by public Art (and possibilities of Art) in our society. This capstone should be of particular...
Fall 2023Spring 2021Spring 2022Spring 2023Spring 2024Summer 2021Winter 2021Winter 2022Winter 2023
Community Health Arts
Instructor Name: Angela Strecker
Globally, freshwater ecosystems are at risk from a number of anthropogenic stressors. One of the foremost stressors is declines in water quality. We will partner with Sherwood Middle School to promote scientific inquiry into water quality issues in the Tualatin National Wildlife Refuge (NWR). The Tualatin NWR is one of a handful of urban wildlife refuges in the nation, highlighting a unique region where urban areas intersect with natural spaces. Understanding the effects of environmental...
Education-Youth Sustainability Science