Guidelines for the General Education Capstone Seminar
To submit a course to CAS CAP for Gen Ed Capstone Seminar approval, please send an email to the CAS Dean responding to each of the items below with at least a paragraph of discussion. In addition, please append a syllabus.
1. Describe the content and purpose of the course.
2. Explain how the course will benefit students at this particular moment in their education. Specifically, how does this course offer students the opportunity to integrate and synthesize what they have learned in the earlier sections of the curriculum?
3. Describe the methodology/ies (including assessment methodologies) and pedagogy that will be used in the course.
Overview:
Trinity’s General Education Capstone Seminars (GECS)will provide students with the opportunity to connect and integrate the skills, knowledge, values, and capacities acquired through their earlier coursework in the Gen Ed curriculum. The capstone seminar represents a transitional moment for students, serving as a bridge between the initiation into liberal arts study afforded by Gen Ed courses and immersion in a major field. Students must wait to attempt the GECS until they have completed at least 40 credits in Gen Ed courses, which will typically occur in the 4th semester.
At this moment in their academic careers, students should have a solid grounding in the core competencies emphasized by the Gen Ed curriculum (reading, oral and written communication, and critical and quantitative reasoning) and should be moving into the broad, informed intellectual inquiry that will be required in their chosen discipline.
Guidelines for developing GECS:
GECS courses will have disciplinary prefixes and should be numbered in the 200-300 range. In developing GECS courses, faculty may develop new courses or may revise and adapt an existing course, such as an FLC Seminar II. In the latter case, the course must still be submitted to CAS CAP for approval for the new designation. GECS courses typically should not have prerequisites.
GECS need not be demonstrably inter-disciplinary. However, it may be useful to faculty to bear in mind Trinity’s mission of educating women for global leadership as part of course development. Given that these courses are designated as seminars, CAS CAP will expect course requirements to typically include an 8-10 page research paper or its equivalent, as well as a substantive reading load. As seminars, courses should allocate ample time to discussion and other student-centered activities.
Because students will be taking the GECS earlier in their course of study than under the FLC, existing courses submitted for GECS may require renumbering. In general, GECS should not have prerequisites and should be appropriate for all Trinity students who have completed 40 or more credits.