Global Pathways: Suwon, South Korea - Semester Abroad Program Proposal, Amanda D. Ledger

Capstone Collection

This capstone proposes the Global Pathways: Suwon program, a semester-long study abroad initiative developed in partnership between Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) and Kyonggi University (KGU) in Suwon, South Korea. The program responds to current limitations in study abroad, particularly the prevalence of short-term tourism-oriented experiences and curricula that prioritizes Western perspectives. A needs assessment consisting of student interviews, surveys, and professional consultation demonstrated strong interest in programs that combine language learning, cultural immersion, and career development. Findings also highlighted the importance of financial accessibility, reciprocal host partnerships, and ongoing advising support. Drawing on Freire’s critical pedagogy and Vygotsky’s sociocultural …

Global Pathways: Suwon, South Korea, Amanda D. Ledger

Capstone Collection

This capstone proposes the Global Pathways: Suwon program, a semester-long study abroad initiative developed in partnership between Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) and Kyonggi University (KGU) in Suwon, South Korea. The program responds to current limitations in study abroad, particularly the prevalence of short-term tourism-oriented experiences and curricula that prioritizes Western perspectives. A needs assessment consisting of student interviews, surveys, and professional consultation demonstrated strong interest in programs that combine language learning, cultural immersion, and career development. Findings also highlighted the importance of financial accessibility, reciprocal host partnerships, and ongoing advising support. Drawing on Freire’s critical pedagogy and Vygotsky’s sociocultural …

Building Climate Resilience: Community Gardens And Environmental Education In Christchurch, New Zealand, Caleb T. Mccauley

Capstone Collection

The socio-political movements in post-earthquake Christchurch are studied to better understand the interplay of community gardens, climate, environmental, and land-based education, and to analyze their relevance to entrenching climate resilience in the region. Social networks and community responses to natural disasters like an earthquake are leveraged to understand their ability to influence the pillars of climate resilience, those being community, economic, and ecological resilience, respectively. The central hypothesis and research question of this paper will seek to answer: Can social cooperation in the wake of a natural disaster influence the ability of a community to respond to similar disruptions caused …

Let Us Break Bread Together: A Historical Analysis Of African American Chefs’ Influence On American Gastronomy, Danielle S. King

Capstone Collection

This Capstone project examines the historical impact of African American chefs on American gastronomy, highlighting their substantial contributions to the nation's culinary heritage from 1619 to 2024. By employing Jessica B. Harris's book High on the Hog as a foundation, the research identifies a critical gap in existing study abroad programs: the Black diaspora within the United States. The proposed four-week educational program aims to immerse participants in African American culinary heritage across four culturally rich cities: Charleston, South Carolina; New Orleans, Louisiana; Chicago, Illinois, and Oakland, California. With a community cultural wealth framework, the program integrates historical research, hands-on …

Making The World A Better Place: Meaningful, Reciprocal Service Learning In Costa Rica, Nora Geer

Capstone Collection

Despite the countless benefits that international service learning can present to host communities and student service learners, current service learnings offerings for undergraduate students remain relatively limited in quantity and intentionality. Unless international service learning programs lead with reciprocity, meaning, and sustainability, their pitfalls may exceed their advantages, resulting in an industry that leaves both communities and student participants necessitating more. The following proposed program in Costa Rica plans to lead by example, remedying service learning’s greatest shortcomings by making community relationship building its utmost priority, emphasizing cross-cultural exchange between students and community members, and offering service projects that fill …

Community Health Worker Training In The Occupied Palestinian Territories: A Program Reflection, Jill Lyn Ridling, Jill Lyn Ridling

Capstone Collection

ABSTRACT

There exist many challenges concerning public health practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt) as the Israeli occupation has created literal and metaphorical roadblocks preventing Palestinians from accessing needed health services outside their towns and villages. Trained Community Health Workers assist in bridging this crucial health service need throughout the oPt. This qualitative study evaluates the Palestinian Medical Relief Society’s (PMRS) Community Health Worker Program (CHWP) in the West Bank of occupied Palestine. The research explores three facets of Community Health Worker (CHW) training and their roles in Palestinian society. The first question addresses the CHWP training goals, curriculum, …

The Radical Imagination: Exploring The Intersection Of The Youth-Led Climate Justice Movement And Education, Calla Sneller

Capstone Collection

This paper explores the crossover of the youth-led climate justice movement and education, utilizing The Experiment Digital Climate Change & the Environment as a case study to investigate this crossover globally and locally. A 6-week virtual exchange program designed to connect 100 high school students from 23 countries, The Experiment Digital Climate Change & the Environment aimed to equip youth with radical tools to address the scale of the climate crisis. The study drew on the neo-institutionalism and systems thinking approaches to globalization. Employing qualitative research methods, including a questionnaire and individual interviews, the findings revealed that international relationships improved …

Global Changemakers - Hope For The Future, Ann Flanagan

Capstone Collection

This exploratory qualitative research study explores the journey of changemakers and the role of formal and informal curricula in shaping students' understanding of social change and motivating them to take action. In addition, it investigates transformative experiences encountered through critical reflection and experiential learning and the steps universities could take to equip future changemakers with the necessary tools, skills, and mindset.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three male and two female students as well as one female teacher at Ritsumeikan University. The findings suggest that formal and informal curricula significantly shape students' understanding of social change and motivate them to …

Integrating Adult Mentorship Module Within Youth Oriented Programs, Shady Elfaham

Capstone Collection

ABSTRACT

World Learning (WL) is a non-governmental entity focused on the advancement of leaders around the world through educational exchange programs and sustainable development initiatives. Its Youth Exchange Unit comprises an experienced and inventive team designing and implementing cultural exchange programs centered on capacity and skills building in civic engagement, teambuilding, leadership, youth workforce development, and entrepreneurship. Through such experiential learning initiatives, WL staff have recognized the correlation between mentorship and positive youth development.

Recognizing the short- and long-term benefits that quality mentorship can generate for youth, this capstone project integrates a tailored adult mentorship module within upcoming WL youth-oriented …

Global Citizenship Education In Homeschooling Practices And Experiences In Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, And Pennsylvania, Bethany Shackelford

Capstone Collection

Global citizenship education (GCED) has moved to the forefront of U.S. education policy. The core tenets of GCED are knowledge, skills, behaviors, actions, attitudes, and values. Through these tenets, GCED strives to prepare students to be contributing members of society through making positive change. In this study, I examined the extent to which GCED was integrated in homeschooling education in eight families located in four Northeastern states, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

The findings derived from individual interviews and surveys with homeschooling parents and their adult children as well as document analysis demonstrate that seven of the eight …

Winter Travel For Cold Weather Novices; Methods For Making Challenging Outdoor Experiences More Inclusive, Anders Fristedt

Capstone Collection

Cold Weather for Winter Novices is a weeklong experiential education trip developed for students, between the ages of 17 and 21, from the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West (UWC-USA), an international boarding school in Montezuma, New Mexico. This trip is an opportunity to examine multicultural perspectives of adventure and wilderness. Specifically, the research question focuses on if the concepts of adventure and wilderness present inherent hurdles for diverse populations.

This program was developed trough a detailed literature review and needs assessment that involved both outdoor education professionals and potential students. The literature review looked at the …

Critical Embodied Praxis For Social Justice And Peace Educators: A Story Of Personal Transformation Through Analysis Of My Jewish And Settler Identities, Cara Michelle Silverberg

Capstone Collection

In this paper, I examine definitions of and relationships between violence, oppression, peace, liberation, and embodiment in the context of critical pedagogy in order to construct a theory of critical embodied praxis for social justice and peace educators. Considering the body to be a tangible vessel through which narratives and mechanisms of violence are expressed and maintained, I explore the potential of the body to be a vessel through which liberatory narratives may be generated and shared. After constructing a theory of critical embodied praxis, I illustrate this framework in action through a personal narrative that explores the intersections …

Leadon Alliance: Empowering Alaska's Youth Through Inclusive Programming, Megan Juneau

Capstone Collection

Alliance is an annual youth conference in Alaska designed to create inclusive and multi-cultural programming for Alaskan youth and their adult mentors. Alliance is a reimagining of a program formerly known as LeadOn. While LeadOn has been successful for the last ten years at providing workshops for Alaskan youth and adults on healthy sexuality, relationships, and leadership, it will now focus on making quality content for Alaskan Natives, Immigrants, and LGBTQ+ identities in Alaska. In the development of this idea past program participants and previous program coordinators were surveyed and interviewed to collect information about how inclusivity has or has …

Residential Life Curriculum: Wyoming Seminary, Allie Maxwell

Capstone Collection

This course linked capstone will focus on creating a residential life curriculum that is student centered, increases cultural competencies, and strengthens the community of the Wyoming Seminary Upper School. Many boarding schools have accepted international students into their schools to respond to a growing revenue need while simultaneously adding to a school’s diversity. The shift in student demographics has created a secondary level international education sector without many people specializing in this arena. Additionally, there has been a push to increase residential life resources in schools to help increase student support. With the drive for additional support and a growing …

Anti-Japanese Sentiment Among Graduates Of South Korean Public Schools, Jamal Barbari

Capstone Collection

This capstone paper aims to explore how South Koreans, who have graduated public high school within the past seven years (from 2010 to 2017) view Japan and Japanese people, and what (if at all) information concerning Japan and Japanese people was established and received during their presence in the public school system. Through a brief analysis into the history and intricate relationship between Korea and Japan, introduction into hidden curriculum and its significance in this context, as well as ten personal interviews with South Korean graduates who fit the criteria for this research, this capstone paper offers a distinctive insight …

Advantages & Challenges: An Assessment Of Suny Oneonta's Current Approach To International Student Services, Sarah Busche

Capstone Collection

The decision to become an international student is a choice that is as challenging as it is rewarding, and is one that I am familiar with from both a professional and personal standpoint. Per a recent Open Doors’ account, 1,043,839 students from around the world have made the decision to study in the United States in 2016. These individuals make up 9% of New York State’s student population, and 10.1% of the State University of New York system (SUNY, 2016). Currently SUNY Oneonta is host to 56 of these international students, whom I was excited to work with through my …

Semester At Sea Global Studies Program, Laura B. Mcdonald

Capstone Collection

Increasing intercultural competence in students is becoming extremely important to institutions around the United States. With the current trends in higher education, study abroad programs need to address intercultural competence as a necessity for the global age (Fantini, 1995). There is no clear consensus on how intercultural competence should be defined. Despite the varied definitions, the need for preparing students for an interconnected world could not be more important.

There has been a recent push for assessing intercultural competence in study abroad programs. Many institutions and organizations claim that their programs are developing global citizens and intercultural competence, but they …

Is Restorative Justice Doing Enough To Address The Power Imbalances Caused By Systems Of Privilege And Oppression, Matthew Furnell

Capstone Collection

Restorative justice is an ever growing philosophy which is causing a paradigm shift in the way society understands and responds to crime, punishment and victimization. The State of Vermont has become a pioneer and an example of how to implement restorative practices into the official criminal justice system, developing an alternative process to traditional punitive approaches. However, it is now more important than ever to ensure that there is not a false sense of success or a level of complacency in the further development of restorative practices. It is time to critically analyse the current restorative process and explore the …

Enhancing Global Education In China - A Global Citizen Language Program, Wen Amy Luo

Capstone Collection

The acceleration of globalization calls for education with an aim of creating global citizens who are able to learn, live and function in an increasingly interconnected world. Educators should remember that they are creating future leaders who need to understand how to perform and interact in a global arena. For global citizens to effectively function in such an environment, they are required to have competencies such as: intercultural understanding, curiosity for discovery, cultural self-awareness, sociolinguistic awareness, and ability to listen, observe, interpret and analyze etc.

Chinese students who live in second and third-tier cities receive significantly less global education due …

Culture, Inner-City Education And Improving Economic Growth In Birmingham, Alabama, Leroy Abrahams

Capstone Collection

Perhaps the greatest reminder of the economic inequities in American society is the drastic deficiencies in educational outcomes, based on class and race. Birmingham, Alabama, vividly portrays this reality. Families with means send their children to private schools and/or concentrate in the suburbs, leaving largely poor, and oftentimes, predominantly minority in densely populated crime-ridden areas with suboptimal schooling. The schooling patterns are clearly reflected in the economic outcomes, though Black are a majority in the city they are vastly underrepresented in the middle to upper middle class, while grossly overrepresented among those in poverty. These inequities are often mirrored in …

Identity-Oriented Program, Isaac Jorgensen

Capstone Collection

This paper demonstrates why identity-oriented community college study abroad programs are more accessible for the diverse student populations that attend these institutions. It does this with a case study, a demographic analysis, and the theoretical support of The Experiential Learning Cycle (ELC) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). First it proves the lack of diversity within United States study abroad participants. Following this, the paper shows that community colleges house more underserved populations than four-year universities. Additionally, it illustrates the benefits of studying abroad and demographics specific to The Washington State Community College Consortium for Study Abroad (WCCCSA), …

Through The Phoropter: A Reflective Analysis Of One Practitioner’S Attempt To Sequence Social And Emotional Learning Competencies Into An Experiential Learning Program, Stephanie A. Globus-Hoenich

Capstone Collection

This capstone is a reflective analysis of social and emotional learning programming and its implementation in traditional Western schools. It approaches the question of sequencing social and emotional competencies for instruction through experiential learning. Initially I sought a linear rationale in order to better understand my work in implementing a social and emotional learning program in nearby Keene, New Hampshire through High 5 Adventure Learning Center’s Edge of Leadership program. However, my inquiry shifted in light of several ethical implications that arise from the prospect of constraining social and emotional learning into a pre-set curriculum.

As a Course-Linked Capstone, this …

Media, Borders, And Citizenship: Internationalization And Social Justice In An Undergraduate Communication Program At A Public University In New England, Kristi Mientka

Capstone Collection

Higher education in the U.S. is becoming increasingly internationalized, a process which is necessitated by the global economy and the increase in communication and mobility across borders. The process of internationalization has many effects on institutions, programs, faculty, and students. It also has many purposes, among them to improve students’ future employability and to foster understanding of social issues. The communication discipline, which encompasses a variety of studies ranging from media production to interpersonal communication, has seen the effects of internationalization. Those effects are evident in evolving curriculum and pedagogy that reflect the shifting dynamics of the media landscape and …

Training The Masses: Cultural Competency Training: Ethics And Practices Of Sharing Training Designs For Others To Facilitate: Reflections And Recommendations, Jess K. Mccue

Capstone Collection

This course-linked capstone will focus on the ethics and practices of sharing training designs for others to facilitate. It will look closely at my own experience in sharing cultural competency training designs with others within my organization to facilitate. It will focus on the design itself, but more in-depth on the process of sharing designs and healthy collaboration among facilitators and design creators. My experience took place at City Year Boston where over 260 volunteers enter into our AmeriCorps program to work in Boston Public Schools.

For this capstone I will focus on one project in particular that I developed: …

Student Perspectives On Proficiency-Based Learning In Vermont's High School Completion Program, Hayley J. Shriner

Capstone Collection

This Independent Practitioner Inquiry Capstone (IPIC) paper examines student perspectives on proficiency-based learning at an adult education center in Vermont. Through Vermont’s High School Completion Program (HSCP), adults can earn their high school diplomas through proficiency-based Personalized Learning Plans (PLPs). This qualitative study focuses on high school-aged students who received referrals to the program from area schools within the context of the current shift toward proficiency-based learning mandated by Vermont Act 77. The study draws on resources specific to Act 77, as well as literature on the nationwide trend toward personalized learning and proficiency-based learning. The researcher uses holistic student …

Diversity Training Workshop Series: How To Learn And Interact Within A Diverse Community, Katherine Mabel Bernal

Capstone Collection

This capstone focuses on a diversity initiative designed for higher education institutions in the United States and it targets students of all levels and degrees. The theme selected for this capstone is: “Diversity Training Workshop Series: How to Learn and Interact within a Diverse Community” and it will be a co-curricular program that follows the interests promoted by Affirmative Action. Due to the wide range of intersectionalities and the abstract definition of Diversity, in this paper, diversity is defined solely as the “composition of the student body”.

The trainings outline the needs for students to recognize and acknowledge non-visible identity …

A National Bilingual Education Policy For The Economic And Academic Empowerment Of Youth In St. Lucia, West Indies, Gabriella Bellegarde

Capstone Collection

This campaign portfolio argues the case for a national bilingual education policy on the island of St. Lucia, where youth speak both St Lucian Creole and St. Lucian standard English. The portfolio consists of a policy paper and brief, an advocacy plan, a communications plan, monitoring and evaluation plan. The Bilingual Education Taskforce (BET), made up of teachers, parents and principals, is an advocacy organization that discovered the need for a bilingual education intervention when they observed, assessed and analyzed the written work of struggling readers at their school, the Anse la Raye Infant School on the west coast of …

Diversifying The Curriculum: An Analysis Of Diversity Course Policies At The University Of California San Diego, Maria Lourdes Amparo

Capstone Collection

As U.S. higher education institutions and the larger society become increasingly global and racially and ethnically diverse, educational institutions are faced with the challenge of adapting their policies and academic curriculum to reflect and meet the demands of a changing environment. As part of a comprehensive plan to address campus climate issues at the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), the UC San Diego Academic Senate revised the undergraduate graduation requirement in 2011 to include one course that focuses on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). In addition to having a diverse student population, UC San Diego is ranked …

Youth Media And Social Change: Using Digital Storytelling As A Tool That Engages Youth To Become Change Agents, Soufiane Khebbaz

Capstone Collection

Today the importance of digital technology has significantly increased worldwide, as cameras, laptops, and easy-to-use applications and software have become available to educators and activists, enabling them to join the digital world. Through a digital storytelling workshop, I examined the use of digital storytelling as a potential means of empowerment for teenagers participating in the Access Micro-scholarship Program. Using qualitative methods, I looked at the students’ interactions with each other as well as with technology in the process of digital storytelling. The main purpose of this project was to investigate the opportunities that digital storytelling practices hold for youth in …

Reflect, React, Exchange: A Cultural Competency Co-Curriculum, Derrick Lewis

Capstone Collection

Cultural competency serves as key component to medical training and education and increasing interest in international health experiences denotes a recent need to respond to globalized health and populations. Reflect, React, Exchange (RRE) is a co-curriculum aims to provide a revised and integrated framework and foster awareness via experience, exchange, reflection, and dialogue at the Clinica de Familia La Romana in La Romana, Dominican Republic. RRE utilizes theories which are appropriate to the transformative learning aims and integral curricular activities of the CFLR Global Health Experience, an 8-week, global health internship experience for health science. It provides students with the …