By Kerri Linsenbigler
Associate Editor
Senior capstones are an integral part of many students’ educations at Bonaventure. A capstone is a final thesis, event or other project which embodies all the student has learned here. It is kind of a last “hoorah” before a senior walks across the stage. This semester, a few students have gone above and beyond the call of capstone duty to create exciting and innovative final projects.
For political science majors, a capstone must show the implementation of research methods learned in previous courses. Students create hypotheses, gather data and then provide conclusions based on that data.
Joe Faircloth, a senior political science major, used an episode of HBO’s “The Newsroom” as inspiration for a research topic for his capstone.
“Newsroom 2.0, that’s what the episode was called,” Faircloth said. “They just talked about completely revamping the news and really asking the tough questions that candidates don’t want to answer.”
Faircloth then decided to develop his capstone around the coverage provided by media outlets. Faircloth split coverage into two types — soft news, like entertainment and celebrities, and hard news, like policy issues and elections.
Through his study of content in newspapers and online sources, Faircloth concluded the media is providing sufficient hard news stories and not just focusing on entertainment pieces, contrary to what he initially believed.
Overall, Faircloth said creating a capstone was more fun than he thought.
“It was kind of an eye-opening experience,” Faircloth said. “The whole media thing is my interest. The research thing was what was required for me from Bonaventure. Instead of a headache, it was enjoyable.”
Makeda Loney, a senior journalism and mass communication major, also set out to enjoy her capstone experience. Loney created a photo blog, titled “This is Bona’s,” which captures stories of Bonaventure students.
“I got inspired by the blog Humans of New York,” Loney said. “The creator describes his blog as a photo map of each individual person in New York. So, I guess I decided to go on the same path, to tell a story that each person has a different meaning of what Bonaventure is to them.”
Loney asked each student she interviewed to fill in the blank: Bonaventure is _____. She also inquired about students’ favorite memories at school, why they chose St. Bonaventure and more. In the creation of her blog, Loney hoped it could be used as a promotional tool for the school.
“I know when people are coming to school, they want to know what the life is like,” Loney said. “If they’re going to be living here for the next four years, they want to know ‘are students really enjoying it or is the platonic face they see on the website what it’s all about?’ There’s more to a school than the pictures they hire people to take.”
Loney said she incorporated lessons learned throughout her years as a journalism student in the creation and implementation of “This is Bona’s.” She credits the program with teaching her how to approach people, how to interview and how to write fluidly.
“The experience was awesome,” she said. “I always wanted to do something like that and I’m glad they gave me the permission to do it.”
Jennifer Koehler, an art history and visual arts major, also wanted to do something out of the ordinary for her capstone. Koehler, now in her fifth year, said art history capstones are mostly research papers. She decided to use creative license and create an exhibit and host an event.
“For my capstone, I created an art exhibition for study abroad programs,” Koehler said. “I wanted it to represent all of the study abroad programs. That way students, faculty, anybody from the Bonaventure community could submit their photographs and share their experience.”
Koehler said she was inspired by the photos she saw when she studied in Salamanca, Spain. Koehler, together with Alice Sayegh, director of international studies, and Chisato “Kitty” Dubreuil, assistant professor of art history, collected photos from students and faculty who studied abroad all over the world in order to create a collection for the exhibit. Koehler then displayed the photographs in the Loft in the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts.
“I think one thing that made me want to do the exhibition was just how the photographs are usually shared on social media,” Koehler said. “I thought it would be a good idea to put them all together in a really good setting. There’s a lot of artistic talent among all these students that’s not being brought out there.”
Koehler said art history encompasses all mediums. Photography, as it is more contemporary, is accessible to a wider audience. She said her capstone taught her how to communicate and plan an event, as well as see the endless possibilities for capstone ideas.
“Anything can happen on campus if you make it happen,” Koehler said. “If you plan it all out and you put in the work, the school is really open to you doing anything. If you honestly just present your ideas and follow through with them, there’s room for a lot of new events to take place.”
