The SSM Capstone class is a 3-credit, one semester course offered Spring semester each year. Each year, 20-30 SSM students participate in the course, most of them are seniors in their last semester of our program. Students work in teams of 3-4 and are required to complete their project in 14 weeks. Each of the students spends an estimated 140 hours on the project.
The course has 14 three-hour class periods that students are required to attend. A small fraction of the class time is devoted to team building, project management, ethics, economics, as well as discussions regarding the environmental, global, cultural, and social considerations of sustainability projects. The remainder of the time they are working in their teams on projects and supervised by the course instructors.
Capstone projects come primarily from outside organizations that like to mentor and engage the next generation of sustainability professionals and have a sustainability problem to solve.
The success of the course and capstone projects rests on the students and on the combined effort of Course Instructors, Project Sponsors, Faculty, and Faculty Advisors.