Part I Guidelines for Your Human Services Capstone Project Via The Professional Internship Seminar: Part I Of Your Analytic Paper
This set of guidelines addresses Part I of Your Analytic Paper, which theoretically is connected to your Capstone Project. As you know, your Capstone Project represents a culminating activity that provides a way for a student to demonstrate knowledge and skills s/he acquired during her/his undergraduate studies. As such, it involves the processes of critical thinking, selecting a topic/issue of inquiry, planning and carrying out actions that involve collecting and analyzing data on that topic/issue, and making a coherent and organized presentation to a relevant audience regarding findings and implications.. Your Part I Analytic Paper, therefore, should be based on background information related to your topic or issue and present a plan for how you intend to carry out and present your Capstone Project. Your Part I Analytic Paper should be a minimum of 7 pages. After actually carrying out your Capstone Project next semester, your Part II of Your Analytic Paper, which would analyze and summarize your findings, should be, in addition, a minimum of 7 pages. If you happen to change placement sites, and develop a new topic or issue for research for Spring semester, this paper will count, but you would still need to do Capstone research, do a presentation, and write a 7-page paper (minimum) where you analyze and summarize your findings.
Following are guidelines for doing Part I of Your Analytic Paper related to your Capstone Project:
1. Identify and write about a topic or issue directly connected to your placement site or related in some way to the mission or issues addressed by your placement site. In this part of your analytic paper, you should discuss (a) what the topic or issue is, (b) why you chose the topic or issue, i.e., why is it relevant
2. A. After determining the topic or issue, familiarize yourself with the “body of knowledge” related to the topic or issue to help you understand the topic or issue. In regard to the “body of knowledge,” you need use a variety of resources, not just one source (i.e., relevant books or articles, data from relevant pamphlets & documents, placement site literature, etc.). Here, you should discuss (a) what you found out about the topic or issue (i.e., prior information and data) as it relates to your placement site, and (d) how your proposed topic or issue and data analysis might add to prior information and data.
B. Secondly, you should develop a thesis statement. A thesis statement is the one sentence that describes what your entire Capstone Project is about. (a) Justify your thesis statement by clearly discussing what you speculated would be possible findings (hypotheses), based on the body of knowledge. (b) Relate your thesis statement to relevant theory.
3. Discuss your plan for (a) conducting research on your topic or issufkte, and (b) analyzing your findings.
