Capstone Project draft Outline: 20 Pages

Title Page

Abstract

Summary of the project and my main Interdisciplinary insights.

Introduction

Overview of the chosen topic.

Explanation of the relevance and timeliness of the topic within Logistics and Military Studies.

Statement of the research problem.

Objectives of the capstone project.

Justification of the Interdisciplinary Approach

Explanation of why an interdisciplinary approach is crucial for the chosen topic.

Discussion of how Logistics and Military Studies complement each other in addressing the research problem.

Review of Disciplinary Insights

Military Studies Insight

Overview of relevant theories, methods, or results from Military Studies.

Critical analysis of how these insights apply to the research problem.

Logistics Insight

Overview of relevant theories, methods, or results from Logistics.

Critical analysis of how these insights apply to the research problem.

Integration of Additional Disciplinary Insights

Consideration of insights from systems thinking or pragmatic constructionism.

Evaluation of how these additional disciplines can further inform the research problem.

Framework for Interdisciplinary Integration

Development of a comprehensive framework that combines insights from both disciplines.

Discussion on how this framework addresses the research problem.

Application of the Framework

Detailed description of how the framework has been applied to the interdisciplinary research problem.

Presentation of findings and outcomes from the application of the interdisciplinary approach.

Comprehensive Understanding of the Issue

Discussion on what new understanding or solutions have emerged from applying the interdisciplinary framework.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of the interdisciplinary approach in providing deeper insights or solutions.

Conclusion

Summary of key findings and their implications for Logistics and Military Studies.

Reflection on the interdisciplinary process and its benefits.

Recommendations for future research or practical applications based on the capstone findings.

References

List of all sources cited in the paper will be here.

Notes
: This framework took me a while to create because I have never written such a large paper, however, it provides a methodical approach to the capstone project.

RUBRIC

The Capstone of a Loosely-Connected Major

While during this course, you will learn about two additional areas of interdisciplinary studies: systems thinking and pragmatic constructionism, the major concentration is producing your capstone project. The project should be a significant discipline-informed work that integrates disciplinary insights from the two minors that make up your interdisciplinary studies major. For instance, if your two minors are business and education, the project should make use of insights from each of these disciplines. The project is by far the most important part of this course, worth 500 points.

The focus of the activities in this course push towards a project that would resemble a research paper (though the interdisciplinary research process is somewhat different than a typical research paper process), because most students will prefer this approach. However, do not feel that you have to limit yourself to producing a project that is a research paper. An interdisciplinary project can also be a creative endeavor, an essay, narrative or large-scale creative project. In the end, the projects will be evaluated according to the rubric below. While not a rule, the project you produce should probably be the amount of work you would expect to do for a research paper, double-spaced, 1 inch margins. Feel free to use whichever citation style your disciplines prefer. If your discipline doesn’t have a preferred style, use APA or MLA style.

A good way to think about the project is to find two or three major disciplinary insights: a result, theory, method, or so on that can dovetail together to give you a more comprehensive understanding of some bigger issue. For instance, you may be able to weave together an ethical theory like social contract theory with some economic findings about inequality and some ethnographic research via communication arts to better understand poverty in downtown Kansas City. You may want to weave together insights on leadership from military studies together with findings about gender from sociology to talk about how the military can move towards an organizational structure that better promotes equality. You may join the latter with insights from human resources management to make substantive policy recommendations for how recruiting, hiring, and benefits are handled.

In the end, you will be the first one to advance the more comprehensive understanding that you are writing about, so you won’t be doing research directly on your issue, problem, or topic. Rather, you will be putting forth a new way of thinking about it given research you’ve done on disciplinary insights that are relevant to your general issue, problem, or topic.

Suggestions on Structure

There is no one structure that can be recommended for every topic. As your topic emerges, you may need a structure that is considerably different than everyone else’s project. However, a good structure to think about starting with would be the following:

Description of topic, issue, or problem.

Justify using an interdisciplinary approach to the issue, topic, or problem.

Write about each of your 2-4 building blocks, subjecting each to some critical tools.

Integrate the building blocks into a framework that can be used to approach the topic, issue or problem.

Write about the more comprehensive understanding of the topic, issue, or problem you’ve arrived at as result of applying the framework in (4) to your topic.

Reflect on how the interdisciplinary approach informs your more comprehensive understanding.

Of course, if your project is more creative (like Mansilla’s description of the building of the Vietnam Memorial), your project will look considerably different. It might look a lot more like a wall!

In the end, this isn’t about testing you to see if you can write a lot of pages and read a lot of articles. It’s actually about whether you can take academic, disciplinary insights and put them together to work towards solving bigger problems. That’s the standard by which your final capstone project will be measured.

100 pts

The paper asks a truly meaningful question about a complex topic

100 pts

Important disciplinary insights are gathered and explained from the student’s two minors

100 pts

Interesting connections and relationships are noted between the two insights

100 pts

The paper integrates the two insights by finding common ground to create a more comprehensive understanding.

100 pts

The paper does not accept the disciplinary insights at face value, but critically engages with them.