Professor Franz Newland is Co-facilitating new Capstone Course

A new, full-year capstone course is being pilot tested this fall at York University. C4: The Cross-Campus Capstone Classroom brings together third- and fourth-year students from different faculties into multidisciplinary teams focused on solving pressing, real-world challenges posed by organizations operating in both the for-profit and not-for-profit worlds. C4 partners include the Yonge Street Mission, the Al and Malka Green Artists’ Health Centre, Glendon’s Globally Networked Learning Project, and Panoplo Inc.— among many others.

Danielle Robinson, the director of the York Capstone Network and an associate professor in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance, & Design and Franz Newland, assistant professor in the Lassonde School of Engineering are co-facilitating C4 alongside as an extension of the York Capstone Network they founded last year, with integral support from the Teaching Commons and the Career Centre. The YCN, which is now bolstered by a two-year AIF Grant, brings together dozens of faculty who have been, are, or want to be teaching capstone courses. Network members gather for monthly cafés, where capstone students, pedagogy experts, and York staff allies explore the immense rewards and challenges of capstones.

Robinson and Newland are supported in this groundbreaking endeavor by a resource team that is as diverse as C4’s participants: Carolyn Steele (Career Centre and LAPS), Natasha May (Teaching Commons and Science), Bridget Cauthery (AMPD), Alice Kim (Health), and Kai Zhuang (Lassonde). They are backed up by Lassonde and its Student Engagement Team and as well as a host of York’s experiential education (EE) coordinators, who have spent the summer building relationships with multiple community partners and curating nearly 40 “real-world” challenges for multidisciplinary teams of York students to tackle.

Newland says that “C4 ends with a big celebration—of these students and all they have accomplished this year, of the partners and all they have contributed, and of York and its commitment to pedagogical innovation, experiential education, and student success.”

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