Guidelines for the General Education Capstone Seminar
To submit a course to CAS CAP for Gen Ed Capstone Seminar approval, please send an
email to the CAS Dean responding to each of the items below with at least a paragraph of
discussion. In addition, please append a syllabus.
1. Describe the content and purpose of the course.
2. Explain how the course will benefit students at this particular moment in their
education. Specifically, how does this course offer students the opportunity to integrate
and synthesize what they have learned in the earlier sections of the curriculum?
3. Describe the methodology/ies (including assessment methodologies) and pedagogy
that will be used in the course.
Overview:
Trinity’s General Education Capstone Seminars (GECS) will provide students with the
opportunity to connect and integrate the skills, knowledge, values, and capacities
acquired through their earlier coursework in the Gen Ed curriculum. The capstone
seminar represents a transitional moment for students, serving as a bridge between the
initiation into liberal arts study afforded by Gen Ed courses and immersion in a major
field. Students must wait to attempt the GECS until they have completed at least 40
credits in Gen Ed courses, which will typically occur in the 4th semester.
At this moment in their academic careers, students should have a solid grounding in the
core competencies emphasized by the Gen Ed curriculum (reading, oral and written
communication, and critical and quantitative reasoning) and should be moving into the
broad, informed intellectual inquiry that will be required in their chosen discipline.
Guidelines for developing GECS:
GECS courses will have disciplinary prefixes and should be numbered in the 200-300
range. In developing GECS courses, faculty may develop new courses or may revise and
adapt an existing course, such as an FLC Seminar II. In the latter case, the course must
still be submitted to CAS CAP for approval for the new designation. GECS courses
typically should not have prerequisites.
GECS need not be demonstrably inter-disciplinary. However, it may be useful to faculty
to bear in mind Trinity’s mission of educating women for global leadership as part of
course development. Given that these courses are designated as seminars, CAS CAP will
expect course requirements to typically include an 8-10 page research paper or its
equivalent, as well as a substantive reading load. As seminars, courses should allocate
ample time to discussion and other student-centered activities.
Because students will be taking the GECS earlier in their course of study than under the
FLC, existing courses submitted for GECS may require renumbering. In general, GECS
should not have prerequisites and should be appropriate for all Trinity students who have
completed 40 or more credits.