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Senior Project

By President Doug North

Senior Project has been a required part of the undergraduate curriculum for ten years now. It was installed back in 1995 when Alaska Pacific University overhauled its curriculum and became what we now call "The University of Active Learning." This was not an easy curricular change to make. Prior to that time, students were required to complete at least 124 credits for graduation-almost all through coursework. Installing a 12 credit Senior Project at the end of the undergraduate course of study meant taking away 12 credits of coursework and substituting a student project - and not all faculty members thought that was a good idea. Nevertheless, they were willing to humor the new president and try it out.

Since then, the senior project has become a cornerstone of APU undergraduate education, and each semester every graduating senior carries out and then presents publicly her or his senior project. Here is the theory behind it: the first axiom of Active Learning is that you don't really know something fully until you have tried to do it. The second axiom is no leadership education is complete until you have tried to make something happen and learned from the experience. The senior project calls upon each student to go through a five-step process:

1. Conceptualize an individual or group project that will bring about change or new knowledge.
2. Plan the project in great detail: time frames, scope of activity, outcomes, etc.
3. Carry out the project, evaluating and changing the plan as you go along
4. Evaluate the project: what went right, what went wrong, and lessons learned
5. Present the project to your peers and to the faculty.

The important thing is that the student is in the driver's seat, the position of ultimate responsibility, and the faculty advisor and committee are there as coaches. Nobody tells the student what to do for the senior project; it has to come from the student's heart and passionate interest. However, the faculty is there to help the student carry it out and set the required standards for academic rigor. At best, the senior project challenges the student to try things never before attempted, builds the student's confidence, and culminates the student's academic work. As such, the senior project prepares the student to enter the workforce as an experienced and capable, pro-active leader or go to graduate school with significance experience in doing one's own work.

Personally, I think this form of "stand and deliver" education is a profound departure from the way education is usually transacted. Most students when they arrive on our campus have never been given this kind of responsibility or motivation. Their education has almost always consisted of trying to get 100 on someone else's test. A project-based form of education requires that people get something partially wrong and not be penalized for it. You go into a project knowing that everything will not go right. The important thing is that you learn from the experience: evaluation of learning is everything.

Because it is so different a form of education, the senior project has had the effect of making the entire APU curriculum more project oriented - after all students need consistent practice in this if they are going to do a senior project of significant scope in their senior year. The process begins with the student's first course: Introduction to Active Learning in which the student puts their toe in the water of project-based learning. The next year, in the required Sophomore Seminar, each student learns how a project is done in their anticipated major. In addition, most APU classes require students to do some kind of a project as part of the course, and many students do "directed projects" for credit during their time at APU. All these give the student practice for the senior project-and for a life of leadership and initiation. Active learning leads to active lives.

Classes are cancelled at APU when the seniors are presenting their senior projects. The students become the teachers. They stand and deliver and inspire us all with their work. I am extremely grateful to the faculty at APU for being willing to adopt the senior project way back then and carrying it to new heights of rigor and accomplishment. I never could have anticipated how excellent the process would become in their capable hands.

Recently Completed Senior Projects