Your Senior Project is the capstone work required of all APU undergraduates.
Here’s where your Liberal Studies coursework readies you to think critically, logically and independently to form a research question that incorporates your values, knowledge, goals and passions. Use the social scientist’s strategy of observing, describing and measuring; add the historian’s eye for facts that explain and reveal; combine the philosopher’s appreciation for truth or the writer’s skill to convey that truth in stories.
Your Liberal Studies Senior Project is limited only by your dreams.
You’ll gain important practice in analytic, research and communication skills as you work with an adviser to pursue a project and then present findings to the APU community at colloquia held throughout the year.
Let these recent Senior Projects be your guide:
- Known around campus for his music-making, poetry and fiction writing, John combined his art with an interest in philosophy to examine the dynamic interplay between audience and author in a post-modern world. Not content to look solely at the writings of others, John also produced and presented a literary critique of his own short stories.
- A passion for photography, writing and mountain climbing led Matt to Nepal and a senior project that documented the real-life challenges and rewards of chasing a dream.
- After spending her junior-year practicum in a third-grade classroom where she worked side-by-side with teachers, Eileen began to wonder how state-mandated benchmark exams might influence teaching. Building on her practicum, Eileen’s senior project examined how – or if – some elementary school teachers adjust the way they teach writing in light of required testing.
- Sam wanted to test the connection between medium and message when it comes to the way news is gathered and presented. Working with APU’s on-faculty journalist and local public radio reporters, Sam wrote news stories intended for the public and then preformed a study based on medium and message.