SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND POLICY: A CAPSTONE COURSE.

This article describes the capstone course in the sociology major at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. The capstone course in the sociology major at Cornell College is a senior seminar called Social Problems and Policy. In this course the students' principal task is to write a research paper on a social problem or component of a social problem and on the social policy that exists to address this problem. The capstone course is required only of sociology majors. Students take this capstone course during the first part of their senior year, after they have completed most of the other required courses in the major, including the methods and theory courses. The school added Social Problems and Policy to the major in 1990. The particular course developed by the college reflects their departmental emphasis on the application of the sociological perspective to social problems and policy. Nearly all of the subject area courses in the department reflect this emphasis to some degree. The capstone course also provides sociology majors with an opportunity to write a major research paper using library and other resources. Since 1978 Cornell has operated on the one-course-at-a-time calendar, in which students take and professors teach a single course in consecutive four-week terms.