Because undergraduate capstone experiences are associated with increased overall performance as students, it is important to design these courses so they meet your students' needs. Capstone courses vary across disciplines, institutions, and geographic regions. Program faculty may or may not adhere to an agreed upon course framework. Regardless of design, these courses are often opportunities for students to draw from all of their undergraduate experiences (course work, research experiences, internships, etc.) as they prepare for either graduate studies or employment. Students often synthesize their own knowledge and evaluate how they can contribute to their profession. Rangeland and natural resource students typically represent diverse stakeholder interests and perspectives. What unifies these diverse perspectives, though, is the desire to address problems associated with socio-scientific issues (SSIs). SSIs are issues for which there may be no clear-cut right or wrong answer but for which a clear understanding of both social-cultural and bio-physical systems is needed. Many natural resource management graduates will be directly or indirectly involved in addressing SSIs and perhaps helping community members resolve problems associated with SSIs. In this regard, graduates will benefit from being fluent in different disciplines so they can communicate with different stakeholders. Designing an interdisciplinary capstone course, therefore, requires that curriculum developers and instructors are able to identify the necessary skills as their profession grows and changes. I will present a few models of how interdisciplinary courses can be designed, as well as, issues that instructors should consider as they implement such courses. In addition, I will discuss strategies for assessing interdisciplinary capstone courses.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.