THE GRADUATION PROJECT

A Graduation Project is a formal assignment chosen by a student or small group of students on a topic related to the curriculum and involves out-of-class research and development. The project is primarily a learning activity, not solely an evaluation activity, designed to provide students with an opportunity to make clear that they are ready to graduate, equipped with the essential know-how, self-discipline, and mature attitudes required of adult life and/or the demands of college.

A Graduation Project is designed to challenge students to demonstrate:

1. not merely their knowledge but also their initiative.

2. not merely their problem-solving but also their problem-finding.

3. not merely their capacity for learning on cue, but also their ability to judge and learn how to learn on an open-ended problem, often of their own design.

The Graduation Project experience would typically be focused on the essential skills of "inquiry and expression" a synthesis that requires:

1. questioning

2. problem-finding

3. problem-solving

4. independent research

5. the creation of a product or performance

6. a public demonstration of mastery

A component calling for self-reflection and analysis of what one has undergone and learned may be included.