Students Prepare Capstone Projects

articles and then integrated her Greenhill history knowledge into the creation process.

want it to do,” said Bresie.

Over 20 years ago, Greenhill seniors began undertaking Capstone projects, allowing students to explore a field of interest. At the end of each year-long project, the student presents their findings to the Upper School.

This year, there are four seniors creating Capstone projects.

Senior Azal Amer is creating simulations for advanced physics concepts. Senior Ava Iwasko is putting together a program aimed at educating freshmen about misinformation in the digital age. Senior Ella-Rose Levy is crafting a report about a strain of bacteria she discovered. And senior Aakash Vattikuti is creating a model for business pitches.

“[Capstone projects] were designed to create an opportunity for students to pursue independent work on something they are passionate about or where they might not find a current academic program [offered at Greenhill],” Director of Academics Jason Yaffe said.

Although the work is selfpaced and selfguided, seniors work with on-campus and off-campus mentors. The mentors help students solidify a foundation for the research and lend expertise throughout the journey.

Upper School science teacher Barry Ide is Levy’s mentor.

“In a science Capstone Project, a student is often working with a professional scientist who has many years of experience and years of schooling and our seniors involved in a Capstone Project are trying to get up to speed really, really quickly,” said Ide. “They may not always be able to ask some basic questions, or what will be basic in the field of their Capstone mentor, so my job is to kind of try and fill in those gaps and help them understand what scientific research looks like and how scientific research is generally conducted.”

Each student has developed priorities and a process for their research.

Iwasko has focused her research on misinformation. She has looked at online journals, academic sources and news

Vattikuti spends a lot of his time during weekends dedicated to his project.

Levy, on the other hand, has logged a significant amount of lab time to find “a strain of bacteria that comes from dirt that fits the characteristics of [a] good probiotic,” she said. She will consolidate her findings in a final lab report at the end of the year.

The first semester of the project is focused more on narrowing down to a central idea, which Bresie notes, is the hardest part.

Upper School science teacher Michael Haskins has a similar perspective in his mentoring experience with Amer.

“[Amer] had a lot of really good ideas at the beginning and wanted to go a lot of different directions with this project,” said Haskins, “I’ve noticed that he’s started to by getting this computational stuff out of the way, I’m just having more fun because I enjoyed working with algorithms and stuff,” said Amer.

Iwasko was driven by the contemporary relevance of digital misinformation. She finds it important to educate students who are growing up in today’s social media age and help them distinguish between real and fake news.

Like Amer, she said she also believes the research she is doing will naturally

Since the Capstone project is not offered as a normal class block, students must plan out free periods and time outside of school to complete their research. For Iwasko, she tends to spend most of her time on the weekends using chunks of time to work. During weekdays, she finds herself focusing more on her specific academic classes, Iwasko said.

To ensure that steady progress is made, there are mandatory check-ins with the assigned mentors. Students also attend practice presentations with the other seniors and Yaffe, regular group meetings and oneon-one meetings with Yaffe himself.

Upper School History Department Chair Amy Bresie ’96, Iwasko’s mentor, says that one of the common challenges students face in their Capstone projects is creating a realistic timeline.

“Most of what I do is say, ‘Okay, but let’s cut that down,’ because I think Capstones are, by definition, really big ideas and even when you have a whole year to do something, it’s often still not enough time to do everything that people be a little bit more realistic with what he’s able to accomplish in one year.”

On top of balancing schoolwork from other classes, Capstone students must carve out time to focus on their extensive research. Ide says it can be tempting to prioritize more immediate deadlines from other classes when working on a longterm project without specific due dates.

“It can be really easy to say I’ve got this AP test coming up, I should work on that instead,” said Ide.

Bresie agrees with this.

“I think it can be difficult to maintain focus sometimes,” she said. “And it can be difficult to keep working on [the project] when you have seven other things that are due.”

As Class of 2023 members prepare for their last weeks at Greenhill, Capstone seniors must remain motivated in their project and research endeavors.

“One of the things that works for me in terms of time management is just making myself understand why I need to do those things,” Amer said.

“I make it sound fun for myself. [This] is the type of skill that took me a while to develop. With no built-in structure in the self-paced course, time-management becomes vital.”

From physics to business entrepreneurship, each student is pursuing a project that relates to their college and career aspirations.

Amer, who plans on majoring in computational physics in college, picked a topic that he will encounter in future studies.

“I don’t get to take a computational physics course in college until my junior year, or in my late sophomore year … so come up again in her college experience, because she plans to major in philosophy.

“I think not only does my project give me a great foundation and background on this very important, prominent, prevalent issue, but it also has given me the skills I need to pursue research in an individual, independent capacity that I will most likely face in college,” Iwasko said.

Levy, on the other hand, initially started her process as an aspiring history major. Her concentration on biology throughout her research led her to change her college plan.

“After realizing I actually really enjoy biology, I sort of had a change of heart and ended up applying to certain schools that had professors working on similar projects,” said Levy. “I plan to continue this research because what I am doing is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to characterizing strands of bacteria.”

As for Vattikuti, his Capstone project is an extension of an internship he did with consulting firm Highwire Ventures. After being exposed to entrepreneurship in the real world, he says it is a potential path he can see himself go down.

“I’ve been able to spend a lot more time kind of getting into the details of how to create these investment pitches,” Vattikuti said. “Rather than just creating something broad that was effective … it has kind of helped me kind of focus on what I actually want to do in the future. So, this Capstone Project has helped me with that [future career choice].”