During SPHE 490 you will be working on your Senior Capstone Project. This Senior Capstone Project is an additional and separate project from the Personal Portfolio. The Senior Capstone Project is not a traditional Capstone Project but one that is designed to place Sports and Health Sciences degree students in the role of the decision maker. You have been “hired” and given a “job/project” to complete. Each individual project is based on realistic scenarios and situations in multiple aspects of sports and health science businesses that involve a particular company, event, or cause. The objective of each Capstone Project is to require students to research information relevant and current in today’s sports and health science industry, make decisions that impact sport organizations, and apply theory to practice.
Capstone Projects will be provided within the specific concentration areas of Coaching Studies, Exercise Science, General, and Fitness and Wellness Professional Studies. Each student will select a project related to their concentration within the Sports and Health Sciences degree program. If your concentration is “General”, then you are allowed to select the Capstone Project that applies best to your career focus. The Capstone Project will focus on an individual situation that allows students to research and analyze information to provide a comprehensive presentation containing creative solutions. The presentation should demonstrate an inclusive understanding of program level objectives, key coaching, exercise science, fitness and wellness, and sports and health science concepts, critical thinking, reflective practice, constructive analysis, ability to make executive level decisions, and overall ability to write efficiently.

Capstone Project Tools
Your Capstone Project format should use a variety of tools to showcase your work. The meat of the project should be in a word document that points the reader “your boss” to the intended document for clarity. The additional tool choice should be based on the best way to showcase and display specific sections of your work. For example, an employee manual in Microsoft Word, an employee schedule in Excel, a YouTube video to showcase a training procedure, or a Power Point presentation for a workout plan.
Power Points are not recommended as a formatting tool for the entire Capstone project. (The reason is that power points are meant to be conversations starters – see any TedTalk video for reference, each power point slide enhances what the speaker is saying, but does not speak for the speaker – meaning each power point slide should not be a flyer containing all of the necessary information within a topic heading. Its too much information on one slide.) Despite all of this, if you would like to use a power point slide presentation within your Capstone Project you must attain approval for its use. And your initial submission and final submission must contain an accompanying word document where each power point slide’s talking point is fully addressed using 250-500 words per slide.
You have a great deal of latitude with how your Capstone Project is presented and what appears inside. Ensure it is professional, yet maintain the creative aspects necessary to advance your project.
Capstone Project Objectives

• Require students to research information current to today’s industry.
• Make strategic decisions that impact sport organizations.
• Apply theory to practice.
• Enable students to execute creative solutions.
• Demonstrate critical thinking.
• Build/develop constructive analysis.
• Demonstrate an ability to make executive level decisions.
• Demonstrate ability to write efficiently.
• Provide examples of leadership.
• Establish methods of management that promote teamwork.

Exercise Science & Coaching: NCAA Division II Head Strength Coach

You are the head strength coach for a NCAA Division II College. Use the NCAA website to view your school choices – choose an actual school. Each spring you present the up coming summer and next year’s plan of action for the strength and conditioning department. Within this presentation you will provide the athletic department and individual coaches with the University’s academic objectives, your personal coaching philosophy, athletic department philosophy, job descriptions of current staff, and a year round weight room schedule for all sports at your college. Present these components along with athlete weight room guidelines and strength and conditioning staff schedule for Athletic Director approval. Prior to this meeting you have had one on one conversations with each coach and coaching staff. These meetings lined out the goals and objectives for each team, based on last season results and in coming athletes. You will discuss these meetings in your presentation for your chosen 4 sports. You will develop strength and conditioning programs for a total of 4 sports at your University/College, 2 major men’s sports and 2 major female sports. You may only choose one gender for a particular sport. For example you may not choose, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s volleyball, etc. Baseball and softball are considered similar in training and both sports cannot be used. The strength and conditioning program must provide clear team and individual position objectives. The strength and conditioning program must include a summer program and an in season program. No additional offseason program is necessary. Remember for the summer program, consider the athletes who do not have access to weight room equipment during the summer or are injured and insure modifications are present. Strength and conditioning programs must abide by the current ACSM resistance training guidelines and industry protocol for training for each chosen sport. Each team’s program must be able to be presented and accessible to players and coaches at the above mentioned yearly spring meeting after all post conference play is complete. *This Scenario is in a “world” where a COVID-19 vaccine has been created. There will still be sanitary precautions that are more in depth, but not necessarily to the extent that we are required to go through now.