Submit a Capstone Project

Capstone projects use students' competencies developed throughout the MBA program to solve real-world business problems supplied by a variety of organizations and are completed in the student's final term. Capstone projects are experiential learning in action that mutually benefit students and organizations.

 


Project Parameters

Duration and Selection
Chosen projects are required to be completed in a 3-month time frame and are sufficient in scope to provide an average of 10 hrs/week commitment from a 3-5 person student team.

Once the proposals have been selected by the students, the assigned team will reach out to their successful organization to arrange the first meeting. If your proposal is not successful, you will be contacted to see if you are willing to move your project to the following term for consideration of a new group of students with different areas of interest.
Project Scope
Ideal projects integrate materials from across 2 to 3 functional business areas (strategy, accounting, finance, marketing, human resource management, economics, etc) and provide enough depth so students can deep dive into each area for analysis to solve the business problem.

Community Partner Expectations

Proposal Submission

Interested organizations provide a 1-page project description by completing the proposal form. The form asks for your organization description and/or company background, a project overview, expected project deliverables, and contact information.

When completing the form remember that students will be viewing all the proposals at once, comparing projects, and selecting which one is of interest to them and their skill development. Historically, projects that provide access for students to engage with high-level personnel and solve complex problems are strongly sought after.

For more information and to complete the proposal form, please contact hirebusiness@ualberta.ca

Ongoing Communication with MBA Students
As part of the capstone, we encourage engagement with the student team on a consistent basis. Most organizations commit to meeting with their student group at least 3 times during the 3-month period. This includes the Initial meeting at project outset, a progress meeting roughly halfway through the 3-month time period, and a final meeting before the project due date.
Project Sign-Off
Organizations, students and the assigned professor to SEM 641 will be asked to sign off on the student project plan after the initial meeting.

Course-end Presentation Attendance
Organization sponsors are invited to the final presentations and are highly encouraged to attend as the experience closely parallels presentations students will be asked to deliver when working in the corporate world. The presentations are typically on campus but arrangements can be made to have them off-campus.
Project Debrief
In addition to the in-person presentation, organizations and students will meet to debrief the project outcomes after they have delivered the final report.
Evaluation Questionnaire
As this is a course for grades, it is critically important to receive your positive and developmental feedback regarding the capstone experience which will be integrated into the marking by the professor. The collection of feedback will be managed through the professor.

 

For more information:

Email: hirebusiness@ualberta.ca 
Phone: 780-492-7806