On Monday, seniors presented their capstone projects to the community, displaying their results from their hard work of the past year. The capstone experience includes Springboard and Mercersburg’s Advanced Program for Global Studies (MAPS).
MAPS is a two-year academic offering that leads to a research paper and a TED-style presentation in their senior year. The MAPS topics ranged from gender income discrimination in the Chinese workforce to reform of the CIA in the United States.
MAPS has been a rewarding experience for the students. Cecilia Wang ’25 said, “MAPS really cultivated my critical thinking skills and I'm really interested in philosophical ideas and discussions in general. So, I think it is the start of my journey of exploring what the philosophical world looks like.” Bella Tai ’25 stated, “When I first started, I had a lot of ideas for what I could write about, and they were mostly concepts related to things I was interested in at the time. I never even thought of what I ended up researching, but now it’s what I’d like to do for my career.” Justin Oh ’25 said, “MAPS is a challenging but rewarding process, filled with a lot of personal satisfaction once you are finished taking the course. I have become a more inquisitive and knowledgeable person. Just listening to my peers and their topics has opened my eyes to so many different topics from water policy to genetic engineering.”
The Mercersburg Springboard is the one-year senior capstone program that challenges students to deeply explore real-world topics through a deep dive into a topic culminating in a final project. Students then gather their knowledge together in a polished presentation evaluated by experts.
Jaidee Promphan '25 chose to work in Research Science. She studied rosemary scent’s impact on short-term memory recall in female adolescents. She said, “I am very interested in the connection between smell and memories. [For instance,] my parents' perfume.” When discussing how she worked with her experiments, she said, “I did a lot of research for background information on my experiment, and went through some detailed processes like getting approval, etc. After that, I sent emails out to recruit more participants. Then, I started my first session (scented environment experiment) right away (with a gap of one week apart from the second session). A week later, I conducted my second session in a controlled/ unscented environment. The last part is data analysis where I try to find if there’s any pattern/correlation.” After her talk, she said, “It’s a mix between a proud moment and a fun time.”
Cocona Yamamoto ’25 chose Arts Practicum. Her project, which she show-cased at the Springtalks, involved the creation of a “future tomb” for herself. She said, “I actually came up with this idea while solo-traveling around Europe. It was when I went to the British Museum in London… when I saw the sarcophagus and I was like, ‘Well, I want to be buried in that… Death is inevitable, so I'm going to plan ahead.’” Yamamoto ’25 said, “I'm going to be mummified, and then I'm going to be in the sarcophagus.” Looking back at the process of creating her sarcophagus, she said, “Taking the first step is always the hardest.” She continued, “[For] a lot of people, they procrastinate and never start, … which was kind of what I did, but as soon as you start the first step, either doodling or putting your hands on the play, your body just tells you what to do.”
In the Maker’s Lab, Ana Botello Gaytan ’25 decided to create a squash racket. She said, “I've been into the squash racket that they originally used in the 1950s.” But this was not her initial plan for her Springboard project. She said, “I didn't have an idea at first. I was just wondering ‘What should I do?’... I was thinking of doing ceramics first, but then I was like, ‘I love squash’, so maybe something related to that.” The making process was no easy task. Botello Gaytan ’25 said, “I actually didn't know a lot of stuff… The process was similar to the videos, [which] were much easier, but when you [start making] it, it's really, really hard.” Her thoughts on this project were, “I hadn't done anything like that before. So it was a really nice experience.”
Albert Park ’25 and Tahir Hasanov ’25, who also presented their project at Sprintalks, worked together in entrepreneurship and established Keepr. The idea originated when “Tahir and I were thinking about a serious problem impacting Mercersburg, we stumbled upon the fact that Dorm Room Movers is very pricey,” said Parks. “For international students like me, it [personal items] were either Dorm Room Movers or the bin, so I was essentially forced to pay hundreds of dollars for storage. In order to solve this problem, we came up with the idea: Keepr.” He added, “For the past couple of years, not a single project from Entrepreneurship was actually put into action. They were all hypothetical. So we are determined to bring our project into real life. We met with teacher, asking for advice, and outlined our project in a realistic way.” Their Springboard talk not only presented Keepr to Mercersburg, Park said, “[It] enabled us to fully connect to our target customer base, giving us the best possible chance to advertise our business.”
Students like Tiana Lee ’25 participated in Open Topic. Lee’s topic was about cooking Korean dishes that gave her nostalgic vibes. She said, “We all had two projects [to work on], and my other one was about gender inequality. Since that one's a bit stressful, I decided to [present] my second one, [which is] a bit more fun. And of course, I'm a foodie, so I decided to cook my home country's food.”
Expo Day was a chance for students to present their creativity to the school. Lee said, “I think it's really good that Expo Day gives a solid amount of time for students to think about what they are really passionate about because not a lot of classes allow you to do that.” Promphan said, “It was very nice to see everyone present their long-term project that they’ve been working on. It’s a mix between a proud moment and a fun time.”
Of course, teachers are crucial to the continuation of these capstones. MAPS teacher Tim Kerr said, “I'm incredibly proud of the effort they put forth on both their papers and final presentations. These were topics all of us needed to know more about, and the style and grace that each senior brought to their presentations was marvelous.” Kelsey Rupp added, “I hope that they take away the knowledge of how to engage in a research process, and they're able to take the structure that we've given them throughout the past two years and take it with them into college, because I think that that's what's really special about this program.”
JD Bennett said, “The gift of capstones is the gift of time. The capstones give kids that time back. Kids can dedicate themselves to a worthwhile, edifying project that is their own. I'm proud of Mercersburg for providing that opportunity, which is one of the myriad reasons I appreciate this place.”