Have you been wondering how to find work in the field of international studies that uses your talents and gives you joy? Are you wondering if graduate school is right for you? Do you want to build up your network of contacts with Baylor alumni who majored in international studies? Do you want to make friends with other IST majors?

If this sounds like you, then PSC 4396: International Studies Senior Seminar would be a good course for you to take in the fall semester of your senior year.

What is a capstone?

It is a seminar that helps upper-level students pull together all that they have learned across several different classes in this major and integrate that knowledge into a paper and/or presentation. At the same time, we will build a connection between academic learning and the next stage with career readiness and graduate school.

What will we learn?

• Mondays: Build skills for life after Baylor.
  Topics include: writing a policy memo, making an effective presentation, creating a data visualization, extending a paper the student already wrote in another class, writing a cover letter for job applications, writing a statement of purpose for graduate school applications, rewriting the findings from a previously written research paper into a new form.
• Wednesdays: Discuss a reading related to International Studies.
  Topics will include: globalization, regions (Africa, Middle East, South/Central/East Asia, Europe/Russia, Americas), international security, erosion/transformation of the nation-state, religion and politics, global environmental and health crises, global communications and new media, and more.
• Fridays: Learn about career paths in international studies
  Meet with a variety of IST alumni to learn about their careers. Learn about graduate admissions process. I will invite any recruiters who come to campus hoping to meet with IST majors to come meet with this class. Sometimes there will be lunch.

When should I take the IST senior seminar?

• When you have taken at least 60 credit hours overall.
• When you have already taken at least 12 hours of courses that count toward the IST major.
• Enrollment is by instructor permission, so email Dr. Hamerly to request a permit.

What is it like to take this class?

The International Studies Capstone class helped bring me an academic community at Baylor that I didn’t think I would ever find. As an IST major, the departments I take classes in can range from public health and political science to ancient Russian history. While this diversity in options is one of the leading factors that made me choose the major, I found that my classmates often had interests that related to one another but that my story didn’t quite fit into. In just the first week of Capstone, I was shocked by how many other students there were with perspectives and passions so similar to mine. Even though we all have our own unique niches, we share a similar heart for the international studies world and the capstone class provided us with tangible skills and information that we needed to develop our strengths and achieve our various goals. Even now that the class is over, all of us keep each other updated in our group chat and love meeting up to attend various panels and events on campus together. I’ve had so many discussions with classmates about how helpful it was to both have a class geared specifically to our goals and filled with like-minded students that became fast friends.

Halle Kill (’22) is an International Studies major with a minor in Chemistry from New York City. In fall 2022, she will begin a year-long internship in Guatemala working in clinics around Guatemala City and conducting research with the diabetes population there. Afterwards, she plans on attending medical school and hopes to pursue a career in the global health field working with underserved populations around the world.

When I signed up for Dr. Hamerly’s International Studies Capstone class I was unsure what to expect. I quickly realized it was one of the best decisions I could have made to succeed. We learned the critical skill of synthesizing data from multiple sources and analyzing it. We then learned how to communicate its significance through data visualizations and presentations. Another major part of the class was the networking we did both within the class and with Baylor alumni. Each Friday we met with International Studies alumni with experience in federal jobs, NGOs, and the private sector, sometimes over a meal, and learned valuable lessons from their experience. The opportunity to network with alumni was one of the best parts of the class. I would recommend Dr. Hamerly’s capstone class to anyone looking to tie everything they’ve learned together while working on the skills they need to succeed in their career.

Comments from the 2021 Capstone Class:

What are three things you learned in this class and one thing you will do differently as a result of taking it?

• Throughout this course, I have learned to better synthesize my international studies skills. Pulling together all of the different skills I have learned throughout my political science courses has been extremely helpful. Moreover, I also learned more about data visualization and how to take data from excel and put it into a table and graph. This skill is something I want to work more on, but I appreciate the start in learning how to better use data. Also, another thing that I learned was how to write policy memos. This was not something I had been taught before; however, I think it will be an extremely useful skill as I apply for political jobs up in Washington DC. One thing I will try to do differently is put more effort into the data exercises and try to learn more about it as a whole. I wish I put more effort in when I first did the assignments so I could have remembered better how I did them.

• I really appreciated this class because I learned both “hard skills” and “soft skills” for lack of a better term. I learned really important things for jobs such as data visualizations and how to write policy memos. But I also had my eyes opened to looking at topics in a new way such as the trade or economy chapters. I wasn’t really familiar with those topics before but I had heard them numerous times because I feel like they’re such buzz words in DC. But I’m glad we could pin down what they really mean and I feel more prepared to walk into conversations surrounding these international topics discussed in McCormick. I think something I will do differently after this class is how I conduct discussions and meetings. I learned what a productive meeting and discussion looks like and what an ineffective meeting looks like so that is super helpful for my future goals.

• Three things I learned in this class are the best practices to keep in mind when composing cover letters and statements of purpose. I also learned the best format to follow on a resume and how to make it as concise as possible. Lastly, I learned how to make a data visualization on Excel. One thing that I will do differently as a result of this class has to do with creating a data visualization. This class taught me that there are steps to be followed and that it is actually quite simple. I will no longer have to make graphs based on trial and error and hitting different buttons.

Is there any advice you would like to share with the students who take this class next semester?

• I would recommend that they take advantage of the guest speakers for sure! We got to talk to some really cool people and they were all so nice and receptive to struggling students trying to get our foot through the door. That was really encouraging and I think I was stuck in such a spiral, I really needed someone to show me that it’s okay to be a lowly undergrad right now and that there are really people out there who want to help you. So I would definitely say to keep that in the course!

• Really make an effort to get to know everyone in the class. Also, do not be afraid to reach out to some of the speakers to talk one on one with them. I have scheduled conversations with a few of them and they are always willing to talk and give advice.