Capstones, collaboration and community
Redefining capstone learning by bringing Health students, faculty and community partners together to tackle real-world challenges
The room hums with conversation. Around each table, students talk with health-care professionals, community advocates and local leaders. A Health Sciences student leans in to ask about cultural accessibility in hospitals. Across the room, a Kinesiology student listens as a transit worker describes barriers faced by riders with mobility challenges.
This isn’t a typical university lecture — it’s a glimpse at how the University of Waterloo is expanding what capstone learning can be. In HLTH 480: Competencies in Health, students learn to solve real-world problems through a community-embedded classroom model that blends coursework with collaboration and social impact.
Building a campus-wide capstone network
HLTH 480 is one piece of a University-wide effort to expand experiential, interdisciplinary learning through capstone courses. Dr. Jennifer Yessis, associate director of professional graduate studies in the School of Public Health Sciences (SPHS), co-leads this Global Futures Network-funded project along with colleagues from Engineering and Environment.
The community-embedded classroom is an important part of growing the capstone ecosystem. It gives students a chance to work with partners — including non-profits, municipalities, health-care organizations, campus services and researchers — often with a focus on positive social change.
Created in collaboration with United College’s GreenHouse social innovation hub, including Tania Del Matto and Erin Hogan and the Centre for Career Development (CCD) with Kate Kennedy, HLTH 480 helps students strengthen their creative problem-solving skills while tackling real-world health challenges.
Originally designed by SPHS’s Dr. Diane Williams and Yessis, the team sought ways to scale the course to more students after the first offering. Dr. Sean Geobey from the Faculty of Environment shared the community-embedded classroom model, which worked well for more than doubling the cohort after the first year.
Hands-on experience for health students
“Many of our students plan to work in health care, so strong communication skills are essential,” Yessis says. “Students need to work well in teams, collaborate with other professionals, and talk with patients in clear, compassionate ways. That means learning how to ask good questions, gather information and build trust — skills that aren’t always part of traditional coursework.”
HLTH 480 fills that gap by giving students the chance to apply what they’ve learned to complex, community-based problems. CCD workshops allow students to reflect on their strengths and goals while creating career e-portfolios. GreenHouse staff lead design sprints using the principles of design thinking — empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test — to help students build innovative, evidence-based solutions. The result is a learning experience that connects self-reflection, collaboration and creativity.
This year, GreenHouse alumni led some of the workshops as part of a Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada (CEWIL Canada) grant. Anna Wright (BSc ‘20, Health Sciences), who led the prototyping workshops, emphasized how essential real community engagement is for student learning. She noted that opportunities to work directly with end users is often rare in traditional coursework, yet critical for developing meaningful solutions in health care.
“Watching students move from writing about their ideas to actually building prototypes was incredibly rewarding,” Wright said. “You could see the moment it clicked for each group – their projects suddenly felt feasible, and they began problem-solving in entirely new ways. Early exposure to design thinking gives health students a perspective that will serve them long after graduation. Learning to problem-solve this way has shaped my own career immensely.”
The prototyping sessions filled the room with energy as students identified limitations, exchanged thoughtful feedback, and refined their concepts through hands-on experimentation. Wright believes this experiential model not only builds confidence but also helps students recognize the many paths their careers can take when they understand innovation tools.
From ideas to impact
Since its launch in 2023, HLTH 480 teams have worked on projects that address real community needs. Students have explored how people experiencing homelessness access health care, developed tools to raise awareness of bladder cancer symptoms, and designed a wearable patch to help predict stress responses in neurodivergent children.
Thanks to funding from CEWIL Canada, some students have continued their projects after the course, gaining paid experience and deepening community partnerships.
“These experiences change how students see themselves,” Yessis says. “Some discover a passion for innovation or advocacy they didn’t know they had. Others realize that empathy and collaboration are just as important as technical skill.”
Learning across disciplines
Last fall, Yessis and Dr. Laura Middleton of the Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences taught HLTH 480 side-by-side. Students from Middleton’s course, KIN 418: Physical Activity and Aging, joined HLTH 480 sessions with community partners and workshops run by GreenHouse and the CCD.
“After teaching KIN 418 for a decade, I can confirm that the community-embedded classroom model helped students think more deeply and creatively about community challenges,” Middleton says. “Their project pitches were far more realistic and likely to make an impact than in previous years.”
This year also brought a new partnership with Dr. James Tung in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Tung’s students design prototypes for health applications but often have limited exposure to the social and behavioural aspects of health. By working with HLTH 480 students, who bring insight into patient needs, both groups gain a broader understanding.
Early in the term, the engineering students presented their projects for feedback from the health cohort. In November, the health students shared their own solutions and gathered insights from the engineering group.
“The peer review between biomedical engineering and health students was a win-win,” Yessis says. “Each group learned from the other’s strengths — design from one side, context from the other.”
Preparing tomorrow’s changemakers
Courses like HLTH 480 show how capstone courses can reach beyond labs and lecture halls to address complex community issues. Students learn to navigate challenges, build partnerships and design solutions that combine evidence and empathy.
There are plans to team up with Dr. Edith Law, who will be teaching a capstone course for computer science students, CS 497, in fall 2026. Both capstone courses will be scheduled together with students from Health Sciences and Computer Science integrated into interdisciplinary teams to focus on the topic of AI and health.
“The way we’re teaching and collaborating across departments shows what’s possible when disciplines connect,” Yessis says. “Together, we’re preparing students to take on important health challenges — and to lead meaningful change in their communities.”