EdD in Leadership Program Capstone Partnerships
Our 3rd year Doctor of Education (EdD) in Leadership students fulfill their degree requirements by completing team-based capstones. Capstones are Dissertations in Practice that address actionable problems of practice to advance organizational improvement for selected partner organizations.
Real World Problems
Capstones impact the work of partner organizations (and/or a specific office, department or unit within the organization) by offering improvements to address specific challenges and contexts. Doctoral teams conduct interactive analyses of problems, documents, and literature as well as field-based inquiry specific to the organization. Partners receive a culminating product, with findings and recommendations targeted to meet the needs of the organization. For their degree requirements, the capstone teams also produce a Dissertation in Practice that they defend to an academic committee.
Real World Impact
EdD capstone teams have fulfilled many different needs for over 110 organizations from a variety of sectors. Here are a few examples:
- Increasing Doctoral Student Completion Rates within a College
- Teacher and Leadership Recruitment in a Fiscally Distressed Urban District
- The Intersection of Diversity, Inclusion, and Audience Building in Performing Arts
- A Case Study about Increasing Equity in the Capacity Building Grant Funding Process
For an additional sense of the impact of this work, this VCU article profiles a past partnership.
Who can be a Capstone Partner?
Partner organizations can be located anywhere (or have multiple sites) and capstones may be completed by distance (i.e., online/virtual). Past partners have included organizations from the K12, Higher Education, Nonprofit, Private, and Public Service sectors.
What are Capstone Partner responsibilities?
If selected, partner organizations:
- Designate a point of contact for communications and four primary meetings during a 13-month timeline (below) with a faculty chair and a doctoral student team of 2-5 members,
- Inform and approve the work plan (plan is also approved by an academic committee), and
- Help facilitate agreed-upon field work/data collection that the team will undertake within the organization.
How do I learn more about Capstone Partnerships?
- Attend our virtual Information Session on February 11, 2025 - Register here
- Contact Dr. Kim Bridges, Coordinator of Capstone Experiences, at bridgeskm@vcu.edu
How can I submit my organization’s problem of practice for consideration?
Your organization’s identified problem of practice may be submitted via this Request for Partnership form. Please be as detailed as possible to help us better gauge how a Capstone team can best serve your needs. Requests for Partnership forms must be submitted no later than March 14, 2025 for consideration for the 2025-2026 capstone cycle.
Note: Many factors contribute to which projects are selected for partnership with the EdD capstone teams; thus, there is no guarantee of an organization’s selection for a capstone partnership.
2025/2026 Timeline
Teams work with selected partners over this timeframe:
March 14, 2025
- Deadline for organizations to submit the Request a Partnership form for capstone work in 2025-2026
April - May
- Notification about selected organizations and projects. Partners and teams meet virtually.
June - August
- Teams analyze problems of practice, system/context, relevant documents and literature to generate an actionable problem of practice for capstone work.
August - September
- Teams present analyses and propose a scope and plan of work for partner and academic committee approval.
October - May
- Teams continue to interact with partner organizations to collect, interpret, and analyze data.
- Teams and partners convene about the progress of the work and final product.
April - May, 2026
- Teams present data-informed recommendations, final deliverable(s), and results to the partner.
- Teams defend scholarly documents to the faculty committee as part of the graduation requirement.