Capstone puts Molloy students to the test

The Capstone course is offered to undergraduate business students at Molloy University during the final semester of their senior year. The program challenges students put their skills and expertise to work with not-for-profit or governmental entities by solving a problem by providing a turnkey solution with continuing value.

Brittany Donnelly, a student CEO of the Capstone project, discussed how her team was able to create a plan for Long Island school districts to help support students, families, and faculty members facing bereavement issues by working with hospice care and educational leadership.

Designed to draw upon everything students have learned over the course of four years, the Capstone project allows students to engage in real business experience by working with organizations. Some previous groups who have worked with the Capstone course include Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, the Backyard Players and Friends, Canine Companions, COPE Foundation, EAC Network, Island Harvest, Limb Kind Foundation, Nassau County Bar Association, Paths of Hope, The INN, The Mary Ruchalski Foundation, The Tommy Brull Foundation, and the Village of Freeport, among others.

The project was carried out in the fall semester at the request of Northwell Health’s Hospice Care Network, which submitted a proposal asking the Capstone students to consider three challenges it faced. 

The first two requested help fundraising on college campuses, and a desire for improved visibility through social and traditional media, while the third was to offer a “train the trainers” program connecting the Hospice Care Network’s children and family bereavement services with school districts or mental health agencies.

Mary Gravina, the associate vice president of Hospice Care Network, said such a program can “teach the support staff in the school districts how they can offer and lead programs to support grieving children.”    

With Donnelly’s supervision, adherence to deadlines and efforts to ensure team members were working on tasks aligned with their interests, she enabled the groups to become a cohesive unit.

“I had to be on top of everything,” Donnelly said. “We all grew so close because we were spending so much time working on the project and connecting with each other.”

She would graduate from Molloy in December with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and is now a merchandizing intern at Publishers Clearing House in Jericho.

Dawn DiStefano, associate dean of Molloy Unviersity and director of undergraduate programs at the School of Business, has taught the course since 2015. She said that the students’ work draws on information they learned in finance, economics, marketing, management and accounting courses.

Classes are typically comprised of 15 to 18 students who are divided into three groups to answer the charges raised by the client. In the first half of the semester, students work on tasks in the three groups before uniting in the final six weeks to create one program for the final presentation. Clients can also be approved for a Phase II project in a subsequent semester. Between DiStefano, whose background in nonprofit management, provides referrals from businesses in that sector, and a working arrangement with the University’s Office of Advancement, there is now a waiting list of prospective businesses seeking to participate.

Gravina said the Molloy students were “incredibly energetic and very determined” in the initial meeting. Still, the complexities of hospice care, especially relating to child and family bereavement weren’t something they knew from the start.

“It took them a little while to understand who we were and what we needed,” Gravina said. “It was brand new to them.”

Getting assistance to forge such connections is a necessity because Gravina’s unit does not have sufficient staffing to accomplish the task itself. This required students to work for six or seven hours each day in order to help out.    

For her task, Donnelly went straight to the top of the Merrick school district, reaching out to Superintendent Dominick Palma, who is also president of the Nassau County Council of school superintendents.

Donnelly emphasized the mission of the children’s bereavement program at Hospice Care Network and how it could help students deal with “the emotional aspect” of suffering a loss in their families or community. 

“We want to help the children and spread this to other schools and children in general across Nassau County,” Donnelly said. “I put the emphasis on how the children getting the help they need would not only benefit them, but it would also benefit their way of communicating with their friends and their schoolwork.”   

The importance of Capstone students’ efforts was made more evident when a Seaford High School student in Nassau County died in a car accident in January, as the district was in need of support and sensitivity to better support the children with bereavement. 

“My job is transforming students to be the sought-out leaders of tomorrow,” DiStefano said. “Not just because they have qualifying skills, but because they have the right disposition to do so. They can be the ones to create the corporate culture that is so needed today.”

For more information on the program visit Molloy.edu and search “Capstone course.”