A: The overall goal of the capstone program is to help students discover and develop new and effective ways of communicating, managing, and working with all stakeholders in the healthcare field. The capstone helps trainees to develop the contextual awareness, integrative management, and industry technical skills that are needed to lead and affect change in a rapidly expanding healthcare sector.

This capstone puts you in a new organization, with a group of fellow graduate trainees, so that you get hands-on training and experience in a multitude of environments as a part of your graduate training. The technical and soft skills learned during the capstone, in addition to the coursework in the degree program, will help you advance to the next stages of your career.

The portfolio project follows the same format as the capstone and is good preparation for those individuals who wish to pursue a doctoral degree after completion of the masters. Instead of being part of a group of students, allowing you to choose a specific role, such as student project manager, student client liaison, or student analyst, a student pursuing a portfolio would be expected to perform all of these tasks themselves. Portfolios often follow a more traditional thesis like approach, and often culminate in a publication, which is good preparation if the student wishes to pursue training at the doctoral level or segue into academic research.