The Multidisciplinary Urban Capstone Project is designed for exceptional undergraduate students who are in their final year and are looking for a unique, challenging capstone design experience. Students in the MUCP:
- Apply knowledge, skills and processes from different disciplines to the analysis of a real-world problem;
- Demonstrate judgement as they integrate economic, environmental, social, and other pertinent interdisciplinary factors;
- Incorporate teamwork, project management, and direct stakeholder and client interactions into their work;
- Prove the feasibility of their solution
Information session recordings
May 20
June 9
Frequently Asked Questions
You are eligible to apply if you are in your final year of your undergraduate degree. The MUCP and IMUCP is a substitute course that you can take in place of your departmental capstone or independent thesis course.
The School of Cities puts out a call for a Statement of Need early in the year, inviting organizations and municipalities to apply with a real urban problem they face, and one they feel a multidisciplinary team of final year students could work on throughout the school year.
The community partner is expected to provide support to their team for 1-2 hours per week from September to March. This support includes timely access to any data that the team requires. The specific details and scope of the project are discussed in an initial meeting between the team members, team TAs, and the Academic Director.
Each student is expected to work approximately 10 hours per week for about 26 weeks. This includes attendance at eight or nine workshops hosted throughout the year by the Academic Director, and a presentation of their work at the annual student showcase.
The course assignments are designed to build towards achieving the course deliverables. The final deliverable will be a report that summarizes the research and investigation resulting from the multidisciplinary and mixed methods problem-solving approach. The following are also student deliverables:
- Project requirements: Defines the background of the problem, frames the problem, and outlines the scope. The project requirement should clearly state what the students expect from the community partner, and the community partner’s expectations of the students.
- Review and critique: The team will present and defend their problem-solving proposal. This is an opportunity to receive feedback and critique from the community partners, the TAs, and the Academic Director.
- Showcase: Poster presentation for student teams to clearly present the problem and an intervention. The showcase is an opportunity for student teams to talk about their research with multiple community partners, as well as with School of Cities and U of T leadership.
- Final report and deliverable: The final report contains the complete problem-solving process, from the definition of the problem to the implementation of the solution and the results of testing. It contains a discussion of the required future work in enough detail that the community partner can implement the solution.
No. You are invited to rank your interests as part of the application process, but the selection committee assigns the team, based on your rankings and the needs of the clients.