We live in a world where manual skills are shunned. As technology advances, manual skills, techniques, and tools are becoming obsolete and a thing of the past. However, preserving manual craftsmanship should be an essential part of designing a product. George Nakashima, an Japanese American Architect and woodworker once said “I believe in them, not only in the act of producing a better product, but in the sheer joy of doing or becoming.” This quote is the drive and motivation of my capstone.

For my capstone, I designed and created furniture using traditional woodworking methods. The traditional woodworking is a culture that is increasingly becoming extinct with companies like Ikea. There’s a high demand for nicely designed but cheaped crafted furniture. The modernism style is an important part of our culture today but we can’t forget the classic style and traditional methods.

(I'm still working on finishing the chair plus other products)

For my capstone, I worked with my church(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints aka the Mormon Church) to better improve the family history/ancestry program that is run through the church with a program known as Indexing. Indexing is a program that is used my members of the LDS church to further increase the database of names in the church's genealogy records so that things can be done in a more sacred setting. So, to further simplify what it is that I did, for my capstone, I worked with the genealogy group at my church to archive as many names as I could through the Indexing program into the LDS church's database. I chose to have my dad as my mentor, for several reasons, for one I knew that he would keep me in check through the whole process of completing the project and was always asking me for updates on how far along I was.

My Capstone project was a joint effort with Jonas Bromley to create a solar powered charging station. The plan was to create a solar panel that would provide power to a charging station for phones and laptops inside the school. There were three main steps in making this plan come to fruition: one, making a solar panel; two, making a circuit to ensure that the battery does not get overcharged; and three, creating a station with charging cables in an accessible location.

My job was creating the solar panel. After getting the solar cells, I realized that there was more work to be done than I originally thought. The cells that I ordered needed to have tabbing wire soldered to each cell to wire them together. The biggest issue was that solar cells are extremely fragile and any moderate force would shatter them. Thus, creating the solar panel required a lot of patience; a lot of cells were broken by the end of the project. I spent a lot of time with my mentor and engineering teacher John Kamal problem solving and learning about electronics. He was a huge help in completing this project and kept me on the right track.

Having been in America for over nine years now, I have always loved the diversity of culture and race within my surroundings. It’s fascinating hearing and seeing the colorful facet of varying cultures. However, it’s distressing when I tell people about my culture and where I’m from because they’re so unaware of it. A culture so rich and beautiful, yet so invisible to people. Also, to be frank, I did not know much about my culture and my country, Tibet, as well as I should have. Through this year long project, I wanted to reach out to people through digital media, an ubiquitous tool around the world, to teach about Tibet and to teach myself about its history.

​For my Capstone I worked on the preproduction process to be able to make a high quality short film. This project took many different forms as I edited and reworked it. From creating a TV pilot episode to trying to film this film, I decided instead to focus my capstone on the pre production aspects on making this film, in which the ultimate result would be that I am ready to start filming. Which I have thus far succeeded in! In fact I have already filmed some scenes, which will be reshot later, but certainly demonstrate some examples of how page changes to screen.

The bulk of this project and my work lies on the script that it all comes from, which was a more difficult process than I originally gave it credit for. Creating a storyline, characters and especially dialogue that you feel like most audience members would be able to listen and respond well too- are all very difficult things to do I found. Especially when the content of your script deals with a supernatural element as well.

I was able to learn a lot into the making of films and media creations, and how encompassing and difficult it must be when you're actually in the industry. From script writing to getting props and more it was an incredibly involved process. I have been able to get my movie at a good place and I hope you will all enjoy it when it comes out next year!!!

Link to Google Folder with my work: Sean’s Capstone

Link to Citations (also in folder): Citations

For my Capstone I wanted to focus on what is it like to coach a baseball team. I wanted to understand the basics of it. For example come up/make drills for practices, workout routines, making lineup cards for games, and record games in the book. Since I had elbow surgery over the past summer I wanted to find a way to still be part of the baseball program at SLA. My mentor was able to let me coach throughout the fall, winter, and a little bit of the spring. I didn’t coach as much in spring because that was when I returned to action.