As graduates left Town Hall after Commencement, NYC’s own ‘radical protest marching band,’ the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, brought a musical close to the academic year.
In the spring semester at SLU, “Capstone” is the buzzword! Students work hard on their biggest research projects – but most SLU community members are unaware of what’s being researched. Here’s a sampling of projects, mostly by Urban Studies MA students, that examine topics from urban renewal in St. Louis, to perceived safety in The Bronx’s Hub, to how real estate values affect public park maintenance. Together, they provide a peek into SLU scholarship.
How do Black women deal with workplace burnout?
By Tanesha Alexander
My Capstone examines how Black women experience and cope with workplace burnout while being expected to stay strong and carry more than others. It looks at burnout as more than individual stress. It considers how history, race, gender, workplace culture, and unequal expectations shape Black women’s experience at work, given the pressure to remain dependable when support is limited. It suggests ways workplaces can better respond to burnout instead of leaving Black women to manage it on their own.
Urban Renewal in Mill Creek Valley: Policy, Displacement and Collective Memory
By Monique Blount
My capstone examines Mill Creek Valley, a predominantly Black neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri, that was demolished in 1959 through urban renewal and slum clearance policies. The study focuses on the lived experiences of descendants and the lasting impact of losing homes, community institutions, and social networks in a once-thriving Black neighborhood. This research further considers how collective memory can function as a critical tool for addressing the ongoing effects of structural racism and policies that continue to harm Black communities. Using a qualitative research approach, this study uses interviews to highlight the power of collective memory, preserving history, and exposing lasting impacts of structural racism through erasure, displacement, loss, and community harm.
From Jobs to Generational Success: Rethinking Career Pathways in NYC Public Schools
By Alejandro Cantagallo
My capstone examines whether New York City career pathway programs truly prepare students for long-term, durable socio-economic success, or whether they mainly produce short-term outcomes like job placement and credentials. Using a literature review and interviews, it argues that success should be understood more broadly as generational mobility shaped by job quality, wealth, institutional access, civic capacity, and social capital.
How real estate values shaped NYC Parks maintenance budget allocations in Brooklyn, 2024
By Anil Chandrakumar
As someone who enjoys everything our green spaces offer and currently works for NYC Parks, I’ve wondered if all communities in Brooklyn are being served equally: cleaned, cared for and corrected from a maintenance standpoint. I’m highlighting the shift of neighborhood real estate values, the current spending habits and prioritizing practices used at Parks, and identifying the impacts of having a park in your neighborhood. I’m passionate about this topic and care for how parks are funded.
Community Benefit Agreements: A new tool for community advocacy in urban redevelopment
By Daniel Flamhaft
This paper examines the effectiveness of community benefit agreements for empowering communities in the face of the urban growth machine. It adds to our understanding of how community members can get a seat at the table for the planning decisions that impact their own neighborhoods.
Illegal cannabis trade and the impact on tax revenue in New York after legalization
By Desmond Ransford Henry
This research examines how the persistence of New York’s illicit cannabis market has undermined projected tax revenues following legalization in 2021. It finds that high taxes, licensing delays, and limited access to legal dispensaries have kept illegal operators competitive and widespread. Enforcement efforts, while necessary, have proven insufficient to eliminate the underlying economic incentives driving illicit trade. The research concludes that effective cannabis policy requires a balance of regulatory reform, market competitiveness, and targeted enforcement to achieve fiscal and social goals.
Breast Cancer Care in Corrections
By Jacqueline Johnson
This capstone project explores the barriers Black women face in accessing breast cancer care in correctional facilities. It focuses on how race, gender and the prison system influence access to screening, diagnosis, and treatment, and aims to highlight the gaps in care and the need for fair health practices.
Public Drug Use, Homelessness, and Perception of Safety in the Bronx Hub
By Caressa Ogletree
This case study examines how public drug use and homelessness shape the perception of safety in the busy Bronx Hub area, 149th Street. The case study examines how residents, workers, commuters, and those who spend time in the area understand what they see when in the public space of the Bronx Hub. The study examines how those visible conditions, such as public drug use and homelessness, influence their perception of safety, disorder, and who belongs there. It also considers the bigger problems behind public drug use and homelessness, such as poverty, unstable housing, addiction, mental health needs, and lack of support. Overall, the case study examines the Bronx Hub as a place with more than a local problem of public drug use and homelessness. It is a public space where drug use, homelessness, safety, and inequality are all connected in everyday life.
The Problem with Workplace Violence in Healthcare
By Shiba Perry
Workplace violence in healthcare doesn’t just leave physical scars, it erodes staff morale, drives burnout and turnover, and fractures the trust and safety patients depend on to heal. This will be a quantitative and qualitative analysis paper.
Schools for Sale, Communities for Rent: Marketing, Values, and the Limits of School Choice in Central and East Harlem
By Maura Schlagel
My capstone study examines the promotional materials of elementary and schools in Central and East Harlem. This includes websites, mission statements, and admissions information, and looks at them as institutional texts that construct particular visions of community, values, and families. Set against the backdrop of New York City’s rapidly changing school choice landscape, rising income inequality, and one of the most religiously and culturally diverse neighborhoods in the country, this study asks: how does the values language in Harlem schools’ promotional materials reflect, construct, and sort the communities they claim to serve? More specifically, this study investigates what values are most and least promoted across school types, what school marketing strategies reveal about broader patterns of community and social stratification, and how the choices, or lack of real choices, available to Harlem parents reproduce inequality. Using qualitative data analysis, this study analyzes promotional materials across all school types in the 110th to 145th Street corridor, including public district schools, charter schools, and private religious and secular schools. A comparison of schools’ advertised values against actual demographic enrollment data provides the study’s grounding.
Beyond SNAP: Comparing Traditional and Specialized Food Assistance in Urban Communities
By Diamond Shammgod
This capstone project examines the effectiveness of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in combating food insecurity, particularly exploring how enhanced and specialized food initiatives can improve outcomes in urban communities. It utilizes a mixed-methods approach that includes policy analysis, case studies, and expert interviews to evaluate various aspects of the program, including its effectiveness, accessibility, and impact on dietary quality. The project highlights the limitations of the standard SNAP model and analyzes how targeted, locally adapted initiatives can effectively meet the needs of urban populations, ultimately improving food security outcomes.