Learning through experience
The Calvin Action Projects (CAP) are multi-disciplinary projects intended to provide business majors at Calvin College with a significant transformational learning experience with a team of students working as consultants for actual sponsors on real business problems.
Collaborative learning
Student CAP teams at Calvin College consist of undergraduate business majors with little or no professional experience. The teams work under the guidance of faculty advisors who have high levels of professional and academic experience to help provide better results and a more realistic project experience for the students - including direction from more experienced practitioners.
CAP is designed first and foremost to be a transformational learning experience for the students. Our goal is that the projects will also provide real, fact and data-driven solutions and recommendations for sponsors, which will stimulate thinking and provide fresh insights and actionable directions.
Creative problem solving
Calvin CAP teams are not given well-defined problems and asked to choose from several obvious alternatives. Instead, the CAP 
experience leaves the sense-making phase to the students, which forces them to develop both problem-solving and opportunity sensing skills. The problem definition and project scoping phases are important to the overall CAP project experience and give the students a better sense of the uncertainties and the dynamics of the business world.
CAP projects are semester-long, and are part of the course requirements for such classes such as Marketing, Finance, Accounting, and the senior Capstone project.
