It's hard to measure the impact a program can have over two decades at a university, but the Capstone Scholars Program can measure it in flour, egg and chocolate chips. One of the program's signature events, Hot Cookie Friday, started as a weekly gathering of students and has turned into a tradition where students, staff and faculty come together to talk, share ideas and secure opportunities  

"We’ve had students tell us they’ve come for the cookies and left with a research connection," says David DeWeil, staff director of the Capstone Scholars Program. 

Capstone Scholars is a two-year, invitation-only program within Carolina Elite, a group of specialized programs for high-achieving students at the University of South Carolina. 

DeWeil joined the program in 2006 as its first graduate assistant while pursuing a master's degree in higher education and student affairs at the University of South Carolina. Today, as the program’s staff director, he supports the staff who help Capstone Scholars connect with faculty, campus partners and experiences beyond the classroom. 

Twenty years later, Capstone Scholars live across campus and off campus while remaining connected through shared experiences and program traditions. 

"Campus partnerships are in our DNA," DeWeil says. "From the very beginning, this has been a shared commitment between Academic Affairs and Student Affairs." 

For Faculty Director Amanda Fairchild, the Capstone experience is about helping students discover what's possible once they arrive at Carolina. 

"Most of our students would thrive anywhere," Fairchild says. “Capstone doesn’t just recognize talent; it helps students figure out what to do with it once here.” 

Fairchild says the program helps students build a sense of belonging before encouraging them to explore research, leadership, service and study abroad. 

"You see it when a student stops asking what they have to do and starts asking what they can make happen," Fairchild says. 

For Hilton Head Island native Alexandra Wiegel, one of those experiences took her to Honduras. 

The senior public health major in the Arnold School of Public Health participated in a Capstone study abroad experience that also gives scholars the chance to learn alongside medical students from the Floyd School of Medicine. 

"It was truly a life-changing experience and clarified my decision to attend graduate school for occupational therapy," Wiegel says. "It absolutely solidified my love of healthcare and showed me my love for medical missions." 

Faculty connections are another part of the Capstone experience. Dedicated courses and program events create space for scholars to connect with faculty from across the university. 

"A student is far more likely to remember one real conversation with a professor than anything that happened in a lecture that week," Fairchild says. 

Hakeem Jefferson can speak to that firsthand. 

While a student at Carolina, Jefferson volunteered on Barack Obama's presidential campaign alongside friends he met through Capstone. He also connected with political science and African American Studies professor Todd Shaw through the program. 

Shaw later invited Jefferson to join a research project examining how implicit racial appeals shaped support for Obama, giving him his first experience with serious research. 

"USC is where I first learned to think well, and it's where I fell in love with research," Jefferson says. "Capstone was where I found my footing and my first community of fellow thinkers." 

That early research helped set the direction for his career. The 2011 Carolina graduate is now a professor of political science at Stanford University. 

"The political psychology I do today runs directly out of what I started at Carolina, and I'm grateful for it," he says. 

Among the many students DeWeil has worked with over the years, one story illustrates how those relationships can last well past graduation. 

"I think back to the early days when I met a Capstone Scholar in my University 101 class who happened to go to the same high school as me," DeWeil says. "He was my peer leader for a couple of years, and I ended up being in his wedding after graduation." 

For Fairchild, stories like these are among the clearest measures of Capstone's lasting influence. 

"Those long-arc outcomes are probably the truest signs of what the program does, since they show up years and even decades later," she says. 

This fall, DeWeil will experience Capstone from a different perspective. 

His daughter is joining the program's newest class. 

"It's surreal," he says. "Over the years she's attended events and Gamecock athletic events with me, and it's neat to see how that's grown her love for the university. She was thrilled to be named a Capstone Scholar, and I was overjoyed." 

Capstone Scholars: 20 years of impact 

• 20,000+ Capstone Scholars since 2006 

• About 400 students in the inaugural class 

• Approximately 1,500 first-year scholars welcomed annually today 

• Nearly $400,000 awarded for undergraduate research 

• Almost $750,000 awarded for study abroad