This benchmark course portfolio is the culmination of a year’s long planning and execution process to improve an existing capstone course NSST 475. This course has two goals: to teach students about subject matter and to expose them to structured analytic techniques (SATs) before they graduate. This course is a minor capstone which means that the students come from a diverse set of disciplinary backgrounds. I targeted two course objectives to examine for this project with the intention of employing backward course design to think through what students should be learning and how I can improve that process. This portfolio examines the development of my target objectives and a discussion of the teaching methods and activity design that I employed to maximize the impact on the students. The results show that students were enthusiastic about the subject matter and SATs. Finally this portfolio discusses the future of the class and the lessons learned
