Portland State University (PSU) is a public university with more than twenty-three thousand students enrolled in 120 undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degree programs. In the fall of 1994, the PSU faculty initiated the revised general education program, University Studies. The culmination of this four-year, interdisciplinary general education program is the capstone requirement. Under the guidance of PSU faculty members and community partners, six-credit capstone courses provide community-based learning and give interdisciplinary student teams an opportunity to apply what they have learned in their major and in their other University Studies courses to a challenge emanating from the metropolitan community. The capstone's purposes are to cultivate in students crucial life abilities that are important both academically and professionally and to allow them to establish connections within the larger community, developing strategies for analyzing and addressing problems and working with others trained in fields different from their own. This article describes the impact of this capstone requirement on PSU students, as well as the challenges presented in the assessment of the capstone courses.