Communications Senior Capstones: Dec. 2025

Judah Kupfershmid shares his capstone at Candlelight Carols 2025 | Festival of Arts & Culture.

For December 2025 Communications graduates, the culmination of four (plus) years of hard work was showcased during Candlelight Carols’ Festival of Art and Culture. Eight capstone projects were on display in the Chapman 1 conference room, ranging from a novella to a research project, a Bible study guide, and even a cookbook. For two seniors, these capstones were the realization of life-long passions.

Judah Kupfershmid’s Purgatory

“I've definitely have always been a fan of fantasy,” said Judah Kupfershmid. “I've been a huge fan of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.”

Judah channeled this love of fantasy into a monster-themed novella titled Purgatory, which uses the well-known werewolf trope to tell the story of 18-year-old Martin Newman’s journey through addiction and redemption. Judah was particularly inspired by the 2010 film The Wolfman.

“I found that there was such a parallel between the werewolf myth and our struggle with sin. After a while [the werewolf character in the movie] was consumed—his humanity was gone,” he explained. “It just is so symbolic, how if we don't conquer our sin, we eventually give in to it. The fact that he needed to die is symbolic for us needing to die to our sin, and that's the only way out.”

 Judah, who also counts Frankenstein and The Twilight Zone among the major inspirations for his writing, enjoyed the opportunity to work a theme of redemption into a myth that commonly doesn’t offer grace to its monster.

“In every werewolf story that I've seen, I've always been bummed that it means that they're doomed and they'll never be redeemed,” he said.

Nonetheless, Judah found the writing process challenging, particularly when trying to figure out how to make larger plotlines happen plausibly within the limits of the context that he created. When he got stuck, he would look for inspiration in other creators.

 “I will watch something or read something just to get inspiration,” he said. “What's possible? What is believable? I press through until I finally arrive at something: ‘Okay, maybe I can go in this direction or maybe this character can help knock that loose.’”

Though he completed the novella for his capstone, Judah plans to spend serious time revising it and getting it ready for publication after he graduates.

“I have a sister who gave very detailed feedback, and she's very good at spying the plot holes,” he said. “So I'm going to be focusing on making it to where I'm satisfied. And if enough people approve of it, I’ll feel good about putting it on the market.”

Sophia Bell’s From Buried to Blooming

Sophia Bell was also able to channel a long-held passion into the creation of a 30-day devotional for her capstone project, which includes illustrations that she drew herself.

“When I was in middle school I was like, ‘I want to write Bible studies when I get older and so I'm gonna go to Moody and study communications,’” she said. “And so it's kind of funny seeing that as kind of a full-circle moment of things that I wanted to do when I was younger. God still gave me a passion for that.”

Sophia’s devotional, From Buried to Blooming, focuses on growth and sanctification through difficult times, and the fruit (or flowers, if you will) that often result. She illustrated the devotional with gardening images, which speaks to another of her passions.

“I drew from a lot of scriptures that talked about [gardening] and then also just used as intros to each day my own experience, because I love gardening,” she explained. “So this was kind of like a mesh of all of my hobbies into one: painting and gardening and writing.”

Like Judah, Sophia’s biggest challenge in creating her capstone was writer’s block, particularly because she first had to honor the scripture she was featuring.

“Sometimes I would have a really good exegesis of the scripture passage, but I just had a hard time finding how to draw in imagery,” she said. “I also didn't want to make scripture try to say something that it wasn't by using a theme that I had.”

The result is a devotional that she hopes will speak to anyone who wants to spend more time in the scriptures, though she did write it for adult believers and admits that the book does skew a little feminine.

“I didn't want to make something that was just targeted to women,” she explained. “My style is very feminine, so there are flowers and that kind of thing, but it's basically [for] anyone who is walking through challenging seasons of life and needs some encouragement.”

Sophia’s time at Moody included a summer internship with Moody’s Today in the Word, which has been a big part of her personal study of Scripture. She appreciated the behind-the-scenes look into the creation of daily devotionals and how to properly read and use them.

“Today in the Word has always been…super helpful as a student, being so busy, to sit down and read a devotional to help me to get into the Word every day,” she said.

From Classroom to Capstone to Career

Both Sophia and Judah said classes in Professor Kelli Worrall’s creative writing trifecta—Fundamentals of Creative Writing, Advanced Creative Writing, and Writing with Style and Grace—equipped them with the skills they needed to complete their capstones successfully. Judah, who took all three classes, called them “a huge blessing”; in fact, he first conceived the idea for his novella in Advanced Creative Writing.

Sophia, who confirmed her love for writing devotionals in Writing with Style and Grace, also credits Matthew Snyder’s Fundamentals of Visual Design class with giving her tools to successfully illustrate her devotional.

“That class really helped me because I learned InDesign software and how to take my paintings and put them on a digital space so that they could be printed,” she said. “[It was helpful] because I did the layout all on my own.”

After graduation, Sophia plans to work at her home church while looking for a job in publishing or communications, with an emphasis on design and illustration.

For Sophia, the capstone creation process helped hone her future career goals. “[My capstone] actually was helpful to show me what I enjoy and what's hard for me,” she said. “[The writing] wasn't as enjoyable to me as was the painting and designing, which is interesting because that's not been my primary focus while I've been at Moody.”

Other December Communications graduates include Hadassah Johnson, Ruthie Case, Rae Maxwell, Amey Prakash, Elijah Rickard, and Micah Siemens. They have finished well. Congratulations to all! We are excited to see where God leads them next.