Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

This 15-week long course is designed to introduce students, specifically in Arizona, to basic sustainability and conservation principles in the context of local reptile wildlife. Throughout the course, the students work on identifying the problem, creating visions for the desired future, and finally developing a strategy to help with reptile species survival in the valley. Research shows that animals in the classroom have led to improved academic success for students. Thus, through creating this course I was able to combine conservation and sustainability curriculum with real-life animals whose survival is directly being affected in the valley. My hope is that this course will help students identify a newfound passion and call to action to protect native wildlife. The more awareness and actionable knowledge which can be brought to students in Arizona about challenges to species survival the more likely we are to see a change in the future and a stronger sense of urgency for protecting wildlife. In order to accomplish these goals, the curriculum was developed to begin with basic concepts of species needs such as food and shelter and basic principles of sustainability. As the course progresses the students analyze current challenges reptile wildlife faces, like urban sprawl, and explore options to address these challenges. The course concludes with a pilot pitch where students present their solution projects to the school.

Collective human attitudes influenced by macro-forces that impact environmental issues are partially correlated to our behaviors for the good and the harm of the planet. In this thesis, I will explore how collective human attitudes contribute to pro-environmental behaviors, common and pre-existing frames of mind on major conservation dilemmas, and finally suggest future directions on how humans could be inclined to take on more environmental responsibility through an increase in human-environmental connectivity. It is found that humans are largely driven by institution structures, education, and social influence. In conclusion, more efforts should be placed to further analyze these structural incentives for pro-environmental behaviors and use them to make environmental stewardship more accessible for all people and diverse circumstances. This can be done by evaluating the human dimensions of what influences human attitudes and behaviors, how to use these forces to systematically influence pro-environmental choices, applying these structural forces to main conservation issues, and further incorporating moral discourse into the environmental research in order to appeal correctly to all aspects and perspectives. Only when human connectivity is understood in relation to the natural sciences will we be able to make positive change in the direction of a healthier Earth.

The depiction of female action heroes in modern blockbuster films has become more accurate throughout the years; however, the representation of women is still not as progressive as feminist scholars, actors, and viewers would like. This thesis explores two recent blockbuster films, Wonder Woman (2017) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and how each film deals with the representation of women. While one could look to many cultural forms to explore such issues, films, “the most accessible representations of the past, present, and future of our society,” are particularly fertile ground for exploring gendered representations and stereotyping (Haskell, 1974). For much of Hollywood history, action films have used female protagonists as either passive, venerated symbols of perfect femininity, or objects of fascination and sexual pleasure for their male viewers. Or, if the female hero does have a degree of agency that allows her to push the plot forward, she is subject to moral scrutiny and frequently masculinized. In fact, the representation of women often falls into binary categories: the angelic damsel in distress, or the morally reprehensible, often masculinized, female villain. While the history of women’s representation in film more generally and action films more specifically is a long and complicated one that is beyond the scope of this project, recent action productions have exhibited notable shifts, both in terms of female characters’ box-office and narrative strength. However, both Wonder Woman and Mad Max: Fury Road, present viewers with examples of female representation that break through many of the misogynistic tropes that have dominated the genre for far too long. The key distinction between how both films destroy gendered stereotypes lies in the degrees to which the films allow their central female protagonists, and more minor female characters, to dominate the narrative and inhabit the composition of the screen. Wonder Woman tells the story of one powerful woman, whereas Fury Road utilizes a multitude of women in its story to defy gender stereotypes. While both films can be interpreted as empowering for female viewers, Wonder Woman gives its audience an easily digestible example of female agency; this is due to Wonder Woman allowing its famous comic book hero to comment and reject traditional women’s clothing, but also insists Diana be limited to hypersexualized battle armour and implicates that women cannot have love, power, and family. On the other hand, Fury Road presents viewers with a more radicalized gynocentric world in which, after considerable struggle and not without compromise, female characters not only have power, but wrest it away from the men who have abusively held onto control in the past. These two films also paved new ground for women in Hollywood production terms: giving women more power at the box-office and destroying the old-aged notion that female-centric films do not sell and make money at the same rate as male-centered ones do. Both Wonder Woman and Mad Max: Fury Road, in their own ways, depict that there is space for female action heroes to be more progressive and feminist in future blockbuster action films.

Filmmakers seek to create story pieces that are visually beautiful and engage the full attention of their audience. They typically abide by a 3-step process moving through pre-production, production, and post-production. Within each step, there are a series of tasks that need to be accomplished in order to reach the completed film. A successful film requires careful planning and strategy in pre-production, timely and decisive execution in production, and minimal unforeseen retouching in post-production.<br/><br/>Even though filmmakers have continued to follow the same formula throughout the decades, the filmmaking process has remained largely inefficient. It is extremely common for pre-production planning to be undercut, for production filming to run far too long, and for post-production VFX and editing to send the project over budget. These instances can cause major issues as the project is being finalized. In many scenarios portions of the project need to be reshot, the box office revenue isn’t enough to make up for extensive VFX retouching, or the project may never even come to fruition. <br/><br/>The reason for this recurring theme of films being over budget and out of time is quite simply that technology has made filmmakers lazy. “Fix it in post” is a disgustingly common phrase used in the film industry. It describes the utter abuse of computer retouching in the post-production phase of filmmaking. Despite working in an industry that seeks to entertain the human eye, filmmakers have become blind to all of the small mistakes that could cost them hundreds of hours and millions of dollars in the long run.

Through this creative project, I analyzed how COVID-19 has affected the theatre industry. I created a mini-documentary following ASU’s production of Runaways, which was performed without an audience. The final product was a combination of pre-filmed and self-taped scenes. I documented how students were still able to learn and cultivate their skills during a time where most things are virtual. In addition, I analyzed how the shift to filmed theatre has changed the definition of live theatre, including increased accessibility. I also explored the importance of theatre through analyzing the themes of musical theatre performances such as Rent and Runaways. During a time where people cannot gather, artists are still finding a way to create and tell stories.

Optimal foraging theory provides a suite of tools that model the best way that an animal will <br/>structure its searching and processing decisions in uncertain environments. It has been <br/>successful characterizing real patterns of animal decision making, thereby providing insights<br/>into why animals behave the way they do. However, it does not speak to how animals make<br/>decisions that tend to be adaptive. Using simulation studies, prior work has shown empirically<br/>that a simple decision-making heuristic tends to produce prey-choice behaviors that, on <br/>average, match the predicted behaviors of optimal foraging theory. That heuristic chooses<br/>to spend time processing an encountered prey item if that prey item's marginal rate of<br/>caloric gain (in calories per unit of processing time) is greater than the forager's<br/>current long-term rate of accumulated caloric gain (in calories per unit of total searching<br/>and processing time). Although this heuristic may seem intuitive, a rigorous mathematical<br/>argument for why it tends to produce the theorized optimal foraging theory behavior has<br/>not been developed. In this thesis, an analytical argument is given for why this<br/>simple decision-making heuristic is expected to realize the optimal performance<br/>predicted by optimal foraging theory. This theoretical guarantee not only provides support<br/>for why such a heuristic might be favored by natural selection, but it also provides<br/>support for why such a heuristic might a reliable tool for decision-making in autonomous<br/>engineered agents moving through theatres of uncertain rewards. Ultimately, this simple<br/>decision-making heuristic may provide a recipe for reinforcement learning in small robots<br/>with little computational capabilities.

Can You Hear Me is a short documentary which seeks to give voice to the experiences of trans and nonbinary students in ASU classrooms. What I present in this project are the direct spoken accounts of the feelings, thoughts and frustrations of transgender and nonbinary students as they navigate university classrooms at Arizona State University. Can You Hear Me serves as a representational platform for trans and nonbinary students to communicate their experiences to other students, staff and faculty in the hopes that it might help make classroom spaces more inclusive.

This thesis is a supplement textbook designed with ASU’s MAT 370, or more generally, a course in introductory real analysis (IRA). With research in the realms of mathematics textbook creation and IRA pedagogy, this supplement aims to provide students or interested readers an additional presentation of the materials. Topics discussed include the real number system, some topology of the real line, sequences of real numbers, continuity, differentiation, integration, and the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. Special emphasis was placed on worked examples of proven results and exercises with hints at the end of every chapter. In this respect, this supplement aims to be both versatile and self-contained for the different mathematics skill levels of readers.