Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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Description
The inherent risk in testing drugs has been hotly debated since the government first started regulating the drug industry in the early 1900s. Who can assume the risks associated with trying new pharmaceuticals is unclear when looked at through society's lens. In the mid twentieth century, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published several guidance documents encouraging researchers to exclude women from early clinical drug research. The motivation to publish those documents and the subsequent guidance documents in which the FDA and other regulatory offices established their standpoints on women in drug research may have been connected to current events at the time. The problem of whether women should be involved in drug research is a question of who can assume risk and who is responsible for disseminating what specific kinds of information. The problem tends to be framed as one that juxtaposes the health of women and fetuses and sets their health as in opposition. That opposition, coupled with the inherent uncertainty in testing drugs, provides for a complex set of issues surrounding consent and access to information.
ContributorsMeek, Caroline Jane (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis director) / Brian, Jennifer (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Company X is one of the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductors. The company relies on various suppliers in the U.S. and around the globe for its manufacturing process. The financial health of these suppliers is vital to the continuation of Company X's business without any material interruption. Therefore, it is in Company X's interest to monitor its supplier's financial performance. Company X has a supplier financial health model currently in use. Having been developed prior to watershed events like the Great Recession, the current model may not reflect the significant changes in the economic environment due to these events. Company X wants to know if there is a more accurate model for evaluating supplier health that better indicates business risk. The scope of this project will be limited to a sample of 24 suppliers representative of Company X's supplier base that are public companies. While Company X's suppliers consist of both private and public companies, the used of exclusively public companies ensures that we will have sufficient and appropriate data for the necessary analysis. The goal of this project is to discover if there is a more accurate model for evaluating the financial health of publicly traded suppliers that better indicates business risk. Analyzing this problem will require a comprehensive understanding of various financial health models available and their components. The team will study best practice and academia. This comprehension will allow us to customize a model by incorporating metrics that allows greater accuracy in evaluating supplier financial health in accordance with Company X's values.
ContributorsLi, Tong (Co-author) / Gonzalez, Alexandra (Co-author) / Park, Zoon Beom (Co-author) / Vogelsang, Meridith (Co-author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Hertzel, Mike (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
In the medical industry, there have been promising advances in the increase of new types of healthcare to the public. As of 2015, there was a 98% Premarket Approval rate, a 38% increase since 2010. In addition, there were 41 new novel drugs approved for clinical usage in 2014 where the average in the previous years from 2005-2013 was 25. However, the research process towards creating and delivering new healthcare to the public remains remarkably inefficient. It takes on average 15 years, over $900 million by one estimate, for a less than 12% success rate of discovering a novel drug for clinical usage. Medical devices do not fare much better. Between 2005-2009, there were over 700 recalls per year. In addition, it takes at minimum 3.25 years for a 510(k) exempt premarket approval. Plus, a time lag exists where it takes 17 years for only 14% of medical discoveries to be implemented clinically. Coupled with these inefficiencies, government funding for medical research has been decreasing since 2002 (2.5% of Gross Domestic Product) and is predicted to be 1.5% of Gross Domestic Product by 2019. Translational research, the conversion of bench-side discoveries to clinical usage for a simplistic definition, has been on the rise since the 1990s. This may be driving the increased premarket approvals and new novel drug approvals. At the very least, it is worth considering as translational research is directly related towards healthcare practices. In this paper, I propose to improve the outcomes of translational research in order to better deliver advancing healthcare to the public. I suggest Best Value Performance Information Procurement System (BV PIPS) should be adapted in the selection process of translational research projects to fund. BV PIPS has been shown to increase the efficiency and success rate of delivering projects and services. There has been over 17 years of research with $6.3 billion of projects and services delivered showing that BV PIPS has a 98% customer satisfaction, 90% minimized management effort, and utilizes 50% less manpower and effort. Using University of Michigan \u2014 Coulter Foundation Program's funding process as a baseline and standard in the current selection of translational research projects to fund, I offer changes to this process based on BV PIPS that may ameliorate it. As concepts implemented in this process are congruent with literature on successful translational research, it may suggest that this new model for selecting translational research projects to fund will reduce costs, increase efficiency, and increase success. This may then lead to more Premarket Approvals, more new novel drug approvals, quicker delivery time to the market, and lower recalls.
ContributorsDel Rosario, Joseph Paul (Author) / Kashiwagi, Dean (Thesis director) / Kashiwagi, Jacob (Committee member) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Financial statements are one of the most important, if not the most important, documents for investors. These statements are prepared quarterly and yearly by the company accounting department, and are then audited in detail by a large external accounting firm. Investors use these documents to determine the value of the company, and trust that the company was truthful in its statements, and the auditing firm correctly audited the company's financial statements for any mistakes in their books and balances. Mistakes on a company's financial statements can be costly. However, financial fraud on the statements can be outright disastrous. Penalties for accounting fraud can include individual lifetime prison sentences, as well as company fines for billions of dollars. As students in the accounting major, it is our responsibility to ensure that financial statements are accurate and truthful to protect ourselves, other stakeholders, and the companies we work for. This ethics game takes the stories of Enron, WorldCom, and Lehman Brothers and uses them to help students identify financial fraud and how it can be prevented, as well as the consequences behind unethical decisions in financial reporting. The Enron scandal involved CEO Kenneth Lay and his predecessor Jeffery Skilling hiding losses in their financial statements with the help of their auditing firm, Arthur Andersen. Enron collapsed in 2002, and Lay was sentenced to 45 years in prison with his conspirator Skilling sentenced to 24 years in prison. In the WorldCom scandal, CEO Bernard "Bernie" Ebbers booked line costs as capital expenses (overstating WorldCom's assets), and created fraudulent accounts to inflate revenue and WorldCom's profit. Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison and lost his title as WorldCom's Chief Executive Officer. Lehman Brothers took advantage of a loophole in accounting procedure Repo 105, that let the firm hide $50 billion in profits. No one at Lehman Brothers was sentenced to jail since the transaction was technically considered legal, but Lehman was the largest investment bank to fail and the only large financial institution that was not bailed out by the U.S. government.
ContributorsPanikkar, Manoj Madhuraj (Author) / Samuelson, Melissa (Thesis director) / Ahmad, Altaf (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The author is an accounting major headed into the public accounting industry. As a tax intern his senior year, he was able to work in the thick of "busy season", when tax returns are due for submission and work is very busy. The author tired of working long hours and continuous talking with his accounting friends how working on Saturdays and long weeknights was generally accepted. Best value principles from Dr. Dean Kashiwagi's Information Measurement Theory were applied to examine how to maximize efficiency in public accounting and reduce the workload. After reviewing how Information Measurement Theory applies to public accounting, the author deemed three possible solutions to improve the working conditions of public accountants. First, to decrease the work load during busy season, tax organizers need to be sent earlier and staff should be assigned to oversee this information gathering. Second, in order to better prepare new hires to become partners, the career path needs to be outlined on day one with a career guide. Finally, in order to more successfully on board new hires due to the steep learning in public accounting, firms should utilize buddy systems and encourage organic mentoring.
ContributorsBohmke, Scott (Author) / Kashiwagi, Dean (Thesis director) / Kashiwagi, Jacob (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
This project explores the dimensions that affect the success of a nonprofit organizations' web presence by using a dance and health nonprofit website as the foundation of the research and redesign. This report includes literature and design research, analysis, recommendations and a journal of the web design process. Through research, three categories were identified as the primary dimensions affecting the success of a website: content, technical adequacy and appearance. Furthermore, website success is influenced by how the strength of individual categories relies on one another. To improve the web design of Dancers and Health Together Inc., content implementations and redesign elements were both research and personal preference-based. The redesigned website can be found at www.collaydennis.com and will become inactive after May 31, 2015.
ContributorsDennis, Collay Carole (Author) / Coleman, Grisha (Thesis director) / Hosmer, Anthony Ryan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
In A Comparative Analysis of Indoor and Greenhouse Cannabis Cultivation Systems, the two most common systems for commercial cannabis cultivation are compared using an operational and capital expenditure model combined with a collection of relevant industry sources to ascertain conclusions about the two systems' relative competitiveness. The cannabis industry is one of the fastest growing nascent industries in the United States, and, as it evolves into a mature market, it will require more sophisticated considerations of resource deployment in order to maximize efficiency and maintain competitive advantage. Through drawing on leading assumptions by industry experts, we constructed a model of each system to demonstrate the dynamics of typical capital deployment and cost flow in each system. The systems are remarkably similar in many respects, with notable reductions in construction costs, electrical costs, and debt servicing for greenhouses. Although the differences are somewhat particular, they make up a large portion of the total costs and capital expenditures, causing a marked separation between the two systems in their attractiveness to operators. Besides financial efficiency, we examined quality control, security, and historical norms as relevant considerations for cannabis decision makers, using industry sources to reach conclusions about the validity of each of these concerns as a reason for resistance to implementation of greenhouse systems. In our opinion, these points of contention will become less pertinent with the technological and legislative changes surrounding market maturation. When taking into account the total mix of information, we conclude that the greenhouse system is positioned to become the preeminent method of production for future commercial cannabis cultivators.
ContributorsShouse, Corbin (Co-author) / Nichols, Nathaniel (Co-author) / Swenson, Dan (Thesis director) / Cassidy, Nancy (Committee member) / Feltham, Joe (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Executive compensation is broken into two parts: one fixed and one variable. The fixed component of executive compensation is the annual salary and the variable components are performance-based incentives. Clawback provisions of executive compensation are designed to require executives to return performance-based, variable compensation that was erroneously awarded in the year of a misstatement. This research shows the need for the use of a new clawback provision that combines aspects of the two currently in regulation. In our current federal regulation, there are two clawback provisions in play: Section 304 of Sarbanes-Oxley and section 954 of The Dodd\u2014Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This paper argues for the use of an optimal clawback provision that combines aspects of both the current SOX provision and the Dodd-Frank provision, by integrating the principles of loss aversion and narcissism. These two factors are important to consider when designing a clawback provision, as it is generally accepted that average individuals are loss averse and executives are becoming increasingly narcissistic. Therefore, when attempting to mitigate the risk of a leader keeping erroneously awarded executive compensation, the decision making factors of narcissism and loss aversion must be taken into account. Additionally, this paper predicts how compensation structures will shift post-implementation. Through a survey analyzing the level of both loss- aversion and narcissism in respondents, the research question justifies the principle that people are loss averse and that a subset of the population show narcissistic tendencies. Both loss aversion and narcissism drove the results to suggest there are benefits to both clawback provisions and that a new provision that combines elements of both is most beneficial in mitigating the risk of executives receiving erroneously awarded compensation. I concluded the most optimal clawback provision is mandatory for all public companies (Dodd-Frank), targets all executives (Dodd-Frank), and requires the recuperation of the entire bonus, not just that which was in excess of what should have been received (SOX).
ContributorsLarscheid, Elizabeth (Author) / Samuelson, Melissa (Thesis director) / Casas-Arce, Pablo (Committee member) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
The spread of fake news (rumors) has been a growing problem on the internet in the past few years due to the increase of social media services. People share fake news articles on social media sometimes without knowing that those articles contain false information. Not knowing whether an article is fake or real is a problem because it causes social media news to lose credibility. Prior research on fake news has focused on how to detect fake news, but efforts towards controlling fake news articles on the internet are still facing challenges. Some of these challenges include; it is hard to collect large sets of fake news data, it is hard to collect locations of people who are spreading fake news, and it is difficult to study the geographic distribution of fake news. To address these challenges, I am examining how fake news spreads in the United States (US) by developing a geographic visualization system for misinformation. I am collecting a set of fake news articles from a website called snopes.com. After collecting these articles I am extracting the keywords from each article and storing them in a file. I then use the stored keywords to search on Twitter in order to find out the locations of users who spread the rumors. Finally, I mark those locations on a map in order to show the geographic distribution of fake news. Having access to large sets of fake news data, knowing the locations of people who are spreading fake news, and being able to understand the geographic distribution of fake news will help in the efforts towards addressing the fake news problem on the internet by providing target areas.
ContributorsNgweta, Lilian Mathias (Author) / Liu, Huan (Thesis director) / Wu, Liang (Committee member) / Software Engineering (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Imagining Climate (www.imaginingclimate.com) is a social media project that gauges how the public thinks about climate change in their community. Users will view climate data from 2017, view projected data for 2050, and then be given a prompt to imagine what the future looks like to them and write a short narrative story about their vision. Imagining Climate hopes to provide a public source of data for all and use imaginative writing to help users understand how other members of their communities think about climate change.
ContributorsLeung, Ellery Hermes (Author) / Popova, Laura (Thesis director) / Tarrant, Philip (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05