Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

University Devils is a Founders Lab Thesis group looking to find a way for post-secondary institutions to increase the number of and diversity of incoming applications through the utilization of gaming and gaming approaches in the recruitment process while staying low-cost. This propelling question guided the group through their work. The team’s work primarily focused on recruitment efforts at Arizona State University, but the concept can be modified and applied at other post-secondary institutions. The initial research showed that Arizona State University’s recruitment focused on visiting the high schools of prospective students and providing campus tours to interested students. A proposed alternative solution to aid in recruitment efforts through the utilization of gaming was to create an online multiplayer game that prospective students could play from their own homes. The basic premise of the game is that one player is selected to be “the Professor” while the other players are part of “the Students.” To complete the game, the Students must complete a set of tasks while the Professor applies various obstacles to prevent the Students from winning. When a Student completes their objectives, they win and the game ends. The game was created using Unity. The group has completed a proof-of-concept of the proposed game and worked to advertise and market the game to students via social media. The team’s efforts have gained traction, and the group continues to work to gain traction and bring the idea to more prospective students.

University Devils is a Founders Lab Thesis group looking to find a way for post-secondary institutions to increase the number of and diversity of incoming applications through the utilization of gaming and gaming approaches in the recruitment process while staying low-cost. This propelling question guided the group through their work. The team’s work primarily focused on recruitment efforts at Arizona State University, but the concept can be modified and applied at other post-secondary institutions. The initial research showed that Arizona State University’s recruitment focused on visiting the high schools of prospective students and providing campus tours to interested students. A proposed alternative solution to aid in recruitment efforts through the utilization of gaming was to create an online multiplayer game that prospective students could play from their own homes. The basic premise of the game is that one player is selected to be “the Professor” while the other players are part of “the Students.” To complete the game, the Students must complete a set of tasks while the Professor applies various obstacles to prevent the Students from winning. When a Student completes their objectives, they win and the game ends. The game was created using Unity. The group has completed a proof-of-concept of the proposed game and worked to advertise and market the game to students via social media. The team’s efforts have gained traction, and the group continues to work to gain traction and bring the idea to more prospective students.

University Devils is a Founders Lab Thesis group looking to find a way for post-secondary institutions to increase the number of and diversity of incoming applications through the utilization of gaming and gaming approaches in the recruitment process while staying low-cost. This propelling question guided the group through their work. The team’s work primarily focused on recruitment efforts at Arizona State University, but the concept can be modified and applied at other post-secondary institutions. The initial research showed that Arizona State University’s recruitment focused on visiting the high schools of prospective students and providing campus tours to interested students. A proposed alternative solution to aid in recruitment efforts through the utilization of gaming was to create an online multiplayer game that prospective students could play from their own homes. The basic premise of the game is that one player is selected to be “the Professor” while the other players are part of “the Students.” To complete the game, The Students must complete a set of tasks while the Professor applies various obstacles to prevent the Students from winning. When a Student completes their objectives, they win and the game ends. The game was created using Unity. The group has completed a proof-of-concept of the proposed game and worked to advertise and market the game to students via social media. The team’s efforts have gained traction and the group continues to work to gain traction and bring the idea to more prospective students.

Studies over the past years have collected data on the opinions of women in the workforce related to family planning and societal norms (Buddhapriya, 2009). However, these studies do not address the opinions of college students, the majority of whom have not yet entered the workforce yet, may have strong opinions about whether or not career ambitions and the desire for children are mutually exclusive. In addition, these studies mainly focus on the hardships of women already in the workforce, rather than to understand how to broaden the workforce to accommodate women before entering motherhood. Therefore, to encourage mothers in the workforce to strive for high professional achievement, it is important to first encourage those making life-changing decisions based on degree choice in college. In doing this, 111 Arizona State University (ASU) students of all years, gender, and college choice were surveyed to better understand the difference between men's and women’s opinions on family planning in relation to career. The results of the survey concluded that more women have not let family planning affect their choice of major and career aspirations. Although previous studies have shown that a job affects motherhood in the professional aspect, this does not seem to be a reason to alter career choices.

My thesis, titled Female Agency in the Canterbury Tales and Telling Tales, compares Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth century work and Patience Agbabi’s modern adaptation in regards to their portrayal of female agency. While each work contained a whole selection of tales, I focus on four tales, which were The Miller’s Tale, The Clerk’s Tale, The Physician’s Tale, and The Wife of Bath’s Tale. I also include relevant historical information to support and assist in the analysis of the literary texts, and secondary sources were also used supplementarily to enhance the analysis. I argue that female agency is irrationally believed to be dangerous, and the consequent attempts at protection manifest as limitations, which are themselves damaging. The paper is divided into two main sections, which are themselves separated into three smaller categories. The first of the two main sections concerns what actions and options are available to women influenced by a distinction of gender; this section is divided into female gender ideals, marriage, and occupation. The second of the two main sections addresses the entities or individuals enacting the limitations upon female agency, and its three subsections are society, men, and women. I ultimately conclude that not only is it irrational to believe that female agency is dangerous, but also that making gender-based judgment on the capacity of a group of people or an individual is inherently flawed.

Video games are packed full of endless potential. They are the telling of impossible narratives with something for every type of person. So then why has the industry historically been one of the worst for representations of race and gender? In this thesis, I define "good" media representation and engage in the analysis of both Overwatch (2016) and Detroit Become Human (2018) to observe the ways these two video games, which so outwardly market their diversity, have failed marginalized groups. Accompanying the research paper is a video game poster representing a woman of color designed by the author which is meant to learn from the mistakes of its predecessors.

The media often portrays and the public often percieves white women and women of color politicians experience feminist obstacles, such as the masculine-feminine double bind and being dehumanized in the same way. Many of these representations of women of color politicians in society do not incorporate the impact of intersectionality and confining gender schemas; therefore, women of color politician’s experiences are often lumped together with that of their white women counterparts. This phenomenon ultimately contributes to the persistence of color-blind racism in the United States, which negatively effects the life outcomes of women of color politicians and women of color in general. In effort to help lessen the effects of color-blind racism locally and in government, some tools on how to reflect on one’s own biases are provided and avenues for change are proposed.

There exists a gendered difference in how sports films portray female protagonist athletes. This creative project closely examines scenes from four films, Bend It Like Beckham, Million Dollar Baby, Girlfight and Whip It, that collectively represent four gendered themes that are present within the female protagonist sport film subgenre. Each film provides representative examples for themes of exceptionalism, the explicit presence of gender or sexuality, paternal or romantic relationships with male characters, and the punishment or containment of the female athlete. These themes are then analyzed for their presence and meaning in the film genre, including how existing heteronormative film structures are present in female protagonist sport films and how such ideas are reflections of wider societal values. This exposes how the continued use of such heteronormative themes perpetuates stereotypes of female athleticism. After understanding how these themes take shape and what they mean for the genre, this paper then highlights examples of an emergent more feminist genre, promotes alternative filmmaking methods and progressive change to the portrayal of female athletes in sport film.

This thesis is based on bringing together three different components: non-Euclidean geometric worlds, virtual reality, and environmental puzzles in video games. While all three exist in their own right in the world of video games, as well as combined in pairs, there are virtually no examples of all three together. Non-Euclidean environmental puzzle games have existed for around 10 years in various forms, short environmental puzzle games in virtual reality have come into existence in around the past five years, and non-Euclidean virtual reality exists mainly as non-video game short demos from the past few years. This project seeks to be able to bring these components together to create a proof of concept for how a game like this should function, particularly the integration of non-Euclidean virtual reality in the context of a video game. To do this, a Unity package which uses a custom system for creating worlds in a non-Euclidean way rather than Unity’s built-in components such as for transforms, collisions, and rendering was used. This was used in conjunction with the SteamVR implementation with Unity to create a cohesive and immersive player experience.