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.
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Political Science
- All Subjects: Poetry
- All Subjects: STEM
Claiming Impossible Bodies is a collection of poetry and collage exploring gender and sexuality through the lens of the vampire. For this project, I researched various representations of the vampires through folklore, classical and modern literature, film, and pop culture. The liminality of the vampire allows such figures to take different forms and identities, ranging from dark and grotesque creatures, such as the succubus or incubus from mythology, to modern sex-icons, like Edward Cullen from the Twilight Saga. Considering this wide range of performances by vampiric figures throughout history, the poems in this manuscript seek to deconstruct the binaries that vampires live between and expose the liminality in social norms that attempt to define our identities and shape our performances.
This collection entitled “Poems on Home, Family, and the Self” is about the author’s role as a daughter to immigrant parents, who is finding her drive, and understanding where she comes from and how she will use that to find her purpose. The poems in this collection touch upon the author’s upbringing in Northern California, her transitioning relationship with her parents and her brother, as well as her experiences relative to her growth in Arizona. These pieces are greatly inspired by author Arundhati Roy and poet Li-Young Li. Specifically, the author is influenced by Li-Young Li’s approach to poetry – his commentary and storytelling of his life and his parents are objective, observatory, and allow the readers to make opinions for themselves. In this collection, the author aims to make statements about her family and upbringing and show the readers her new understanding of life and her ambitions.
Women’s roles in society have changed significantly throughout the years. The movement to support the rights of women has been ongoing throughout the evolution of society but has been especially prevalent in the last century. The 1960s are when women began to enter the workforce instead of being limited to presuming roles as homemakers. Since that point in time, women have continued to thrive in the workforce and have pursued a larger variety of positions in various fields. Even though the opportunities for women continue to grow, there still seems to be an underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related fields. The underrepresentation of women pursuing physician and entrepreneurship roles in STEM will be analyzed and the challenges this group of people specifically encounter will be examined. Our first proposal to encourage women to enter STEM focuses on middle-school initiatives and incubator programs. The second proposal, based on commonalities females face within the workforce, is finding a better work/home life balance with the development of new maternity/paternity leave policies. Through these initiatives, we believe that the gender gap in STEM can be bridged.
Women’s roles in society have changed significantly throughout the years. The movement to support the rights of women has been ongoing throughout the evolution of society but has been especially prevalent in the last century. The 1960s are when women began to enter the workforce instead of being limited to presuming roles as homemakers. Since that point in time, women have continued to thrive in the workforce and have pursued a larger variety of positions in various fields. Even though the opportunities for women continue to grow, there still seems to be an underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related fields. The underrepresentation of women pursuing physician and entrepreneurship roles in STEM will be analyzed and the challenges this group of people specifically encounter will be examined. Our first proposal to encourage women to enter STEM focuses on middle-school initiatives and incubator programs. The second proposal, based on commonalities females face within the workforce, is finding a better work/home life balance with the development of new maternity/paternity leave policies. Through these initiatives, we believe that the gender gap in STEM can be bridged.
Communication skills are vital for the world we inhabit. Both oral and written communication are some of the most sought-after skills in the job market today; this holds true in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Despite the high demand for communication skills, communication classes are not required for some STEM majors (Missingham, 2006). STEM major maps are often so packed with core classes that they nearly exclude the possibility of taking communication courses. Students and job seekers are told they need to be able to communicate to succeed but are not given any information or support in developing their skills. Scientific inquiry and discovery cannot be limited to only those that understand high-level jargon and have a Ph.D. in a subject. STEM majors and graduates must be able to translate information to communities beyond other experts. If they cannot communicate the impact of their research and discoveries, who is going to listen to them?<br/>Overall, the literature around communication in STEM fields demonstrate the need for and value of specific, teachable communication skills. This paper will examine the impact of a communication training module that teaches specific communication skills to BIO 182: General Biology II students. The communication training module is an online module that teaches students the basics of oral communication. The impact of the module will be examined through the observation of students’ presentations.
