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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- Creators: O'Flaherty, Katherine
- Creators: Minteer, Ben
Description
This thesis project examines the likely factors that cause students to drop out of Barrett, the Honors College. Honors literature regarding retention and attrition suggests four areas encompassing individual student attributes and honors program characteristics which may impact a student's decision to stay or leave an Honors College. The primary question in focus is, "Why do students leave the Honors College?" followed by the tertiary questions of, "what can be done to mitigate this occurrence?" and, "how does this affect the quality of an honors education?" Assessing attrition can be broken down into biographical, cognitive-behavioral, socio-environmental, and institutional-instrumental components. Students who graduated with honors and those who did not graduate with honors were assessed on these four components through survey methods and qualitative interviews to investigate specific reasons why students leave the honors program. The results indicated a wide array of reasons impacting student attrition, the most significant being negative perceptions towards (1) honors courses and contracts, (2) difficulty completing a thesis project, and (3) finding little to no value in "graduating with honors." Each of these reasons reflect the institutional-instrumental component of student attrition, making it the most salient group of reasons why students leave the Honors College. The socio-environmental component also influences student attrition through peer influence and academic advisor support, though this was found to be within the context of institutional-instrumental means. This project offers solutions to ameliorate each of the four components of attrition by offering standardized honors contracts and more mandatory honors classes, mandatory thesis preparatory courses instead of workshops, and emphasizing the benefit Barrett gives to students as a whole. These solutions aim at increasing graduation rates for future honors students at Barrett as well as improving the overall quality of an honors education.
ContributorsSanchez, Gilbert Xavier (Author) / Parker, John (Thesis director) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Committee member) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
The Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) is a genetically distinct subspecies of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) that was driven to the brink of extinction as a result of human persecution. The wolf is listed as Endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and a recovery program is underway in Arizona and New Mexico to restore its population. However, the wolf is struggling to recover due to high mortality, which is a result of continued human hostility toward it. This thesis examines historical and current human attitudes toward the wolf and the implications that they have had on the extermination and recovery of the subspecies. An overview is given of wolf biology, the history of wolf extermination and recovery, and recent events relating to the recovery of the wolf. Negative impacts on ranching, hunting, and human safety are the main reasons for opposition toward wolves and wolf recovery; these concerns are analyzed, and solutions to them are proposed, with the goal of addressing them while fostering non-lethal coexistence with the wolf. In addition, opposition to wolves and wolf recovery is tied in with larger socio-political issues and is influenced by the representation of the wolf in culture; these issues in the context of wolves are also analyzed.
ContributorsLenk, Heather Nicole (Author) / Smith, Andrew (Thesis director) / Minteer, Ben (Committee member) / Brown, David E. (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Undergraduate on-campus residential education is a topic of significant inquiry within the field of higher education, and specifically student affairs. It has become commonplace for institutions of higher education in the United States to leverage the intersections between academics and residence life in order to promote student success by offering on-campus housing options that strategically place students in residential communities that provide additional connection to the students' academic experience, often by major, college, department, or other focus areas. Such models vary by institution, but are often referred to as living-learning communities or residential colleges, depending upon their structure and goals. For example, Barrett, the Honors College on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University implements a residential college model within its student housing; honors students live and study together, with the addition of three "special communities" designed for students majoring in Engineering, Business, or the Arts. This honors thesis case study describes and investigates the impact the visual and performing arts Barrett residential community has upon its residents in their first-year college experience. Through the lens of student development theory, this research focuses upon examining this specific residential community in detail in order to gain an understanding of its effect upon residents' academic and personal well being.
ContributorsBieschke, Sara Danielle (Author) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Thesis director) / Rendell, Dawn (Committee member) / School of Art (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description"Writing the Races" is a documentary exploring how two writers talk about race in their comedy television shows. http://www.writingtheraces.com/
ContributorsTyau, Nicole Jenice (Author) / Rodriguez, Rick (Thesis director) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
The first chapter of this essay will focus primarily on the history of graffiti from what is generally understood as its origin with the first writers who used spray paint as their tools of creation up until modern times. This chapter will look at how the history has formed the general perception of this art form and how it has changed over the years. The second chapter will discuss three archetypes of graffiti seen today. These archetypes are: city funded art murals, city or privately funded freewalls, and artistic mitigations of vandalism. Each of these archetypes will be explored via multiple real world examples and we will consider how each of these examples do or do not succeed in displaying graffiti as a well regarded public art form. The third chapter will propose another archetype for creating graffiti that has not been widely realized or put into practice. The third chapter will then speculate using the knowledge from the previous existing archetypes to discuss whether or not it could be utilized in the real world effectively and a conclusion will be drawn about the methods of graffiti that are practical and effective means to create well regarded art.
ContributorsMiller, Quinn David (Author) / Creath, Richard (Thesis director) / Chew, Matthew (Committee member) / Minteer, Ben (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Bottlenose dolphins, or Tursiops truncates, have captured the attention of humans for centuries leading people to keep them in captivity. However, people's love and an increase in knowledge for these creatures have sparked many ethical debates on whether dolphins should be kept in captivity. In this paper, I discuss the different dimensions of bottlenose dolphin captivity focusing on the physiological, psychological, ecological and ethical concerns raised when comparing captive to wild bottlenose dolphins. In an analysis of the scientific literature, I found that captive bottlenose dolphins experience negative physical and psychological effects, including a shorter life span and a decrease in brain size. They also engage in more risky and harmful behaviors. Preexisting brain structures in bottlenose dolphins indicate enhanced emotional processing possibly leading to a more difficult life in captivity. Furthermore, modeling of bottlenose dolphin social networks have found that removal of dolphins from existing populations have negative repercussions for ecological communities, particularly effecting present and future pods due to their complex social systems called fission fusion societies. Furthermore, removal can have a deleterious effect on the environment due to their role as top predators. Available data suggest that bottlenose dolphins should be classified as non-human persons due to their cognitive abilities such as self-awareness, intentionality, creativity, and symbolic communication. This moral classification demands significant human duties and responsibilities to protect these cetaceans. Due to their similarities to humans, these results suggest that keeping bottlenose dolphins in captivity is ethically questionable and perhaps unjustifiable as captivity violates their basic rights.
ContributorsCoonrod, Sarah Mae (Author) / Gerber, Leah (Thesis director) / Smith, Andrew (Committee member) / Minteer, Ben (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
The mainstream American environmental movement has a reputation for being ethnically homogenous (i.e., white), especially within the field of conservation. Low minority involvement has been noted and discussed in the conservation literature and within environmental organizations, but these discussions aren't always informed by the explicit social justice concerns critical to understanding the complex intersection of environmental and social issues. Communities of color have expressed concern for environmental and conservation issues, but often frame those issues in a different way than is common in mainstream conservation science, a framing that we can appreciate through a deeper analysis of the values and goals of the environmental justice (EJ) movement. A more thorough inclusion of EJ principles could be an effective method to increase ethnic diversity in the field of conservation, particularly within higher education conservation programs like the Conservation Biology and Ecology (CBE) concentration at Arizona State University. This thesis frames the broader challenge of diversity in conservation, the history and current state of the conservation movement, and the history of the environmental justice movement via a literature review. I then evaluate the university's CBE program on the basis of its diversity through an analysis of demographic data on undergraduate ethnicity from the School of Life Sciences. I conclude with a series of recommendations for enhancing the diversity of ASU's CBE program moving forward.
ContributorsLiska, Kelly Margaret (Author) / Minteer, Ben (Thesis director) / Richter, Jennifer (Committee member) / Hall, Sharon (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Every year, millions of people find themselves displaced from their homes because of fear or threats of violence. Some of these people will become refugees, who will then be resettled in the United States. In order to help with the resettlement process, refugees are given cultural orientations through their resettlement organizations. The Phoenix Police Department teaches one of these cultural orientations for local resettlement agencies in order to dispel some of the fears refugees have about law enforcement and build a stronger relationship with the refugee community. Past research on this topic has been limited within the United States, but communities are still trying to figure out how to interact with refugees despite not knowing how to do it. There are various possible complications inherent in the integration process and many potential methods of trust building available to the refugee community and public services like law enforcement. This project seeks to understand the refugee resettlement process through field observation of the cultural orientation taught by the Phoenix Police Department and interviews with detectives familiar with the process in Phoenix. Cultural and language differences as well as lack of education and research on the topic of refugee resettlement are all key points in comprehending what the police, refugees, and resettlement organizations are doing during the integration process. Once these issues are addressed to alleviate gaps in knowledge about refugees, it may be possible to adjust the process to be easier for stakeholders involved in refugee resettlement.
ContributorsBaumgartner, Rachel Paige (Author) / Telep, Cody (Thesis director) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
This creative project is a collection of profiles focused on Arizona nonprofits and refugees. The profiles share stories of refugees, volunteers, employees and others involved in the community serving refugees. Nonprofits are a vital resource for refugee resettlement. These organizations offer services to support refugees as they transition into new communities. Some services include: housing, English language learning, cultural orientation, job placement, medical treatment, education, and farming. Each of these programs support resiliency for refugees and for the communities in which they live. We Are Resilient was created first, to show the important role nonprofits have in serving refugees. Second, to connect people to a few of the stories and experiences within the Arizona refugee community. And third, to build understanding of the strength refugees bring to communities of Arizona and by extension the country. Visit weareresilientaz.com to learn more.
ContributorsGray, Elizabeth (Co-author) / Johnson, Kelcie (Co-author) / Shockley, Gordon (Thesis director) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Committee member) / School of Community Resources and Development (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Postmodernism has been one of the dominant modes of thought in literature and philosophy since the 1960s, but its roots go back much further. This thesis is an examination of Brechtian frameworks in an assortment of popular postmodern works. Both literary texts, such as novels, films, and music, and philosophical texts are used to form a general understanding of the postmodern project, and these concepts are then placed in conversation with ideas from the works of the 20th century German playwright Bertolt Brecht. I found that despite certain differences, the central ideas of postmodernism can be seen as the extension of Brecht’s philosophy, especially his concept of the Verfremdungseffekt. First, multiplicity—in perspectives and understandings—can be seen as an attempt to achieve this Verfremdungseffekt in the reader, and second, transgression in these texts can be used to evoke the same feeling. Many of the identifying techniques of postmodernism, e.g. juxtaposition, unreliable narrator, self-reference, and so on, can be interpreted as the extension of ideas pioneered by Brecht in the 1920s and 1930s. My thesis illustrates these connections.
Keywords: Postmodernism, Bertolt Brecht, Verfremdungseffekt
Keywords: Postmodernism, Bertolt Brecht, Verfremdungseffekt
ContributorsTeipen, Jakob Corry (Author) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Thesis director) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12