Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

The purpose of this project was to promote financial literacy amongst individuals in their 20s and empower them to take control of their finances. Statistics show society is lacking the financial knowledge to create a successful future and be able to one day retire debt free. My research details that by starting in your 20s and aiming for five simple, yet effective, goals one will be able to launch their success and do so reasonably. The thesis presentation details each of the five goals and outlines how to achieve each.

Mink Social is a startup aimed at providing podcasters with a suite of tools to help them edit and market their content on social media. The company aims to solve the niche problem and difficulties podcasters face when promoting their long-form audio content online. Mink Social's unique solution involves automating the backend work of editing and repurposing content into easy-to-market clips. The company's business model targets three distinct market segments: entry-level podcasters, established podcasters, and enterprise podcasting. Mink Social's competitive advantage is that it is the first social media promotion and editing platform exclusively for podcasts.

This thesis explores the benefits of tax loss harvesting by examining the time period from 1999-2000 to determine the potential profits investors could realize from utilizing this strategy. The first step to accomplishing this was to collect data from the past 20-plus years from the SPDR S&P 500 Exchange Traded Fund (SPY) and its 11 sectors: Energy (XLE), Consumer Staples (XLP), Consumer Discretionary (XLY), Communication Services (XLC), Real Estate (XLRE), Technology (XLK), Utilities (XLU), Materials (XLB), Industrials (XLI), Financials (XLF), and Health Care (XLV). The next step was to clean the data from hundreds of months of opening prices, closing prices, and quarterly dividends into an annual opening price and total annual dividends to calculate a rate of return. Finally, I found the weightings of the S&P 500 and its sectors on January 1st of every year and input this data into a model whose output reflected the growth of a portfolio with and without the use of tax loss harvesting. Once this model was created, I determined the benefits of tax loss harvesting in the present and the value of carrying these losses forward. The outcomes of this thesis solely reflect the benefits of using tax loss harvesting through a passive investment strategy. This research will enrich academic and professional understandings of tax loss harvesting through its clear demonstration of how much tax loss carryforward can be accessed, as well as the opportunity for gains from compounding interest on previous tax savings due to tax loss harvesting.

As scrutiny of corporate behavior grows, the demand for ESG disclosures rises across the world. In the U.S., public firms voluntarily provided data relevant to their corporate responsibility through highly individualized and non-comparable ESG reports. Even with the existence of the IFRS’s Integrated Report framework, which aims to provide context to an organization's value creation, the adoption of the exemplar guidelines remains minimal. The intended goal of this research project is to explore whether the data that is traditionally found in the is publicly available through other means of disclosure. Specifically, the research focuses on Waste Management’s public disclosures and explores the data available against the framework. Each subsection of the guidelines is used to analyze the content available to investors and scorable based on the level of disclosure. The objective of the research is to understand how well WM disclosed relevant material against the international ESG standard and the challenges investors face when creating the connections found in the . Using the single case study, my research found that WM disclosed isolated information about values, risks, strategies, and opportunities, but ultimately failed to create connections to the process of value creation. As an investor, the information made available by WM was not comprehensive enough to infer value connections, nor was there specific data on governance and performance reporting. As pressure builds from shareholders and stakeholders, the SEC and organizations must define guidelines and adapt reportings.

Community Garden is a board game developed as a creative project for Barrett, The Honors College. The fully-functional board game's design allows relaxed gameplay between players with the zen imagery of a community garden. The written component of this thesis project details the mechanics of the final product, the design process, and the supporting documentation of the playtesting and research that went into developing Community Garden.

This thesis will analyze the current problems that Chula Seafood is dealing with using the four frames discussed in Bolman and Deal’s reframing model. Using this multi-frame approach allows an organization to see that even though they may not view something as a problem, it may be a problem from other stakeholders which makes it their problem. This paper begins with an industry overview of the Phoenix restaurant scene explaining the current trends such as high employee turnover and an overview of how the industry operates. Then will be the introduction of Chula Seafood and how they are structured and operate currently. The paper will then focus on the current problems: high kitchen turnover, sales slump, and ineffective loyalty program. The analysis of the problems will show how the company may view the problem using a single frame analysis. This will move into the introduction of Bolman and Deal’s four frames and reframing each of the problems using the new frames. This will shed new light on the problem and give the organization a new perspective on why some of these problems exist with respect to the frames. The solution of implementing a new loyalty system will be introduced which helps solve all the problems mentioned. The solution will also be evaluated by the frames to demonstrate how the solution will be effective in fixing the problem. This will be followed by an implementation timeline which outlines how the solution will be implemented in the organization. By using the multi-frame analysis, this thesis was able to come up with a new loyalty system that fixed the current problems that Chula Seafood faces.

The purpose of the ACC / CSE Thesis Project is to develop a solution that simplifies the process of financial reporting. Through our extensive research and experience with designing a project to simulate the life cycle of a conceptual user initiative, we have created a product that transforms these ideas into results. Rather than relying on the expertise of external consultants who are often expensive, the product strives to provide users with an affordable solution to educate and apply financial reporting standards in accordance with IFRS and GAAP.