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.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 53
ContributorsPowell, Devon (Author) / Gardner, Carl (Thesis director) / Scannapieco, Evan (Committee member) / Windhorst, Rogier (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-05
Description
This paper comes from a consulting project that the consulting firm, New Venture Group (NVG), did for a hospital in the southwest United States. The name of the hospital as well as the names of the hospitalists and units for the hospital will be withheld for confidentiality reasons. The hospital will be referred to as the ‘client’ throughout this paper. New Venture Group is a management consulting firm associated with Arizona State University (ASU), W.P. Carey School of Business and The Barrett Honors College. NVG recruits their consultants directly from the upper-class student body. NVG takes on projects from a wide variety of clients to provide real-world solutions comparable to that of other management consulting firms in the industry.
The client wanted to look into ways to improve patient satisfaction. To improve patient satisfaction the consulting team performed research and held a data collection. The team researched literature for possible improvements in technology, management procedures, and hospital operations protocols. The team then provided the findings and possible implementations to the client. Another item the team looked into was communication between night shift hospitalists and nurses, and possible ways to improve their communication. In the winter of 2010 a data collection was held at the client hospital that measured several different metrics of hospitalist
urse communication. In early 2011 a NVG team provided a descriptive statistics analysis of the results to the client. After the team’s first presentation I joined NVG and the team with this client. The client wanted to dig deeper into the data to find any patterns that were inherent in the data that were not immediately obvious from descriptive statistics. To do this I built over a 150 different regressions to dig from the data as many different patterns that could be found. Most of these regressions found many non-interesting results and a few did find significant interesting results. A report was sent to the client with all the results found. This paper is structured differently than the one delivered to the client in that only the significant interesting results are included and terminology will used for an audience who is familiar with statistics and mathematics. The work in this paper is the combined result of the whole team. My most specific input in this project is the quantitative analysis section. The other parts of this paper are also included so that the reader can see the full results of this consulting project.
The client wanted to look into ways to improve patient satisfaction. To improve patient satisfaction the consulting team performed research and held a data collection. The team researched literature for possible improvements in technology, management procedures, and hospital operations protocols. The team then provided the findings and possible implementations to the client. Another item the team looked into was communication between night shift hospitalists and nurses, and possible ways to improve their communication. In the winter of 2010 a data collection was held at the client hospital that measured several different metrics of hospitalist
urse communication. In early 2011 a NVG team provided a descriptive statistics analysis of the results to the client. After the team’s first presentation I joined NVG and the team with this client. The client wanted to dig deeper into the data to find any patterns that were inherent in the data that were not immediately obvious from descriptive statistics. To do this I built over a 150 different regressions to dig from the data as many different patterns that could be found. Most of these regressions found many non-interesting results and a few did find significant interesting results. A report was sent to the client with all the results found. This paper is structured differently than the one delivered to the client in that only the significant interesting results are included and terminology will used for an audience who is familiar with statistics and mathematics. The work in this paper is the combined result of the whole team. My most specific input in this project is the quantitative analysis section. The other parts of this paper are also included so that the reader can see the full results of this consulting project.
ContributorsGuggisberg, Michael (Author) / Ahn, Seung (Thesis director) / Brooks, Daniel (Committee member) / Werner, Kathleen (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-05
Description
Research on human grasp typically involves the grasp of objects designed for the study of fingertip forces. Instrumented objects for such studies have often been designed for the simulation of functional tasks, such as feeding oneself, or for rigidity such that the objects do not deform when grasped. The goal of this thesis was to design a collapsible, instrumented object to study grasp of breakable objects. Such an object would enable experiments on human grip responses to unexpected finger-object events as well as anticipatory mechanisms once object fragility has been observed. The collapsible object was designed to be modular to allow for properties such as friction and breaking force to be altered. The instrumented object could be used to study both human and artificial grasp.
ContributorsTorrez, Troy (Author) / Santos, Veronica (Thesis director) / Santello, Marco (Committee member) / Artemiadis, Panagiotis (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-05
DescriptionMy main goal for my thesis is in conjunction with the research I started in the summer of 2010 regarding the creation of a TBI continuous-time sensor. Such goals include: characterizing the proteins in sensing targets while immobilized, while free in solution, and while in free solution in the blood.
ContributorsHaselwood, Brittney (Author) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Thesis director) / Pizziconi, Vincent (Committee member) / Cook, Curtiss (Committee member) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2011-12
Description
Because of the author's profound interest in media and race relations, she conducted this study on race portrayal in film. The notion of post-race used in film as a lens to see how society thinks about race is what is tested in this study. The author hypothesizes that if film is a reflection of society, the study should show that society is now post-racial, and if we are indeed in a post-racial society, has the portrayal of African Americans in the media changed with this post-racial image? The author believes the study is pertinent and timely because of the increase in discussion of post-race and the wide claim that America is a post-racial society because of the presidential election of Barack Obama. This study examines African Americans in film beginning in 1939 and tracing it through present media. The author feels this study shows how society views African Americans in "real life" and, in turn, will illustrate how society thinks about race.
ContributorsTyson, Briana (Author) / Hinds, David (Thesis director) / Robillard, Alyssa (Committee member) / Cavender, Gray (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
This project is a screenplay that follows the life of Marisa Bradford, a young college-aged woman from Palm Springs, California who finds herself moving to London to attend the London University for the Dramatic Arts (LUDA). Marisa is a recovering alcoholic who recently became engaged to her boyfriend Eric before leaving for London. At LUDA, while fighting for leading roles in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with catty actresses from Essex, Marisa faces the familiar temptations associated with her alcoholism and a new temptation—Sean, a good-looking lead actor who defends Marisa at every turn. When her friends and family arrive for the debut of the play from America, everything comes to a head as Marisa’s separate lives merge. Ultimately, she maintains the relationships that matter to her with the people who have never stopped supporting her, even when she didn’t understand the support. A scout from a prestigious acting program in New York City sees her performance in a supporting role, Titania, and offers her a spot in the highly-competitive program. The ending leaves her and Eric resolving their relationship challenges and moving to New York together.
ContributorsAnderson, Della (Author) / Bradley, Christopher (Thesis director) / Green, Michael (Committee member) / Haggins, Bambi (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
Dead Letter Office is an experiment in story-telling through computer animation; investigating world-building through nineteenth-century Victorian culture infused with the folklore of White Socks and set in a fictional city. This manuscript documents the output-oriented approach behind the creative project and is divided into two parts: conceptual development and technical execution. The first half will talk about the world in with Dead Letter Office takes place, the evolution of the storyline, and how it draws from its historical influences. The second half will be a breakdown of process and assumes a basic knowledge of Atodesk Maya 2012, placing stronger emphasis on modeling, texturing, and rendering, as well as the creation of a streamlined workflow by utilizing third-party MEL scripts and stand-alone programs. It is not a step-by-step tutorial, but rather aims to discuss different options in 3-D animation, explain the reasoning for my choices, and hopefully share suggestions on general good practice.
ContributorsYau, Patty (Author) / Magenta, Muriel (Thesis director) / Messinger, Ellen (Committee member) / Garner, Timothy (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-05
Description
The theory of diffusion of responsibility has for years sparked social and psychological scientists' interest. Interest in why it occurs and in what contexts, have sparked a great deal of investigation over a broad range of assumptions. Various researchers support ideas behind gender differences, racial disparities, internal ideation of bystanders, and settings among which helping behavior is more or less likely to occur. Strong correlation between variables has shed light on this phenomenon, offering significant support behind it. The significance of this phenomenon is evident in that life and death could potentially be of consequence; therefore, one would believe that awareness about the theory of diffusion of responsibility is crucial to investigation.
ContributorsYbarra, Stephanie (Author) / Fey, Richard (Thesis director) / Bodman, Denise (Committee member) / Goldblatt, Lois (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-05
Description
Platelets are specialized blood cells that play crucial role in normal physiologic and pathologic processes such as hemostasis, inflammation, wound healing, and host defense. Activation of platelets is essential for platelet function and it includes a complex interplay of adhesion and intracellular signaling molecules. Platelets are known to be activated during vessel injury by a complex interaction of soluble agonists and once activated, they adhere to sub-endothelial matrix to aggregate and secrete granules leading to the formation of platelet aggregate that is necessary for thrombus formation. Platelet integrin plays a central role in platelet adhesive reactions by serving as a receptor for fibrinogen involved in bidirectional transmembrane signaling. In order to elucidate the interaction of integrin with cytoplasmic signaling molecules during inside-out and outside-in signaling, we have studied the kinetics of the recruitment of talin, kindling, filmin-A, skelemin, Scr and syk to the B3 cytoplasmic tails. Platelets were isolated from human blood and activated with ADP/Epinephrine for different times. The complexes of *** with signaling proteins were obtained by immunoprecipitation of platelet lysates with anit-*** monoclonal antibody and then analyzed by Western blotting using antibodies directed against selected signaling proteins. Our results show different kinetics in recruitment of signaling molecules to the B3 integrin cytoplasmic tail during inside-out and outside in signaling.
ContributorsYantas, Alexa Susan (Author) / Ugarova, Tatiana (Thesis director) / Podolnikova, Nataly (Committee member) / Turaga, Ramya (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-05
Description
A 1969 report identified South Phoenix as a community that simply needed to "strengthen residential identity" (City of Phoenix), but the decades of blight and decline that followed led to the eventual adoption of the South Phoenix Village Redevelopment Area Plan in 1989. The plan recognized that twelve block area five miles southeast of the heart of Phoenix needed comprehensive revitalization. Many of the programs implemented by the City over the 20 years have been successful, but the plan has not been reevaluated in more than a decade. This research seeks to compile information as a proxy for an update on the current state of South Phoenix Village with a goal of ascertaining whether a comprehensive plan continues to be the best revitalization tool for the neighborhood. Using census tract-level data, housing, social, and economic characteristics were analyzed in an effort to identify the barriers to success that South Phoenix faces as the area continues to be rehabilitated. Some issues that have been rampant in the 1980s continues to plague the area, but others seem to have been mitigated. Following analysis of the data in the context of residential stability and neighborhood health, conclusions concerning the advantages and limitations of the comprehensive plan approach for South Phoenix Village were drawn, and recommendations for future initiatives in the area were made.
ContributorsAagard, Sarah (Author) / Dantico, Marilyn (Thesis director) / Lewis, Paul (Committee member) / Mack, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-05