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 - 3 of 3
Description
Billions of people around the world deal with the struggles of poverty every day. Consequently, a number of others have committed themselves to help alleviate poverty. Many various methods are used, and a current consensus on the best method to alleviate poverty is lacking. Generally the methods used or researched exist somewhere on the spectrum between top-down and bottom-up approaches to fighting poverty. This paper analyzes a specific method proposed by C.K. Prahalad known as the Bottom of the Pyramid solution. The premise of the method is that large multinational corporations should utilize the large conglomerate of money that exists amongst poor people \u2014 created due to the sheer number of poor people \u2014 for business ventures. Concurrently, the poor people can benefit from the company's entrance. This method has received acclaim theoretically, but still needs empirical evidence to prove its practicality. This paper compares this approach with other approaches, considers international development data trends, and analyzes case studies of actual attempts that provide insight into the approach's potential for success. The market of poor people at the bottom of the pyramid is extremely segmented which makes it very difficult for large companies to financially prosper. It is even harder to establish mutual benefit between the large corporation and the poor. It has been found that although aspects of the bottom of the pyramid method hold merit, higher potential for alleviating poverty exists when small companies venture into this space rather than large multinational corporations. Small companies can conform to a single community and niche economy to prosper \u2014 a flexibility that large companies lack. Moving forward, analyzing the actual attempts provides the best and only empirical insights; hence, it will be important to consider more approaches into developing economies as they materialize.
ContributorsSanchez, Derek Javier (Author) / Henderson, Mark (Thesis director) / Shunk, Dan (Committee member) / Industrial, Systems (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
In recent history, the world has been inspired to respond to the challenges faced by communities with ‘help’. This help has been administered with moderate success through community engagement strategies traditionally centered on social services provided through non-profit agencies. Social entrepreneurship has emerged in response to the lack of progress made in solving local and global issues with new innovations that have the potential to change the status quo and eliminate the problems for future generations. In social entrepreneurship, concerned individuals saw an opportunity to truly change the world. Higher education leaders have embraced social entrepreneurship, positioning university students as a driving force behind ideating creative and innovative solutions that can be implemented in communities to overcome a vast array of challenges from poverty to environmental sustainability. Despite the efforts of university staff and faculty, many student changemakers struggle to successfully implement their ideas and measure their impact. Factors such as how well the student understands the issue and community in addition to the extent to which the student is experienced in ideation, creative-problem solving, and implementation of projects contribute to the success or failure of a student social effort. Inspired by their experiences serving as director of Changemaker Central, the authors sought to understand the process of preparing students to be agents of change in the community. Having observed the variance in success among aspiring changemakers at Arizona State University (ASU), the researchers studied how to best support students in preparation for a high-impact career. The research analyzed students’ experiences in two of ASU’s social change programs, Changemaker Challenge (CC) and University Service-Learning (USL) and found a need for more cohesion between two programs and their represented methodologies in addition to a need for in-depth analysis on the student journey.
ContributorsMicevic, Vid (Co-author) / Fitzgerald, Kaitlyn (Co-author) / Henderson, Mark (Thesis director) / Smith, Jacqueline (Committee member) / Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Programs (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This project is a web development effort to improve the web presence of GlobalResolve. Established in 2006, GlobalResolve has directly improved the lives of underprivileged people locally and in underdeveloped nations throughout the world. This social entrepreneurship program at Arizona State University has enhanced the educational experience of students and faculty by involving them in real world projects that have shown direct results. The initiative goes beyond the traditional model of philanthropy but works to establish successful business ventures of solutions to provide sustainable economic development to the underserved communities they work with. GlobalResolve: A Digital Story is a website that was proposed to help improve the current GlobalResolve website and make a more compelling presentation of the program in hopes of attracting new funding for new projects and also student to be involved as problem solvers. The problems seen in the current website are: lack of student testimonials, sense of up keeping, context in the use of multimedia, and best web design practices. The resulting objectives for the new site were: build a product that would assist in publicizing the GlobalResolve program and tell its story to future students and prospects and potential donors. The new website solved these issues by: incorporating student experiences, embedding social media widgets regarding current projects, details of multimedia elements to provide context, and researching and implementing best design practices. The new website was developed to be an interactive experience, delivering the story of the initiative from its beginnings to it current state. The information is presented on a website with data maps, digital timelines, and short video clips, to give a thorough, interesting, and an explanation of GlobalResolve. With the incorporation of photos and graphics to assist, the website was designed to tell a compelling, composing informative yet engaging digital media. This was confirmed by doing a beta test of the website. This project evolved in many ways as an effective ways of relating information. Ultimately, the goal of this thesis was to make a digital case statement for the initiative, in order to create a clear message to prospects and potential donors. The case statement represents GlobalResolve's digital needs and how those needs can be achieved. Using digital tools and marketing, the website was approached as a strategic business plan and meant to deliver a more effective representation of the program, while setting up a template to be used for future use to allow updates that can show the progressive success of GlobalResolve.
ContributorsLopez, Carolina (Co-author) / Jeong, Yihyun (Co-author) / Henderson, Mark (Thesis director) / Reilley, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor)
Created2015-12