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 38
Description
Zoraida Ladrón de Guevarra was born in 1936 in Coyula, Mexico, a small village in the state of Oaxaca. Her father’s passing required Zoraida to find a job at age fourteen to support her family. Her story, a 200-page memoir entitled “After Papa Died,” follows Zoraida’s time as a servant and eventual nanny in Veracruz. Flashing back to memories of her hometown and the people living in it, the story ends before she enters America first as a visitor in 1954, and later on a working Visa in 1957—the first woman in her village to leave to the United States. Hers is a story relevant today, evident with the paradoxes explored between poverty and riches, patriarchy and matriarchy, freedom and captivity. Assimilation impacts the reading of this memoir, as Zoraida began writing the memoir in her 80s (around fifty years after gaining American citizenship). This detailed family history is about the nature of memory, community, and in particular, the experience of being an immigrant. This thesis project centers on this text and includes three components: an edited memoir, informational interviews, and an introduction. Beginning as a diary steeped in the tradition of oral history, the memoir required a “translation” into a written form; chapters and chronological continuity helped with organization. Topics of interest from the story, such as identity, domestic violence, and religion, are further explored in a series of interviews with Zoraida. The inclusion of an introduction to the text contextualizes the stories documented in the memoir with supplemental information. The contents of the project are housed on a website: alongwaybabyproject.net.
ContributorsVan Slyke, Shea Elizabeth (Author) / Meloy, Elizabeth (Thesis director) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Committee member) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
In this article we present a low-cost force-sensing quadrupedal laminate robot platform. The robot has two degrees of freedom on each of four independent legs, allowing for a variety of motion trajectories to be created at each leg, thus creating a rich control space to explore on a relatively low-cost robot. This platform allows a user to research complex motion and gait analysis control questions, and use different concepts in computer science and control theory methods to permit it to walk. The motion trajectory of each leg has been modeled in Python. Critical design considerations are: the complexity of the laminate design, the rigidity of the materials of which the laminate is constructed, the accuracy of the transmission to control each leg, and the design of the force sensing legs.
ContributorsShuch, Benjamin David (Author) / Aukes, Daniel (Thesis director) / Sodemann, Angela (Committee member) / Engineering Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
This project is investigating the impact curvature, buckling, and anisotropy play when used passively to enhance jumping capability. In this paper we employ a curved structure to allow a rigid link to collapse preferentially in one direction when it encounters aerodynamic drag forces. A joint of this nature could be used for passively actuated jump gliding, where wings would collapse immediately on takeoff and passively redeploy during descent, allowing the jumping robot to extend its horizontal range via gliding. A passively actuated joint is simpler and more lightweight than active solutions, allowing for a lighter glider and higher jumps. To test this, several prototype collapsing gliding wings of different diameters were tested by dropping them from a consistent height above the ground and by launching them upwards and recording their initial velocity. A model was constructed in Python using the data gathered through the experiments and was tuned so that its outputs were as close as possible to the experimental results. As expected, increasing the wing diameter increased the total fall time, and increasing the payload mass decreased the total fall time. Orientation of the wings around the vertical axis of the glider relative to the direction of horizontal motion was also found to have an effect on the length of time between when the gliding platform was launched and when it made contact with the ground, with a configuration where the axis between the wings was parallel to the direction of motion granting added stability.
ContributorsLighthouse, Guston Heqian (Author) / Aukes, Daniel (Thesis director) / Sodemann, Angela (Committee member) / Engineering Programs (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The truth about animal husbandry is not being explained properly to those who visit zoos, or, more importantly, to those who vehemently oppose zoos and animal captivity. Currently, the quality of modern zoos is communicated from within the zoo, where most animal rights activists would never step foot. I have researched the current influence of animal welfare on the practice of behavioral husbandry in modern institutions. In order to bring benefits of behavioral research to the debate on animal welfare, I have also observed two tigers at the Out of Africa Wildlife Park in Camp Verde, Arizona. The reality is that modern zoos are dedicated to improving the quality of life in captivity for rescued animals and to providing education and genetic diversity for their species. Accreditation standards are constantly evolving with discovery and criticism from professionals in the field of animal husbandry and behavior. Even tigers at the Out of Africa Wildlife Park display minimal stereotypic behaviors compared to other studies of captive tigers, and both of these cats also participate in healthy play and environmental enrichment use. Current advancements in animal welfare, enrichment, and animal husbandry project an excellent outlook for the zoological facilities of the future.
ContributorsSamuelson, Maisy Louise (Author) / Meloy, Elizabeth (Thesis director) / Caron, Martha (Committee member) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Illness is one of the most unfortunate experiences that can occur during one's life. It often emerges without warning and when it is least expected. Illness is not only detrimental to the physical and emotional health of the person who is directly diagnosed, however. When one person is diagnosed with any kind of illness, many people are affected. Literature and art have always been used as vehicles to express their creators' thoughts and feelings. Those affected by illness sometimes adopt this method, using the art of storytelling to cope with and express their many emotions. Because there are so many affected people when even only one person is diagnosed, there are several different perspectives that are expressed and must be analyzed. This anthology, titled "Creativity, Medicine, and the Arts: An Anthology Edited and Annotated by Gabrielle Georgini," illustrates the correlation between various kinds of illnessesand literature. According to Merriam-Webster, illness is defined as "obsolete, an unhealthy condition of body or mind" (371). To make a patient healthy again, he must receive some kind oftreatment. Unfortunately, in some cases, a patient may not become healthy again even if they do receive treatment. Literature is an art, and art is a form of therapy. Therefore, patients can use literature and art as forms of treatment. Art and literature provide therapies for the mind. They can allow patients to relax and can work as a distraction from their illnesses. Art and literature can also be a form of expression. Those who are affected by illness can describe or depict their thoughts on paper, enabling them to clear their head or inform others about how they are feeling.
ContributorsGeorgini, Gabrielle Marie (Author) / Meloy, Elizabeth (Thesis director) / Vega, Sylvia (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
In 2016, Azerbaijan arrested one of its esteemed writers, Akram Aylisli, for writing a fictional story depicting Armenian trauma, existence, and peaceful coexistence with Azeris. This paper analyzes how Akram Aylisli's work, "Stone Dreams: A Novel-Requiem,' has reevaluated national identity and has disrupted the official memory created by Azerbaijan, where certain historical events are contested and even suppressed.
ContributorsMacias, Riley (Author) / Meloy, Elizabeth (Thesis director) / Palandjian, Garine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
This memoir documents the author's dynamic relationships with the Catholic faith and being a lesbian.
ContributorsAsh, Emily (Author) / Meloy, Elizabeth (Thesis director) / Barca, Lisa (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
In this paper, we discuss the methods and requirements to simulate a soft bodied beam using traditional rigid body kinematics to produce motion inspired by eels. Eels produce a form of undulatory locomotion called anguilliform locomotion that propagates waves throughout the entire body. The system that we are analyzing is a flexible 3D printed beam being actively driven by a servo motor. Using the simulation, we also analyze different parameters for these spines to maximize the linear speed of the system.
ContributorsKwan, Anson (Author) / Aukes, Daniel (Thesis director) / Marvi, Hamidreza (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Engineering Programs (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
Race-based trauma is classified as the cumulative traumatizing impact of racism on a racialized individual. These include individual acts of racial discrimination combined with systematic race systems including historical, cultural, and community trauma. This trauma mostly affects individuals of color and has been known to affect physical and mental health and over time lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. Racial trauma can be a result of many different experiences throughout life including hate crimes; environments with discriminatory practices, and smaller incidents of everyday discrimination, which are known as microaggressions.
Race-based trauma falls into four main categories: Structural, intergenerational, historical and cultural, and intersectionality. Structural racism affects multiple systems such as policy procedures and laws that sustain racial discrimination and reinforce racial biases in housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice. These systems reinforce discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources. Intergenerational trauma affects the descendants of a person who has experienced distressing events. These descendants exhibit adverse behavioral, psychological, and emotional reactions to events that resemble the circumstances that originally traumatized their older family members. Slavery, the Holocaust, and other genocidal events have resulted in intergenerational trauma, for example. Historical trauma includes the distress of the descendants of a particular community that has experienced major oppression. Examples include Holocaust survivors and African Americans, who were victims of the Tuskegee experiments. Cultural trauma occurs when a horrendous event imprint’s itself on a particular ethnic group’s consciousness and changes their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways. Cultural trauma stems from micro-aggressions, stereotypes, hurtful comments, or structural barriers to advancement. Lastly, intersectional trauma, is a unique experience of marginalization that affects African American women who face gender and racial discrimination. Sadly, these experiences are greater than the sum of racism and sexism. Analysis of this trauma is considered to sufficient to address the manner in how African American women are subordinated.
ContributorsPless, Candace (Author) / Meloy, Elizabeth (Thesis director) / Barca, Lisa (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2022-12
Description
According to the Center for Disease Control, the first case of COVID-19 in the United States was confirmed on January 21st, 2020. The patient was a resident of Washington state who had returned from the city of Wuhan during the previous week. The virus quickly spread across the country, and our lives have yet to return to normal in the nineteen months since. Between the initial wave that began in early 2020, and the current wave from the Delta variant that is now ravaging the country once again, this virus has claimed the lives of over six hundred thousand people in the United states alone. The majority of news coverage has focused on the pandemic from a national or global perspective. And since major metropolitan areas are often hotspots for the spread of infectious diseases (with the spread of COVID-19 being no exception), smaller towns and cities have experienced incredible desolation of their own. While the global scale and impact of this tragedy is paramount, it is also important to consider the devastation that has been torn apart smaller - often rural - communities, and to remember people whose lives have been forever changed. When I moved back from Phoenix, Arizona to my hometown of Owensboro, Kentucky in June I had the opportunity to do just that: to see this pandemic through the lens of a tight-knit community, where there exists a feeling that everybody knows each other. I wondered whether or not Owensboro had experienced the COVID-19 pandemic between March 2020 and June 2021 in the same way that was being portrayed by national news broadcasts. How did one city combat a nationwide pandemic?
ContributorsPowell, Madison (Author) / Meloy, Elizabeth (Thesis director) / Topal, Emel (Committee member) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05