Uniforms and logos are an essential part of sports teams and are created with the intention of representing the city and state of their respective teams. More than a uniform: How culture influences the creation of Arizona sports logos and jerseys presents a look at the conversations and processes undergone before teams are able to unveil their new threads. Four local professional teams are involved with this project: Phoenix Suns, Arizona Diamondbacks, Arizona Coyotes and Arizona Cardinals. Members from each of the organizations were interviewed, in addition to Greg Fisher of Fisher Design. Information was gathered from each of those interviews in addition to research done on the history of each of the team’s uniforms. The information was then created into a documentary that consists of visual and verbal components. The film highlights how each team attempts to represent Arizona and its culture when it comes to what they are wearing on the field, court or ice. The interviews capture the mindset of creative teams as they explore growing new ideas and looks, in addition to a historical delve into two of the team’s debuts in the 1990s. Many of Arizona’s sports teams have much more behind their logos and jerseys than meets the eye. The project taught me how adapt broadcast skills into documentary style storytelling and how important visuals are for longer features. The interviews showed that so many things are taken into consideration when designing a sports logo or uniform and the process can take either months or years to finally reach fruition.

Urban encroachment into traditional snake territories has long been underway; likely increasing snake sightings in urban neighborhoods. With increasing overlap, I ask if the perceptions of snakes are actually influencing urban residents to say that snakes are a significant problem in their neighborhood today? I was interested in finding out whether or not there would be a positive correlation between the perception of snakes being a problem within a neighborhood and the actual number of sightings recorded. To address this, I used survey responses from 2017 regarding the risk perception of snakes from twelve neighborhoods within Maricopa County. These responses were then compared to the number of snake sightings within those same neighborhoods over a span of ten years using community science data from iNaturalist. The average results of the people who took the survey perceived that snakes were not a problem in their neighborhood. It was also found that in the outlying areas closer to natural snake habitat (desert preserves), a positive correlation between a higher survey response and a higher number of snake sightings could be seen. Overall, the conclusion of the data revealed that the perceptions of residents did not align with the actual number of snake sightings.

In January of 2022, 61 women from Afghanistan were accepted to Arizona State University and joined our campus from the Asian University of Women. Of One Heart is a Phoenix based nonprofit which aims to connect refugees with mentors to cultivate intercultural relationships, assist refugees in integrating into a new community, and to empower refugees to utilize their unique perspectives and talents in their new home. In addition to these goals, these relationships aim to connect refugees with the networks their mentor has and to assist them in understanding the new systems and norms of American culture. The relationship is reciprocal in the sharing of background and stories to facilitate trust and to recognize the value refugees have to contribute to society. The mission of this project is to implement the Of One Heart mentoring model onto ASU campus to help facilitate intercultural friendships between our new students from Afghanistan and other ASU students, faculty and staff. In doing so, we hope to create a model demonstrating refugee student success by collecting data through pre and post program surveys to track if involvement in the program improved participants utilization of existing ASU resources, cultural competency, mental health, and participation in community activities and internships/job opportunities. Ideally, we hope to create a program model which is proven to support refugee students to be replicated for future semesters as the program expands to serve not only the students from Afghanistan, but all refugee and asylum seeking students.

For my Barrett The Honors College thesis creative project, I created a website called Destination Arizona. In short, it is a log of every “destination” I have visited in the state of Arizona. These destinations include hikes, drives, trails, mountain peaks, waterfalls, caves, lakes, arches and more. In total, the site features 182 destinations, which is a number that surprised me greatly. I was stunned to find out I had been to that many places in the state. To log all these destinations in a way that completed the project and was useful for people to potentially use, I created an Airtable that is filterable based on numerous parameters of each destination. For example, Camelback Mountain is a peak in Phoenix that is a short but hard hike at 2.5 miles round trip. It requires a car to get to as the road is paved. In the Airtable, you can search based on all of those descriptors. Another example would be the Barnhardt Trail. It is a trail located near Payson that is long in terms of mileage (13.1 round trip) and hard in terms of difficulty. The road to get there is dirt, and therefore requires an SUV, but not a truck or jeep, to get to. This is another example of how refined the search on Destination Arizona can be. Let’s say you want to go to a lake that is near Prescott. You can find all of them via The Chart. Or a cave that is out in the East Valley of Phoenix. You can find that as well. Accompanying The Chart is the The Maps tab, which is simply a visual of everything that is on The Chart. If you’re wondering where exactly something on The Chart is located in the state of Arizona, chances are it is on one of the maps. Two maps exist on The Maps tab. One is a log of everything on The Chart that is not just simply a drive. It is the top one. The second map is a log of almost every destination on The Chart that is just simply a drive, hence the blue routes you will see when clicking on it. There are a couple on the chart that are not on the second map, as Google Maps only allows for 10 layers – or in this case drives – to be shown on a given map. I tried to pick the 10 best/most important for the second map, though. Additionally, three other tabs exist on the website. One of them is the Secret Spots tab, which has six places I am not permitted to put on the chart for various reasons. I was able to show the images of them to help assist some in finding them, but it’s as much help as you will get from me. Additionally, some of the spots, one will simply not find. They are just too hidden. Another tab is the Bucket List tab. While I have 6-7 pages worth of Google Docs of places I’ve still yet to go to in the state, I was able to narrow down that list to 10 places that are very much worth sharing. If I complete anything on the Bucket List tab, it would probably be one of the best days of my life. Finally, I included the Disclaimer tab. While The Chart does its best to prepare people for what they may expect when traveling to a destination (what the drive is like, what kind of car is needed, how long and hard the hike is, etc), I wasn’t able to go into great detail on each destination. Additionally, very few of the articles posted on the website to accompany featured destinations mention what wildlife one may encounter when traveling to a destination. The Disclaimer tab gives a good summary of all of these things, but most notably the wildlife aspect. Remember, in Arizona, if you’re not in bear country, and then you’re probably in rattlesnake country, and if you’re not in rattlesnake country, then you’re probably in bear country. Don’t that let trip you, though. There are very few places in the state that are not considered rattlesnake country.