Annual Honors Conference

Don't miss the annual Honors Conference! Join us this Saturday March 26th, from 8:30 am to 2 pm in the Maeser Building. This year's theme is "Improving Society through Scholarship," an important concept for everyone in our Honors community! Each year, the Honors Conference provides an opportunity for Honors students to be inspired and get ideas from their peers who are working on their thesis or Great Questions essay. Presentations range from political science policy proposals to poetry analysis to protein quantification and more! Attending the conference is a great way to spark an idea for a future thesis project or Great Questions essay topic, learn from your peers about their journey, and ask questions about their experiences. Plus, a light breakfast, lunch, and Honors swag are all included. Why wouldn't you be there?

Here are some of the presenters who will be sharing on Saturday, with more to follow!

Spencer Ashford | Computer Science | Great Question Essay
Generalizing in a Seemingly Specialist World
Increasingly, it seems that people are having to turn to technology to help them generalize and specialize in things they can’t do anymore. It is difficult for experts to stay up to date within their specialization, and all but impossible for them to keep up with other related sub fields they aren’t specialized in. Spencer examines the idea of T-shaped people and how generalists can fit in today's world.

Lauren Bushnell |Marketing | Great Question Essay
The Thing to Fear is Me
Written from a primary and self-refectory perspective, Lauren's essay explores the concept of fear: what it is, why we experience it, and how it influences our lives and relations through a combination of disciplines that were personally relevant to her life and my process of understanding fear. The essay combines the disciplines of psychology based on Freudian concepts of fear and psychoanalytic perspectives, biology and evolutionary explanations for fear responses, financial/economic fear and its influences on business actions and decisions, and political fear with a focus on recent electoral campaigns and heightened emotions within the political realm.

Brigit Cooper | Psychology/French| Great Question Essay
A Tale of Three Murders
In her essay, Brigit investigates to what extent humans have free will through the lens of mental health issues that impact one’s ability to make moral decisions. Through telling the story of her own ancestor, who was convicted of murder, she explores how schizophrenia and other issues may have challenged his ability to reason.

Hannah Dixon | Sociology | Thesis
Educators' Responses to Discussions about Equity in Utah Schools
National conversation about Politicized Critical Race Theory (PCRT) has led to backlash against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies and trainings despite significant differences between them. This project draws on qualitative research (in-depth interviews with educators and observations of school board meetings) to explore what this has looked like for those working in public schools in Utah County.

Jessica Dofelmire | Political Science | Thesis
The Role of Latter-day Saint Resentment in Utah's Culture War
Jessica's thesis identifies and measures religious resentment in Utah and identifies a potential solution for easing the cultural tensions that contributes to that resentment. She aims to identify ways to improve society in Utah specifically, but also calls for further national investigation of religious resentment to better understand and combat the issue on a larger scale.

Paul Guarjardo | English/History | Great Question Essay
Eleven Minutes
One person dies of suicide in the United States every eleven minutes. David hopes to share something in those eleven minutes that could help someone struggling with suicidal ideation (or the friends and family of those who deal with it). His presentation will cover what he learned about suicide and depression through considering religion, poetry, psychology, and biology.

Holly Harris | Sociology | Thesis
A Gendered Comparison of "Early COVID-19" Parenting Stress and Parental Childcare
COVID-19 disrupted many facets of life, many of which were borne by the institution of the family. Using survey data from 1,142 Canadian parents, Holly analyzes how changes in parental childcare activities due to the pandemic impact the stress parents felt during the early days of COVID-19.

Adam Johnson | Political Science | Thesis
A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Outreach Strategies to COVID Skeptics and its Application to Climate Skeptics
Adam will identify strategies that are being used to communicate with COVID skeptics and hypothesize how these strategies could be used to communicate with climate skeptics. He will use a statistical analysis to determine if there is a shared demographic between the populations of COVID skeptics and climate skeptics, then categorize the communication and outreach strategies that are being used by government and non-government organizations to communicate with COVID skeptics and climate skeptics.

Kennedy Madrid | Neuroscience | Thesis
Examining Limbic Sexual Dimorphisms in Schizophrenia
Kennedy is researching how schizophrenia differs in males and females. She will gather MRI data from three different databases to compare age and gender of each subject. She will then compare the volumes of the amygdala and hippocampus in each subject, and will compare the volumes of the amygdala and hippocampus with a high-dimensional surface mapping procedure .This will allow further investigation on if individuals with schizophrenia have different volume sizes of the amygdala and hippocampus between the same-sex groups and between the opposite sex with the same diagnosis.

Christian Metzner | Neuroscience | Great Question Essay
A Recipe for Disaster: Why We’re Wrong About Being Right (Until It’s Too Late)
Christian explores how we can be wrong when we’re convinced of being right. All of us have been, will be, and currently are wrong about something. Paradoxically, the more we think we’re right, the more wrong we’ll probably turn out to be. The affliction of equivocation affects all of us, irrespective of our upbringing, education, intelligence, and age. How and why does this happen? Can it be avoided?

Jaimi Mueller | Sociology| Thesis
Psychological Sense of Community in Gateway Communities
Jaimi analyzes the changes in psychological sense of community in gateway communities by looking at the rural communities that border the Bears Ears National Monument as a case study. Survey data from three rural communities that surround Bears Ears National Monument are used to test the effects a proposed land management change has on community needs fulfillment, community emotional connection, community influence and community membership.

Kelsey Mae Nield | Communications | Great Question Essay
Love, Yourself
This essay is an examination of self-hatred and self-perception. Using the lenses of optics, psychology, and art history, is it possible to understand loving yourself and learning to love who you are? What contributes to our self image in relation to pop culture and artistic deceptions of beauty? How do our minds communicate criticism to us? What does looking in the mirror do to our warped views of ourselves?

Rebekah Olsen | English | Thesis
“I—I can't talk about things”: The Tragedy of Post-WWII Civilian Masculinity in Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood
Rebekah thesis aims to recognize the civilian trauma (especially male civilian trauma) that came out of WWII, and the importance of talking about it, which she found to be particularly relevant for our collective cultural trauma coming out of quarantine, as well as the ways men still feel like their trauma must go unspoken.

Anna Osguthorpe | Economics | Thesis
Impact of Care For Life-Mozambique's Cyclone Recovery Program
Anna shares her impact evaluation of the cyclone recovery efforts of the non-profit organization Care For Life, based in Beira, Mozambique. She determines the causal effects of this program on business creation, morbidity outcomes, and several inputs to health (serious sickness, improved latrines, meals per day, and access to a vegetable garden).

Taylor Percival | Psychology/Spanish | Thesis
Barriers to Mental Health Help-Seeking Among the Latinx Population in the United States
This thesis explores the disparity between the incidence of mental illness and help-seeking and resource utilization among the Latinx population. Research supports that the incidence of mental health issues is as high among this population as it is among any other, but help-seeking behaviors and resource utilization among this population are significantly lower. It is proposed that this difference is caused by family influence, cultural stigma, and lack of access to education and resources.

Heidi Riboldi | Family History| Thesis
Angel Babies Ascending to Heaven--A Family Saga of Death Across Cultures
Heidi thesis is a microhistory focused on infant death and burial practices in Spain and Argentina at the turn of the twentieth century. The study uses primary sources from biographical journal pages, vital records, and notarial documents to follow Pablo Montaña and Exuperancia Fernández San Juan from their hometown of Cañizo, Zamora, Spain to Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina. Within a migration framework, the story develops around the themes of Catholic death rituals and doctrine, cemeteries and burial, and disease and healthcare. Even though this microhistory follows a particular family, place, and time, it also connects to a broader theme of how people, societies, and cultures remember, grieve, and deal with loss.

Sarah Sederholm | Public Health | Great Question Essay
Marble People
Through the fields of psychology, astronomy/physics, and dance, Sarah shares her own experiences about what it feels like to belong, or not to belong in different settings and in different cultures.

Joseph Sherman | Cell Biology & Physiology | Thesis
A Quantitative Analysis of Maternal Morbidities in Southern Arizona
Maternal morbidity and mortality is rising at an alarming rate throughout the United States, despite advances in medicine and technology. This study seeks to better understand and prevent these affronts on maternal health by analyzing maternal morbidities throughout the lenses of geography, race, age, access to care, and income level in Southern Arizona counties of Cochise, Maricopa, Pima, Santa Cruz, and Yuma.

Josh Stevenson | Linguistics | Great Question Essay
Humankind and Historical Progress: Discerning the Curvature of Our Moral Universe
As Martin Luther King, Jr. famously observed, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." We are either progressing or we aren't. Josh questions the validity and merits of this directional view, focusing especially on questions of progress in American history (and its inevitability or contingency), using the ideology of American exceptionalism, Christian views of Christ's Second Coming, and what progress means in light of contemporary events such as the impending climate catastrophe and global decline of liberal democracy.

Mason Stewart | Psychology | Thesis
The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide in Military Populations
Mason hopes that through his research we can find reasons for why soldiers (Federal) die by suicide at a higher rate and aims to translate this information into preventative measures that will lessen the number of suicides every year in these populations.

Savannah Turk | Ancient Near Eastern Studies | Great Question Essay
Discovering Zion
There is a substantial lack of unity and communication in the world today. Without unity and communication, the world is void of color. In order to bring life back into the world, we need to better understand the world around us. Savannah questions how we would create such a unified society. She creates a story of the tragedy that will be the end of the world, accompanied by a suggestion for an alternate ending.

Kathryn Taylor | English Teaching | Thesis
What is Literary? Teaching Diverse, Literary Young Adult Novels in the Secondary Classroom
Kathryn's thesis defines what makes a novel literary and examines the benefits of introducing Young Adult literature into the English curriculum. The current classical canon that is taught in secondary classrooms consists almost entirely of books written by white, Eurocentric men with a few token novels from women, authors of color, or queer authors. While the books in the classical canon have earned their place there, the rapidly changing demographics in our secondary schools mean that the majority of our students no longer share the same characteristics as these authors. YA novels have the diversity to provide students with the accessibility and understanding that they want while also containing the literary qualities of complexity and thematic development to fulfill state standards and expectations.

Amberlee Woodhouse | Piano Performance | Thesis
A New Age of Film Music: Emotional Responses to MIDI Mockups versus Orchestral Recordings
As technology continues to advance, there are more and more options for composers to create orchestral scores without the help of an orchestra. Up until recently, MIDI mockups created through notation programs or Digital Audio Workstations didn’t sound very realistic, but they are advancing to the point that it is difficult for the average person to hear the difference. Could films, video games, or tv shows ever score their projects using MIDI mockups, which are much less expensive than hiring an orchestra? This study compared the emotional responses of 65 subjects to MIDI recordings and orchestral recordings of the same pieces to determine if they have the same story telling capability.

Brooke Woolley | Psychology | Great Question Essay
Roots of Knowledge, Roots of Me: How I Fit In When It comes to Culture & Belonging
Brooke uses interdisciplinary approaches to come to some conclusions about both how to fit it and how to welcome others. Using different disciples, such as neuroscience, and the ideas and words of Mark Twain, Isaac Newton, Aristotle, Malcolm X, an ecologist here at BYU, and Walt Whitman, she explores several great questions about culture, belonging, and diversity. She comes to understand and respect her whiteness through interactions with different people, cultures, and a stained glass exhibit.

Georgiana Wilson | Psychology | Great Question Essay
"To Love at All is to be Vulnerable:" Do Soulmates Exist?
In our quest for love, most likely the question of whether or not soulmates exist has crossed your mind at some point. What is a soulmate anyway? This essay explores ideas of love, relationships, and the possibility of soulmates by taking a step back to the time of the ancient Greeks to modern research of DNA and chemistry research and wise words from a homeless man.

Suzy Yi | Political Science | 320 Essay
Kimchi: Soup or Salad?
Immigrants are often expected to assimilate to the dominant culture without much regard for their own unique lifestyles. However, they often face a myriad of political and social hardships that alienate them from the mainstream. Suzy’s own family of Korean immigrants certainly experienced difficulties assimilating to American culture. Using ecology, political science, and literature, she explores how immigrants grapple with assimilation and cultural adjustments as she integrates her own family's journey.

RSVP for the Honors Conference today! Remember, breakfast and lunch is included for attendees and each participant will receive a goodie bag of Honors swag. Come cheer on your Honors peers and be inspired for your own future projects!