Congrats June and August Graduates!
Congratulations to our June and August 2018 grads! The Honors Program celebrated our graduates just before Commencement Exercises on August 16th at the Honors Graduation & Luncheon.
The Luncheon was hosted in the Hinckley Center where Honors faculty and members of University administration came together to congratulate the Honors graduates. Dagan Pielstick, an August Honors graduate, gave an exceptional piano performance of “Intermezzo No. 2 in A major, Op. 118” by Johannes Brahms. The keynote address was given by August Honors graduate Katie Johnson Stanley. Katie spoke about experiences she had with unexpected connections throughout her undergraduate education, and highlighted the insights she gained in her Honors 200 level “Unexpected Connections” courses. She also included some hilarious unexpected connections she made during one of BYU student’s favorite pastimes – dating. Dr. Spencer Magleby, the Associate Dean and Director of the Honors Program, congratulated the Honors graduates and awarded the students their 2018 University Honors medallions.
Later that afternoon, June Honors graduate Ashton Omdahl gave the student address at the University Commencement Exercises in the Marriott Center.
Our June and August Honors graduates exemplify the standards of the BYU Honors Program and are moving on to great things. Of the graduates, 55% will be pursuing graduate degrees at various academic institutions including MIT, Oxford, John Hopkins and Cambridge. The remaining 45% of the graduates are entering the workforce in primarily the education, nonprofit, and business sectors.
Honors Graduates
June & August 2018
| Name | Major | Thesis Title |
| Thomas Barlow | Mechanical Engineering | "Design for Maintainability in Developing Communities -- A Case Study on the Uros Islands" |
| David Bates | Political Sciences | "Effectiveness of Different Regime Types in Preserving Common Resources: Evidence from a Lab Experiment" |
| Amanda Buessecker | Art History and Curatorial Sciences | "Public Art Commissions and Alberta’s Regionalism" |
| Micah Cozzens | English | "Understanding Arthurian Romance’s Peripheral Witch: How to Write an Unconstrained Woman in YA Fiction" |
| Robert Drury | Nutritional Science | "College Students’ Understandings of, Perceptions Toward, and Usage of Canned Foods Based on Exposure to Canned Foods During Childhood" |
| Kaylee Dudley | Statistics | "Examining Multimorbidities Using Association Rule Learning" |
| Rebecca Evans | English | "Otherwise Known as Attempting Christianity" |
| Morgan Fronk | Physiology & Developmental Biology | "Identifying the 5’ End of the Camta1 Genes in Zebrafish" |
| Marissa Getts | Sociology | "Informing Social Impact: Enabling Everyday Changemakers Through Research" |
| Madison Grant | Linguistics | "A Sociolinguistic Approach to ‘Ordinary Meaning’ in Legal Contexts" |
| Teron Haynie | Neuroscience | "Synthesis of Candidate Natural Killer T-Cell Ligands" |
| India Henrichsen | Neuroscience | "Irish Dance in the State of Utah: A History" |
| Stephen Hunsaker, Jr. | Political Science | "Reducing the Constraints to School Access and Progress: Assessing the Effects of a School Scholarship Program in Malawi" |
| Lauren Johnson | Elementary Education | "Poverty and Empowerment Discourse in Utah Dual Immersion Classrooms" |
| Erin Kaseda | Neuroscience | "Self Regulation, Threat Perception, and Perceived Parental Support: an fMRI Investigation of Children with ADHD" |
| Ashton Omdahl | Bioinformatics | "Genomewide Evaluation of cis-Elements and Cognate Transcription Factors in Nicotiana attenuate Predicts 27 Unique Transcription Factor-Binding Site Pairs" |
| Caroline Palmer | Anthropology | "Gender and Religion in a Shifting Social Landscape: Final Phase Mortuary Practices, A.D. 600-700" |
| Louise Paulsen | Political Science | "Are Danes Just Xenophobes? Examining the Establishment of Anti-Immigration Parties in Denmark and Sweden" |
| Sierra Phillips | Psychology | "Introspection on the Evolution of Goals in Relation to Emotional Experiences" |
| Dagan Pielstick | Mechanical Engineering | "Similarities and Differences in the Neural Processing of Speech and Song in Religious Music" |
| Mary-Margaret Pilling | Art History and Curatorial Studies | "The Significance of Cloth in the Narrative of the Life of Christ: As Represented in Dieric Bout’s The Life of Christ Altarpiece" |
| Carlee Reber | Interdisciplinary Humanities | "Ecology in The Book of Mormon" |
| Eliza Riley | Political Science | "28 Years of Independence: Post-Communist Attitudes Toward Markets, Privatization, and Redistribution" |
| Kylan Rutherford | Economics | "Grafting Democracy: British Policy in the Burma Independence Process" |
| Kassandra Schreiber | Interdisciplinary Humanities | "Sacred Time in the Work of Makoto Shinkai" |
| Kate Johnson Stanley | English | "Lydia D. Alder: The Life of the Mormon Poet, Suffragist, and Missionary" |
| Anne Thomas | Biodiversity & Conservation | "Plant Functional Groups and Success in a Changing Environment: Modeling Physiological Niches of Colorado Plateau Plants" |
| Jenalyn Thorpe | Chemical Engineering | "Waste Vegetable Oil Properties with Usage and its Impact on Artisan Soap-Making" |
| Tinesha Zandamela | Sociology | "Understanding Biracial Women's Identity Formation" |