2025 Honors Conference

The annual Honors Conference was held Saturday, March 29, 8:30 am to 1 pm in the Maeser Building. This event is a highlight of the academic year and featured presentations from your fellow Honors students on their theses, Great Questions essays, and Leadership Development Experiences – all centered around the theme of “Becoming an Educational Everest.”

The morning began with a light continental breakfast and keynote address by Ty Hopkins, Professor and Department Chair of Exercise Science. His remarks on the theme of the conference were a highlight of the morning as he encouraged students to consider the three key reasons we are all here at BYU: Learn to Think, Ask Meaningful Questions, and Solve Problems.

Following the opening session, participants chose from a variety of presentations during breakout sessions, with presenters in the Maeser classrooms. They were inspired for their own culminating Honors projects as we heard from fellow Honors students about their work (see the list of presenters below) and learned more about their Honors experiences.

After a couple of rewarding hours of inspiration and discussion, attendees enjoyed lunch from Zupas!

Thank you to all of our amazing presenters, and to everyone who attended and showed their support!

Great Question Essays

Ian Brunson: From Renaissance to Resolution
Jacelin Eyre: Why Do I Hate Being a Woman?
Robert Flores: Finding the Captor: You, Language, Me, or Reality
James Hamilton: What is Right?
Kaia Hathaway: The Effects of Trauma on Agency
Kennedy Kleinman: Based on a True Story
Claire Kulbeth: I Fear the Predator
Grace Lewis: Romantic Love: A social Construct, Choice, or Different Altogether?
Leah O’Barr: Making Sense of Spectra

Leadership Development Experiences

Tala Alnasser: Stewardship Over Status: Rethinking Civic Virtue through Faith-Based Leadership
Ilse Eskelsen: Women Who Knew God: Highlighting Women of Faith
Kaia Hathaway: Building Community through Peer Mentorship
Abigal Hoban: Marketing Strategy for Purple T (Ballard Center Social Impact Project)

Honors Theses

Siena Christensen: The Effects of Social Learning on Second Language Acquisition and Memory: an fNIRS Study
Sophie Cranney: Supporting Student Mothers
Israel Davila: Extracellular Vesicle Markers of Disease Progression of Helicobacter Pylori Infection to Gastric Cancer
Sarah Denton: "It is now in flames, but it will never burn down": A Conservation of Resources perspective on resilience of survivors of the fall of Yugoslavia
Gloria Guillermo: Do ESG Ratings Do Any Good? The Problems of Aggregation in Corporate Social Responsibility Literature
Bethany Hartwell: Intermittent Pneumatic Compression and Heart Rate Variability
James Hecht: How We Can Learn to Solve Hard Problems: A Study of Tutorials Structured to Teach Problem Solving in Physics
Sophie Hirtle: More than a Vessel: Presentations of the Mother in Lucie Delarue-Mardrus' Marie, fille-mère; Pagu's Parque Industrial; and Nella Larsen's Qu
Emese Izso: The Witch, the Fairy, and the Woman: Femininity, Morality, and the Supernatural in Hungarian Fairytales
Lily Jensen: Hoping for a Better World: Utopian Performatives in Jez Butterworth's "The Hills of California"
Elsa Longhurst: Connecting with Our Creator: How Experiences in Nature Enable Closeness with God
Mauricio Morales: Harnessing Soft Power for Global Diplomacy: A Critical Analysis of Rhetoric Bridging the Middle East and Latin America in the Pursuit of Sustainable Peace
Olivia Osguthorpe: Adding Virtue: The Leadership of Elaine Dalton
Elijah Pearce: The Readable Scriptures: Creating a Dyslexia-Friendly Book of Mormon
Katherine Rackliffe: Who’s on the Phone: Effectiveness of Cloned Vishing Messages
Destiny Romero: Implementing Exercise is Medicine at BYU
Brooke Smith: Sisyphus Smiles: Essays on Living Well in the Face of Absurdity
Savannah Travis: Picture This: An Event Designed to Create Awareness of and Empathy for Those Who Experience Scrupulosity