An Honors Senior Project is required for graduation through the WWU Honors College. The Senior Project serves as a “capstone” experience, synthesizing what students have done in their entire education, including but not limited to their work in the major and in Honors.
The term, Senior Project, is vague, and for a reason. The term “Senior Thesis” is easily available, but it is one the WWU Honors College deliberately has avoided. While the project must be “product oriented,” i.e., there must be something tangible at the end of the process, it may be a long paper, that is a thesis, but it may also take several other forms, e.g., a recital, a painting, an album, a bound book, all of which have been quite successful senior projects.
2023
Language Barriers Among Immigrant Communities, Rosia Aning
Outdoor Therapy for Women: A Coming Home, Drew Baty
What are our plans missing? What are our missing plans?, Vivien Coop
Frank Wins a Staring Contest with the Universe, Frank DePalma
Route 666: A Guided Tour Through American Road Trip Horror, Grace Fiser
Salmon Against Humanity: Are Hatcheries a Part of Salmon Recovery?, Janine Fong
A History of China-Tanzania Relations: How China Became Donor, Friend, and Foe, Lucy Gentry
Writing through becoming, becoming through writing: The evolution of poems through 2022 and early 2023, Maya Miracle Gudapati
Creating a Knockout Cell Line: Using CRISPR/Cas9 as a Tool for Huntington's Disease Research, Emma Jerome
How-to: Make your house a battery--How demand-side management will be one key to a greener future, explained for popular audiences., Olivia Kaulfus
Silicon and Oxygen in Earth’s Core: Applications of Machine Learning to Metal-Silicate Equilibria and Core Formation, Ruben Keane
alternative milks: a musical exploration of identity, violence, and friendship, Fern Keely
Digital Archaeology: Detection of Archaeological Structures Using Convolutional Neural Networks on Aerial LiDAR Data, Katie LaRue
Facing the Music: Reflections from a Classically Trained Violinist, Olivia Palmer
Single Sex Education in a Gender Fluid World, Stella Sisson
Biological Oscillator Synchronization with the Cellular Potts Model, Rose Una
Overwintering Eagle Demographics on the Nooksack River, Collette Webb
Ponies And Their Eternal Fascism: A Draft, Malachi Wonder
2022
A Field Guide to Jezero Crater, Mars, Lee Adair
Learning by Trowel and Error, Kayla Alvarado-Hogan
Gifted Genes: An Investigation of College Student Perceptions of Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Kits, Kate Amos
'Wokespeak' Woes, Natalie Anderson
Wrestling with Restoration: How We Can Restore an Ever-Changing Planet, Anna Arensmeyer
Dark Patterns: How Interaction Design Turned to Deception, Ian Bansenauer
Travel in Southeast Asia, Adah Barenburg
Connections: Youth Suicide Prevention and Awareness, Catherine Baxter
Exploring Methods of Collecting Accessibility Feedback, Selah Bellscheidt
Why Art and Design Matters, Leah J. Berkowitz
Questioning Complacency: An Analysis of Sustainability to Foster Innovation, Alexandra M. Bierman
The Vampire Tapes, Emily Bishop
Kingdom of Fear: A Dark Fantasy Novel, Katie Borley
The Cross and the Coat Hanger: Catholics for a Free Choice and the Rise of a Religious Movement, Claire Elizabeth Brady
The Utopian Range - Short Climate Fiction, Kai Broach
The Myth of Meritocracy: Factors Explaining Belief in Meritocracy Within the United States, Kaley Burg
WHAT IS POLITICAL SCIENCE? What a Disciplinary Archipelago Says about Political Scholarship and Academia as a Whole, Warren Burroughs
Buenvivir - The Politics of Living Well, Jeremy Caldeira
The Author's Gauntlets: The Writing, Editing, and Publishing Process of a Novel, Robert Clifton
Effects of orthographic silent ‘l’ on preceding vowel duration, Sylvia Cohen
The Mountain In Our Backyard, Jordan Craft and Nathan Knoch
Holocaust Distortion and the COVID-19 Pandemic, Lyric Crane
The Secret Life of Diatoms: An Exploration of the Fascinating World of Diatoms through the Art of Printmaking, Zofia Danielson
10-50: Addiction and Confinement in Whatcom County, Kaitlyn Davidson
Measuring mtDNA in Drosophila, Lola Demurger
The Evolution of 'Homo'-nity: An A to Z from Erectus to Sapiens, Hailee Desrosier
Dust, Asher Didier
Honors Pathways and Curriculum Structure, Sebastian Doll
Bootstrapping the Likelihood Ratio Test To Determine Change Points, Lili Donovan
Paper Butterflies, Cali Dorszynski
Advancing Technology & Digital Lifestyles: Facilitating a Group Independent Study, Kailey Droz
The Interdisciplinary Study of Genetically Modified Salmon and Their Effects on the Environment and Indigenous Communities, Victoria Fair and Kaydee Mittleider
Adapting to Challenges: K-12 Education in the time of COVID, Connor Farrand
Untitled Novel on Indoctrination and Mentorship, Jacquelyn Ferris
Whump, A+ Parenting and Fantasy Racism: Trauma Narratives in Marvel Fanfiction, Sadie Fick
An Honest Man: Short Fiction, Hannah Fraley
Don't Judge Me: Declining Judicial Independence in Hungary and Poland, Jonathan Freeberg
Audience Accessibility- A Study into PAC Infrastructure Renovation, Ariana Gant
Terribly Timely Tariffs, Calvin Golliver
Fair Folk, Jamie M. Good
Dungeons and Disorders: Destigmatizing the Mental Health Conversation, Wren Hart
Pursuing Faith in Good Science: A Neuroscience Student's Argument for Including Science in Spirituality, Savannah A. Hastings
Breeding Sweet Corn for Vitamin A, Sam Herr and Dan Pollard
Fragments of a Soul, Angelina Hinojosa
Synthetic Development of Carbodiimide-Containing Polymers as Precursors to Guanidine-Based Covalent Adaptable Networks, Hayden Houck
VULNERABILITY, Tee Ing
Dean Winchester's Borderlands, Megan Jenkins
The effect of polyunsaturated aldehydes on zebrafish larvae heart rate and mortality, Soraya Jessa
Cannabigerol causes a CB1 receptor-dependent reduction in food consumption and weight gain, Jack Jones and Josh Kaplan
To Remember You By, Tesla Kawakami
White Lies Matter: The Evolution, Persistence, and Impact of Scientific Racism, Kim Keay
Physical properties of Brackett Emitters in the APOGEE DR17 Catalog, Elliott Khilfeh, Hunter Campbell, Kevin R. Covey, Marina Kounkel, and Richard Ballentyne
King of Swords, Hannah Kimble
Trouble Sitting Still Disorder: ADHD Through the Social Model of Disability, Rey Kistler
Software as a Tool not a Master, Dalton Leif Lange
Honors Peer Mentorship: A Guide to Sustaining Community in the Institution, Silvia Leija Rosas
Characterization of Carbon Fiber PEKK Thermoplastic Prepreg for Process Modeling, Tanner M. Leo
Extraction and Interpretation of Fatty Alcohols in the Chuckanut Formation, Ellis Lower
Blood Coagulation Factor IX: Purification, Isolation, Activation, Alex MacNeil
Indel Mapping, Lilu Martin
You, Me, and the Rise of the American Serial Killer, Keyana Marie McCain
Chemical and Physical Tailoring of Guanidine-based Covalent Adaptable Networks, Kate A. McConnell and Michael B. Larsen
Stonewalls and Statues: A Personal Exploration of Memorialization Culture within the United States, Petra McDonnell-Ingoglia
Audio Engineering, Sound Production, and Cultural Documentation Portfolio, Christian Michael McGovern
Queering The Birth Experience: Documenting Queer Individuals' Labor & Delivery Experiences, Caitlin Laura Jessica Millard
Tacoma and Health? An honors capstone project exploring the social stratification impacts on the health and well-being of Tacoma communities, Natalie Miller
It’s Awe-Fully Familiar: The Effect of Awe on Familiarity with Virtual Reality, Cassidy Ochadleus, Charissa Kirby, and Christie Scollon
Khahir: A Constructed Language, Kate Panza
It's the Holiday Rom-Com Season, Mariah Perez
Unmasking Climate Change: How the Impacts of Global Warming Alter Disease Spread and Discovery, Ellie Potts, Andy Bunn, and Adam Wright
Growing Through Climate Change: Food and Farm Resiliency Post-Disaster, Sarah Quenemoen
Coach Otto: Creating a Program to Program Weightlifting, Haylee Rawdin
Moira: A Star Wars Story, Sheila I. Richardson
Making Upper-Level Math Accessible to a Younger Audience, Allyson Roller
Improving Student Outcomes in Introductory Formal Logic, Bryce Rosenwald
The Influence of Intergenerational Trauma on Epigenetics and Obesity in Indigenous Populations: A Systematic Literature Review, Krista Schafte
All Creatures Great and Small: The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Veterinary Medicine, Amelia Schlemmer
Aramark and the Prison Industrial Complex, Katie Jayne HengQin Scoles
In the Flowers: A Novella in Progress, Rachel Seick