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.
2022
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 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
Alga of My Eye, Determining the Ability of Palmaria palmata to Bioaccumulate Metals, Cameron Smith
Family, War, and Identity, Claire E. Smith
The Student Spect-Actor: Embodying Community Through Theatre, Aidyn Stevens
Cupid’s Arrow: A Tale of a Complex and Dynamic Protein, Nadine Tietz
No Place Like Homeskillet, Kai Uyehara
Video Games, Theatre, and the Modern Oral Tradition, Madeline Virtue
About the Dark Times: Poetry for the Miocene, Nadine Waggoner
The History, Drivers, and Social Issues of the Cottagecore Movement, Mason M. Waller
Christians and the Irreligious: What is Associated with Religious Bias Between Groups?, Lucas Wall
Gender Through Time and Culture, Kate Wick
Kerameikos: Death, Life, and the Vessel, Allison Rebecca Yarbrough
2021
Raising Canes: Crafting Disability Narratives, Charlotta Abernathy
Everybody Watched and Watched: Illustrations for a Preschool Journal, Sylvie Spencer Ackroyd
Trade Bait: Season 3, Ben Bagley
The Joy of Cooking with OTs: A Visual Guide, Sarah Baker
Building Better Business: Creating Socially, Environmentally, and Economically Sustainable Businesses, William Barror
More Than Meets the Eye; Accessibility of Scientific Information Through Art, Rachael Barrows
The Graph Menagerie: An exploration of the intersection of math, biology, and art, Maggie Barry
“It’s Love Island, Not Friend Island”: Authenticity and Surveillance in Reality TV, a Literature Review and Content Analysis, Laura Sarie Beaty
Tracking Our Progress Through the COVID-19 Pandemic, Alexandra Bogacz
Transcribing Ragtime for Guitar, William Brehm
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Empathy-Based Education in the Modern Zoo, Annika Brinkley
Insulin: Roles and Functions in Biochemistry and U.S. Healthcare, Mia Brinkley
The Marine World: Its Misrepresentation in Popular Depictions, Ryan T. Brubaker
A Morphosyntactic Analysis of Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓: Pronominal Argument Hypothesis, Clitic Behavior, and the Syntactic Representation of Non-Colonizer Languages, Jessalyn Campbell
Protein Composition: Translating Amino Acid Sequences into Music, Melody Campbell
Out of the Dark: short fiction - works in progress, Ruthie Carroll
Running Whidbey: The Physiological and Psychological Impacts of a 60 Mile Ultramarathon, Bree Daigneault
Fog Town: Exploring the Novel-Writing Process, Spencer de Vries
Design Portfolio for The Tri-Cities Homestead 2.0: A Second Look at a DOE Solar Decathlon Net Zero Home Design, Talia Dreicer
Long-Term Memory for Associative Conditioning and Glutamate Receptor Expression, Kaitlyn Dybing, Waleed Faruqi, Janie Aguilera, Roma Zakos, Lina Dahlberg, and Jacqueline K. Rose
College students’ experiences of sexual violence at Western Washington University, Zoë Evans-Agnew