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
Frank Wins a Staring Contest with the Universe, Frank DePalma
Language Planning, Education, and Linguistic Identity in the Republic of Ireland, Margo Digiacinto
No Man's Land: Diversify Our Outdoors, Katrina Doerflinger
We Walk in Different Worlds, Olivia Dong
Ego Liminality, Sof Dubois
Getting to Know Community Forestry, Jane Egan
Mistletoe Blooms: A Proposal of Method, Petra Ellerby
Route 666: A Guided Tour Through American Road Trip Horror, Grace Fiser
Salmon Against Humanity: Are Hatcheries a Part of Salmon Recovery?, Janine Fong
Wild Buildings in the Balkans - Using drones and GIS to identify illegal buildings in Galicica National Park, North Macedonia, Marko Foster
Animal-Sediment relationships reexamined, a meta-analysis, Christine Franzen
Framing Dr. Fauci: The Portrayal of Dr. Anthony Fauci by Fox News and CNN in the Early COVID-19 Lockdown, Lilian Froese Raihl
Redefining Drug Education: A Neuroscience-Based Class for High Schoolers, Talia Frost-Belansky
Examining harbor seal predation impacts on Bellingham Technical College's salmon smolt release, Madison Gard and Alejandro Acevedo-Gutierrez
A History of China-Tanzania Relations: How China Became Donor, Friend, and Foe, Lucy Gentry
Joy at the End of the World, Faith Giboney
A Golden Friendship: A Children's Book, Gurleen Gill
Visualizing Animal Fire Responses, Michael Ginster
Assessing Positioning of Centriolar Satellites by the Golgi Apparatus, Jonah Goodfried and Nick Galati
Derivatives, Mikayla Goodkin et al
A Change-Point Analysis of Air Pollution Levels in Silao, Mexico and Fresno, California, Rachael Goodwin
Writing through becoming, becoming through writing: The evolution of poems through 2022 and early 2023, Maya Miracle Gudapati
Media Coverage on Human-Bear Encounters, Robin Hall
Shared Roots: A geochemical investigation of basaltic andesites to understand magmatic cogenesis at the Middle Sister and South Sister volcanoes, central Oregon, Sean Francis Halstead
From Filth it Rises presentation, Griffin Hartz
A Look at Languaging: Linguistic Justice in the Hacherl Research & Writing Studio, Rose Huentelman
Virginity: Not All Rose Petals and Candles, Katherine Hunter
Keystone Species Explorer Website, Claire Hutchings
Solving the Genius Square: Using Math and Computers to Analyze a Polyomino Tiling Game, Noah Jensen
Creating a Knockout Cell Line: Using CRISPR/Cas9 as a Tool for Huntington's Disease Research, Emma Jerome
Creating a Mass-Balanced Food Web Model for a Generalized Restored Estuary in Puget Sound, Penelope Johnson
/kwɪɹ/, Breann Jones
The role of volatile enrichment in the radiogenic heating and thermal evolution of rocky exoplanets, Ula Jones and Asmaa Boujibar
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
The Neuroscience of Creativity (Structure and Emotion), Michael Kihanya
Adventure in Seoul: A Bilingual Korean-English Children's Book, Abigail Landaverde
The Diffusion Illusion: An interdisciplinary approach to modeling cellular calcium dynamics, Katie Lane
Digital Archaeology: Detection of Archaeological Structures Using Convolutional Neural Networks on Aerial LiDAR Data, Katie LaRue
L'Esprit de Lascaux: Exploring group camaraderie in the paleolithic through game design, Logan Lemieux
1. On Adapting Local Food Systems, Nelson Lobo
Lagrangian Mechanics and the Motion of a T-Handle, Eric Maurer
Blood Coagulation Factor IX: Purification, Activation, Crystallization, Juliet McGill
Investigations on the Active Catalyst in Pd Catalyzed Organic Reactions, Riley McGraw
Political Rhetoric: A Personal and Scientific Exploration, Joshua McNeal
Beyond the Meeple: TTRPG's Impact on WWU Students, Nicolas Mendez
Development, Line by Line: An Introspective Case Study on Narrative Identity and Development through Poetry, Milla Miller
Liberalism and its Trail, David Nessa
The Silenced Migrants, Alisa Nguyen
Databases and Deliberation, Britany Orozco and Quentin Jensen
Racism within the Honors College, Zoe Pais
Facing the Music: Reflections from a Classically Trained Violinist, Olivia Palmer
The Call of Muscari, Sophia Passarelli
The Preacher's Child, Sam Pearce
The Power of Play: Theatre’s Potential for Healing the Wounds of Capitalism, Danielle Phillips
Revolutionizing Solar: A Portable Solar Solution for Anywhere, Anytime Use, Shelby Powers
Double Trouble: Applying Deep Learning to EBS Systems, Noah Reneau, Hidemi Mitani Shen, Nicholas Chandler, and Ian Pourlotfali
'An Indigenous Reckoning': An Indigifutures Production, Jayden Robles
Liberty Without Love: An Investigation of Antebellum Slave Narratives and American Freedom, Hallie Rogers
Quanta: Queering Video Games, Fyn Rose
“Emotions and the Ocean”: Integrating Social-Emotional Learning into a Fifth-Grade Science Curriculum, Madison Rossen
An Overview of Background and Experimental Methods Used to Investigate a ~23-24 nucleotide small RNA pathway and its Links to Genome Stability, Abigail Ruddick
The Foreign Earth: An Exercise in Speculative Biology, Aidyn Ruf
The Study of Peace: Proposing and Designing a Peace Studies Class for WWU, Clarice Ruhlin-Hicks
Not Not Double Negation, Jagmeet Sahota
On Research Ethics: A Proposal for an Undergraduate Ethics Course using a Graduate Research Ethics Course as a Baseline, Jordan Sawyer
Synthesis and characterization of hydroxy-functionalized copper indium disulfide quantum dots, Julia Schexnayder
Archaeological Photography: The United Kingdom, Madeline Scholten
Interactive Learning with Plankton: Constructing Kiosks for the SEA Discovery Center, Sierra Schuster
Single Sex Education in a Gender Fluid World, Stella Sisson
By the Campfire: How Representation in Video Games Can Be Improved, Hunter Smith
Fingerless Xbox Controller, Brooke Snow
Waiting in Lines Across the World: An Analysis of Lines in the Amusement Industry, Adam Sorg
all patched up!: a collection of poetry and prose detailing life and personal journey, Lukas Spring
Developmental intervention with CBD on BDNF levels and prosocial behavior in a mouse model of autism spectrum disorder, Jenika Staben and Josh Kaplan
Developmental intervention with CBD on BDNF levels and prosocial behavior in a mouse model of autism spectrum disorder, Jenika Staben and Josh Kaplan
Time as a Line: Helping Children Make Abstract Ideas Concrete, Rachel Mae Stenner
Inversed Research: A study about how psychology research impacts researchers themselves, Ayanna Stewart
Rethinking the American National Narratives: Finding a way forward with our past and with hope, Emma Stiff
The Evolution of Spanish Nationalism, Anna Sutherland
Fusion Dance: Exploring Identity and Social Possibilities, Katie Taylor
Anaerobic Digestion at Western Washington University, Sienna Taylor
Hyacinth and Humanity: The Modernization of a Myth, Jace Thompson
An Endless Cycle: Borges and the Reciprocal Nature of Artistic Inspiration and Expression, Alessandro Tomasi
The Effects of Trigger Point Dry Needling on Neck Pain in Adults: A Review, Grace Truesdale
Burnt Out: A Graphic Novel, Amaya Udager
Biological Oscillator Synchronization with the Cellular Potts Model, Rose Una
Evaluating Domain Specific LLM Performance Within Economics Using the Novel EconQA Dataset, Tate Van Patten
Social Impact of COVID-19 in India and Among Asian Indians in the United States, Rajeswari Venkatesh
Overwintering Eagle Demographics on the Nooksack River, Collette Webb
Common Threads: Centuries of Folklore Told Through Tapestry, Audrey Wheelock