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.
2025
The Life of Maud Miner Biglow, Isabella Accetturo
Ecoprinting! An introductory creative workshop on natural fabric dyeing methods, Samone Alberts
Sortase A: Extended and Endogenous Binding Models, Devin Janhaskani Andaluz
Understanding Weaponized Incompetence, Nina Augustine
Security & Privacy in Online Healthcare, Owen Barenburg
Addressing the Low Levels of Civic Education in the United States: A Proposal for Improving Washington State High School Civics, Jaida Barrows
Dancing Through Life: Practicing Creative Movement with Seniors, Amalie Barton
Validation of a SWAN Model for Maritime safety and Nearshore Conditions in American Samoa, Brielle Biehn and Sam Kastner
Celiac Disease: A Review, Lindsey Billingsley
The Monster Under My Bed: An insomniac's poetry collection, Reagan Billingsley
Discovery of a New Chemical Reaction: the Formation of Oxygen and Silicon Containing Rings from a Non-metal Catalyst, Tess Billmire
What Do You See in the Sea? (A Brief Anthology of Marine Organisms of the Salish Sea), Merlot Bingham and Joy Cobb
ESCAPE: A Photographic Exploration of Taking Up Space and How the Urban Landscape Reflects and Resists Women’s Presence, Stella Borrillo
The Intervention Worked, But Did It Help? An Examination of the Pros and Cons of Applied Behavior Analysis for Autism Spectrum Disorder, Sydnee Bossen
An Observational Heat Budget of the Swinomish Clam Garden, Amelia Bourne, Maia Heffernan, Marco Hatch, and Sam Kastner
A review of large marine animal tracking methodologies, discoveries, and applications, Braden Brask
Gain Staging Careers: A Data-Driven Exploration of WWU’s Audio Technology, Music, and Society Program, Kira Buehler
To an Indiscernible Heart, Emalee Burgh
An Exploration of Imposter Syndrome Within the WWU Chemistry Department, Olivia Caldwell
Soxta's New Name: A Conlang Children's Book, Milo Campbell
Voice of the Dead, Diego Cardenas
Improving Language Learning: A Data Formatting and Plotting App for the Spanish Language Learning Research Group, Anuk Centellas
Communicating CRISPR, Charlotte Clark-Slakey
Toxins in Coastal Waters: Will Surf Smelt and Other Forage Fish Survive?, Joy Cobb
Addressing the Impact of Timing Jitter on Visual Evoked Potentials to Faces, Marin Cohan and Kelly J. Jantzen
An Odyssey into Creative Writing (As an Engineer), Aydn Cole
The Emerging Role of Artificial Intelligence in Content Creation, Slate Colebank
Sunrise & Little Car, Eva Cooper
Honors Capstone Report: Emulating the Global Change Analysis Model with an Expanded Input Space, Cooper Cox
BrainGate: Demystifying Psychology Research at Western Washington University, Charlotte Curry
Raise or Hold? Estimating the Whatcom Transportation Authority's Fare Elasticity, Jasmine Daling
The Same and Different Rivers, Fig DePaolo
Functional Analysis of ROCK1 and ROCK2 in Vascular Development Using Zebrafish, Jeffery Devine
St. George Tucker’s Letter to a Congressman: A Virginia Judge's Critique of the Alien and Sedition Acts, Logan Dopps
Opioid Overdose Response Training Program Materials, Cara Doyle
Sex Ratios of Harbor Seal (Phoca vitulina) Haul Out Sites in the Salish Sea, Maren Duffy
Line Dancing with the Land: Embodying Place and Community, Parker Eckardt
Women in the Shahnameh: A look at Representation of Women in the Shahnameh and how it Connects to Iranian Identity and the Fight for Female Autonomy in Iran, Tina Ekhteraee-Sanaee
One more Light, Thomas Endicott
Extended N-terminal helix domains selectively decrease enzymatic activity in Sortase A, Sarah Ernst and Jeanine Amacher
Clean Slate: Restoring Our Spaces, Miles Falcone
21st-Century Syrian Composer Identity: Representation and Sustainability in Concert Music, Amara Farah
A Nervous System, Fiona Ferguson
Becoming Creatured, Emily Freudenberger
Proposed Tax Literacy Standards to be Included with Washington State Graduation Requirements, Isabelle Garten
Composting 101: The Ecological Art of Decay, Aeryn Garvisch
Silk Silhouettes: A Practical Exploration of Fabric Drape and its Applications, Clare Gaskill
Science as a Creative Endeavor, Samantha Gerschwiler
The Inextricable Tie Between Language and Race: How We Perpetuate Racism, Maya Gersh
Falwell and Begin: Shifting Theopolitical Tides, Chris Gilbert
Art & Place, Emily Grund
The Outrage at St. John: Fostering Local Consciousness of an Understudied Pacific Northwest Race Riot, Edme Guetschow
Balboa the Warrior: The Experience of Editing my Novel, Ariel Hall
Experiments in Worldbuilding: Laying the Foundations for Future Works, McKenzie Harris
Making a Person out of Scrap Paper: An Essay Collection, Mayumi Haskins
Eight of Cups, Zay Hassan
The Body Electric: Examining Intersections of Neuroscience, Disability, and Teaching, Elliott Hawley
Finding My Rhythm: An original podcast exploring how Musicians of Color sustain their identities, Anna Mei Hedrick
Reentry: Navigating Life After Abroad, Samantha Herlich
Firefighter Shift Work, Sleep Disturbance, and Trauma Susceptibility, Elizabeth Herriott
A (mostly) Comprehensive Timeline of Banking in the U.S., Jaden Holt
How does being a fully EV automotive firm affect performance?, Gibran Jessa
Optimizing cure conditions for frontal polymerization composites, Anders Johnson, Ethan Granat, and Mark Peyron
Can We Talk?: Toward an Iterative Praxis of Intergenerational Care, Jura Johnson
If/Then, Kumiko Juker
The Role of Motivated Reasoning in Maintaining Democracy, Charlotte King
Stop and Smell the Lilies: A visual exploration of Pacific Northwest native lilies through acrylic paint, Esmé Krause
Beyond Assimilation: A Comparative Literature Analysis of the Roles and Practices of Modern-Day Indigenous Boarding Schools, Eden Krieger
Exploring Manganese, Zinc and Iron behavior in a Constructed Wetland, Grace Landaverde
The Strengths and Weaknesses of ABA Therapy, and the Importance of Compassionate Care for Children with ASD, Aidan Lawler and Brennan Gilbert
We’ll Be Okay, Together: An Applied Hope Workshop Guide, Marlowe Lawson
The Timber Wars: The Framing of the Spotted Owl Controversy in the Media, Mia Limmer-Lai
The Skagit River: Mapping a transborder waterway, Carly Lloyd
Pillars of Sustainability: Connecting People, Business, and the Environment, Serena López
Poor Fuel: The Autobiography of a Nonexistent Game, Finlay MacLeod
SoundGarden, Hamza Magsi, Tarek Idriss, Sasha Petrenko, and Anu Singh-Cundy
Running on Empty: A Review of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, Delphine Maurer
Innervations of Ophelia; How Shakespeare’s Ophelia creates the Madwoman Trope, and Why she Endures in Contemporary Femininity, Kacie Joe McDonald
Early Supports: Measuring the Presence of Community in the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department, Molly McGonagle
The Impact of Gender, Sexuality, and Self-Worth on Gym Anxiety and Avoidance, Sadie McLaughlin
Teaching Perspectives, Maggie Minogue
Navigating reproductive futures post-Dobbs: A scoping review of qualitative evidence, Amanda Mohn and Mary Hunt
Otolith-based Determination of Rainbow Trout Life Histories in the Skagit River Basin, Aleutia Morris, Leo Bodensteiner, Nikhil Amin, and Mai Sas
In Another Life, Olivia Morrow
The Art of Language: A translation of 《胡笳十八拍》, Maven Neumiller
The Fabric of Our Future: Love and Justice Through Art, Dove Nordblom
Lost in Adaptation: A Christmas Carol Through the Ages, Ally O'Connor
Talktistic: how autistic speech variants facilitate communication, Rosie O'Malley-Knudson
Fanfiction's Out of the Bubble, Elizabeth Padfield
For the Birds: An Exploration of the Corvid as a Reflection of the Anthropocene, Gwendolyn Pane
RIPK3 signaling and effects, Selma Ragle and Annelise Snyder
The Power of Food: Recipes to Fuel the Body and Soul, Kayla Reichstadt
Culture in the Commons: Third Places in Bellingham, WA, and their effects on sustainable behavior, Sophie Richmond
What's the Worst That Could Happen?, Joel Rink
Helping Ourselves: Creating a Disabled Peer Mentorship Program at Western Washington University, Remi Rogoff
Pretty Little Nihilists: The Aesthetic Politics of the Sad Girl, Anika Rozich
Diet Preferences of Fish in the Olympic Peninsula, Cherise Russo
Tapestry/Unraveling, Adelle Sager
The Legal Rubik's Cube Group, Wes Schirmer