Honors College
Excellence in Research
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2024 WINNERS
William Campbell
Creative Award
Advisor: Joyce Inman
The Offering
The Offering is an original story that functions as a frame for five shorter stories. Four of the five short stories are self-contained narratives that can be read in isolation. The telling of the stories contributes to the plot of the frame story by influencing the character’s decisions. In this way the short stories function as moralistic tales that demonstrate the effectiveness of telling stories to promote change.
Hunter Smith
Applied Design Award
Advisors: Marie Danforth and Kristi Johnson
Adults Matter Too: An Examination of State Adult Missing Persons Policies and Procedures to Implement a Best Practices Handbook
The purpose of this handbook is to improve success rates of finding and/or identifying adult missing and unidentified persons. This is achievable through two methods. The first involves using this handbook as a training aid for law enforcement agencies to educate their officers on the proper questions to ask, what databases can be utilized, and what resources are available to them. The second is the use of this handbook by law enforcement personnel as a resource and field guide throughout the investigation process.
Haeden Overby
Behavioral Science Award
Advisors: Wei Wang and Banu Elmadag Bas
Robotic Service in Hospitality: Brand Perception and Guest Behavior – A Multi-Method Study
Hotels in hospitality and tourism have found use for autonomous service robots to help soften the impact of labor shortages and provide unique experiences for guests. The purpose of this thesis is to: 1) explore hotel guests’ online reviews about their interactions with service robots and 2) examine relationships between behavioral intentions and guests’ perceptions after staying in a hotel with service robots.
Teresa DiGerolamo
Humanities Award
Advisor: Matt Casey
A World Between: The Macro and Micro-relationships that Shape the Borderlands
This thesis explores changing border policies, their effects on migrants, and the humanitarian community that has emerged to meet the needs of migrants. The humanitarian community in southern Arizona is active and dynamic, adapting to ever-changing border policy and mobilizing resources year-round. Through reviewing U.S. foreign policy, federal reports, and academic literature, I lay the foundation of the political landscape in the border region by conducting on-site research in four southern Arizona cities.
Aiden Leise
STEM Award
Advisor: Julie Pigza
N-Methylpyridinium as a Novel Charged Acidifying Group for Squaramide Organocatalysts
The objective of this research is to draw upon design elements of several previous catalysts to develop a new class of lipophilic squaramide catalyst salts bearing an N-methylpyridinium moiety and to evaluate their catalytic activity in model reactions. The synthesis of these charge-enhanced squaramides was accomplished via a four-step process beginning from diethyl squarate, proceeding similar to the synthesis of other squaramides with additional steps for the creation of a charge center via methylation with methyl iodide and a later salt metathesis to introduce a lipophilic, weakly-coordinating tetraarylborate anion.