Education Commons^™

Runaway Slave Advertisements From Loyalist Newspapers Of The Maritime Colonies, Sarah Elizabeth Chute

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The end of the American War of Independence prompted thousands of Loyalist refugees to flee the United States. 30,000 went to the Maritime colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, bringing with them roughly 1,200 enslaved people. The newspapers founded by these Loyalists include advertisements for runaway slaves. These advertisements reveal the presence of slavery Maritime colonies and explain the nature of slavery there. Comparisons between these advertisements and those from other British North American colonies complicate the traditional understanding of Canada as a land of freedom for many black people. Significantly, these advertisements also bear witness …

Conceptual Metaphor And Its Role In The Composition, Performance, And Consumption Of Music, Loren Natario

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

An analysis of conceptual metaphor (as described by George Lakoff) within the field of music discourse. I examined specific instances of conceptual metaphor and extrapolated to draw conclusions regarding patterns of reasoning and conceptualizations of music as a whole. Despite my observations of conceptual metaphor being limited to the English language, I argue that there is a degree of universality of these conceptualizations (at least within the domain of Western music) and provided evidence of similar conceptualizations outside of the English language. I also argue that significant changes in musical aesthetics in the 19^th and 20^th century can …

Deblurring Images, Jamie Mcmullen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Let the matrix B be a blurred version of a sharp image represented by the matrix X. Given B, we would like to recover X.

To accomplish this, we construct linear models of the blurring process that produced B from X. The idea is that we could then reverse the blurring to reproduce the original image.

For example, if the blurred image satisfies

B = CXR^T

for some invertible matrices C and R, then we could recover X as

X = C-¹B(R^T)^-1.

However, the blurring model …

An Examination Of Hippotherapy As A Tool To Deliver Physical, Occupational, And Speech Therapy, Madison Leidig

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This research paper aims to answer the following questions, 1) how is hippotherapy used as a form of speech, physical, and occupation therapy, and 2) is it an effective method of treatment. This will be done by describing each aspect of hippotherapy and how it can be an essential form of rehabilitation. Hippotherapy is broadly defined as the use of a horse’s movement to facilitate physical, occupational, or speech therapy. While hippotherapy is becoming increasingly popular, it is not yet viewed as a mainstream form of therapy. There is still limited research on hippotherapy, and because it is not used …

Incorporating Academic Writing Into The Advanced Chinese Class, Li Wang

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

How to incorporate academic writing into the Advanced Chinese Class? My mini-study explores how to balance the grammatical aspect with the writing train in the fourth-year Chinese class. By dividing the argumentative essay into a beginning, a main body and a conclusion parts, students can practice how to write an argumentative essay step by step. By including revision into the writing process, students get more opportunity to reflect and rewrite their writing.

Peer Editing As Learning Tool, Warren Cornwall

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

Structured peer editing of student writing provides a valuable tool for teaching writing concepts and skills. This write-up describes a detailed process for teaching and using peer editing in a journalism class. The goal of the peer editing is to help students understand and apply concepts and skills used to craft engaging and informative news stories, and to develop skills providing and receiving feedback about writing.

Incorporating Exploratory Writing Assignments For An Intermediate Nutrition Class, Claudia Wang

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

Several exploratory writing assignments were developed and implemented in a 300 level nutrition class based on the Backward By Design Strategy. A weekly written reflection assignment was analyzed, summarized, and reflected for its strengths/weakness. Strategies were identified to use this assignment in the future better.

Improving Mba Students' Ability To Do Financial Analysis, Claire Lending

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

I restructured my graduate class, MBA 541, Managerial Finance with a focus on the core concept, company value maximization. The course was structured around assignments where the students would do research on a specific company for the whole quarter. These almost daily assignments all focused on value and I would specifically ask the students to make “refutable statements” on how the company was adding or detracting from value due to their financial decisions. The combination of frequent low stakes assignment and the explicit connection to value enhanced the students’ learning and improved class atmosphere.

Scaffolding Writing Assignments In Introductory Art History, Monique Kerman

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

As a result of my participation in WWU’s Backward by Design retreat in 2017, I sought to modify the written assignments of my introductory Art History course for pre-majors in order to better prepare students working towards a lengthy research paper. In course evaluations and anecdotally, students reported being intimidated by the size and scope of the final paper, and asked for more writing practice. I decided that instead of requiring a high stakes research paper as the culmination of the coursework, I would scaffold assignments throughout the course that would eventually lead students to composing a thesis around which …

Consensus To Co-Create Curricula And Build Community, Nini Hayes

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

This project was about using consensus to co-create curricula and build classroom community. I worked with students to narrow their study of focus to two concepts, Neoliberalism and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. This co-creating and buy in from students really encouraged them to be present and find the course relevant to their work as environmental educators.

Using Reflective And Meta Writing Practices In English 101, Michelle Runyan

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

This study examines the ways in which a low-stakes meta, reflective, and reflexive writing assignment has the potential to help students better understand the writing that they do in the classroom. This assignment allows students to think through threshold concepts in the course, to question course concepts, and to think through the areas they are struggling with. Additionally, students are encouraged to think through their own writing process and how the skills they learn in the course might transfer to other courses. Finally, it allows the course instructor to examine their course curriculum and to adjust lesson plans based on …

Course Revision Using Backward By Design, Rita Daniels

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

The purpose of this mini-study was to redesign a Research Methods in Communication course using Backward by Design (BbD; Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). The first stage was to identify the desired results for the course and the second stage was to determine acceptable evidence for the desired results. The third stage was to plan learning experiences. Results of the study indicated that students found assigned course work to be challenging but the effective teaching of the course content, the relevance of the course to communication studies, and the instructor’s contribution to the course made the course overall worth taking. Having …

When Church And State Collide: Examining Belief And Determining Sincerity In Cases Of Religious Exemption, Meghan Woods

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

An examination of how courts define "religion" and determine sincerity in cases of religious exemption in the United States, with a focus on religious exemptions from vaccination.

Development Of A Monodisperse Oligomeric Hemoglobin-Based Oxygen Carrier For Acute Blood Replacement Therapy, Leah Huey

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Our long-term goal is to develop a monodisperse high molecular weight hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier (HBOC) for clinical care. One short-term aim is to ligate hemoglobin (Hb) molecules to a dendritic scaffold utilizing “click-chemistry”. Towards this goal, we have genetically modified the C-terminus of one of the α subunits of a di-α globin to contain the S. aureus sortase A recognition sequence (LPETG) and we have expressed the modified globin in E. coli. Here, we demonstrate that these Hbs can be site-specifically functionalized through sortase-mediated ligation of peptides containing dibenzocyclooctyne (DBCO). We further demonstrated proof-of-concept by conjugating an azide-funtionalized peptide with …

Exploration Of Peptide-Thiophene Hybrids As Self-Assembling Conductive Hydrogels, Ellie I. James

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Here, we have taken a bottom-up approach to confer multidimensional structure to conductive polymers by attaching thiophene monomers to peptides predicted to self-assemble into a biomimetic, fibrous nanostructure. A library of 12 peptides containing covalently attached thiophene-based monomers was synthesized. Peptide sequences that resulted in self-assembly and hydrogel formation in aqueous media were identified and the physical and electrical properties were characterized. The resulting hybrid materials have conductivities in the range of 10-2-10-3 S/cm, and possess moduli in the range of several tissue types, making them potential candidates for use in biomedical electronic applications.

Examining The Use Of Emi In Primary And Secondary English Classes In Taiwan: Reflections On Participation In The Wwu/Ntnu Cloud Project, Leah R. Sharaby

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The purpose of this study is to examine the the impact of the 2017 Western Washington University and National Taiwan Normal University Cloud Project on the Taiwanese participants’ use of English as the medium of instruction in their primary and secondary English classrooms, as well as their teaching practices over the course of the program . The participants were surveyed via Qualtrics, and data analysis was undertaken qualitatively using a combination of postcoding categories to identify common elements among the responses to open-ended survey questions. The majority cited an increase in English use in the classroom as a result of …

Crab Tracker Documentation, Noah Strong, Margot Maxwell, Chloe Yugawa, Elizabeth Schoen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

User and technical documentation for the "Crab Tracker" project, including details on system architecture, configuration, and design.

Representations Of Indigenous Cultures In Today’S Museums And Impacts On Cultural Tourists, Rachel Perkins

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper is an investigation of the ways in which museums collaborate with the minority groups represented in their exhibits, as well as the pitfalls of representation without collaboration and the impact this has on the museum-going tourist's experience.

Becoming Indigenous: A Story Of The Moklen People, Olivia Zimmerman

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The context and ways in which the Moklen people of Southwest Thailand are accessing their indigenous identify.

Queer(Ed) Monstrous Embodiment, Kyla Hupp Garlid

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

A brief poetry collection that explores themes around dehumanized, queer embodiment, mental illness, and inter-generational knowledges.

On The Outskirts Of Europe: Mikhail Glinka And His Spanish Overtures, Natalie Olivia Maeda

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper explores the circumstances in which Mikhail Glinka wrote his two Spanish overtures, discussing how and why Glinka's overtures differ from other Spanish-based pieces by non-Spanish composers of this time.

The Energy Imbalance Market: Environmental Benefits Of Regional Market Integration In The West, Kristen E. Tarr

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Compared to other regions of the United States, the Western electric grid is fragmented and balkanized, due to lack of regional market coordination. As the West anticipates the growth of renewable energy, there is an evident need for regional market interconnection. The Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) is the first sub-hourly regional power-trading market in the West, allowing Western utilities to buy and sell electricity across the diverse geographic region (EIM, 2018a). By tapping into the flexibility and diversity of regional production profiles, the EIM reduces the variability and intermittency of renewable power. According to the 2017 quarterly benefits report, from …

The Construction Of Disability Through Historical And Modern Perspectives: Literature Review And Personal Reflections, Anna Crow

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

A review of current literature relating to disability frameworks, both historic and modern. This paper aims to connect key themes in Disability Studies to current issues within the medical and to reinterpret the field of occupational therapy through a post modern lens.

Reimagining The Tennant Lake Interpretive Center: Needs Assessment Report For The Tennant Lake Interpretive Center In Ferndale, Wa, Kaitlyn Boyd

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project focuses on the Tennant Lake Interpretive Center that has been closed due to budget cuts since 2008. Whatcom County Parks (WCP), who owns the facility, is planning on remodeling the interior of the interpretive center to make the building more rentable as a facility, but plans on keeping some educational materials (J. Jacoby, interview, June 3, 2018). The purpose of this project is to explore the needs of potential stakeholders who would benefit from the re-opening of the interpretive center as an environmental education site, including local school districts and community members. Additionally, this project’s goal is to …

An Analysis Of The Effects Of Mocs1 Upregulation On Lifespan In Drosophila Melanogaster, Michael Lee

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Molybdenum-cofactor biosynthesis protein 1 catalyzes the first step in the synthesis of molybdenum cofactor (Moco), which is conserved across taxa and present both in prokaryotes and in eukaryotes. The effects of Mocs1 -upregulation on Drosophila lifespan were determined using the GAL4-UAS system to drive Mocs1 expression. Driven females lived significantly longer than controls (p=5.7x10 ^-6 , p=9.0x10 ^-4 ) while males did not show increased lifespan (p=0.49, p=1.8x10 ^-5 ). The data suggest a link between Mocs1 and lifespan which has not been previously explored.

Dissolved Organic Carbon Bioreactivity In Stream Environments, Rachel Geiger, Joe Lee-Cullin, Jay Zarnetske, Tyler Hampton

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Biogeochemical research regarding carbon cycling in streams shows the importance of stream sediments in carbon decomposition and the role of flocculent organic matter in stream ecosystems.

Family Experiences Related To Early Hearing Intervention Guidelines In Washington State, Rachel Tennant

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In 2016, the Washington State Early Hearing Detection Diagnosis and Intervention program determined that only 56% of infants diagnosed with hearing loss were identified by three months of age. The aim of the present study was to determine what “barriers” families face when obtaining a diagnosis for their child with hearing loss. A sixteen-question survey was developed using Qualtrics, distributed via email and on the Washington State Hands and Voices Facebook page. The survey collected feedback from parents who were (1) at least 18 years of age, (2) a parent or legal guardian of a child with hearing loss, and …

The Fear Of Things To Come: Science Fiction Before And After World War Ii, Scott St. Clair

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

A broad survey of science fiction before and after WWII. Examining changes in the fiction and how it is reflective of collective perception of technology.

Heroics 101: A Game Of High Fantasy, Adventure, Intrigue And Schoolwork, Alexander Veneruso

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Primary draft of the work-in-progress tabletop role playing game, Heroics 101.

Failure To Launch: A Short History Of Health Care Reform In The United States, Claire Talbert

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

A research paper on the past, present, and future of health care reform in the United States with an emphasis on past failures and the role of health insurance.