Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Populist Nationalism In The Age Of Trump, Vernon D. Johnson, Chelsee Autry

Political Science Faculty Publications

This paper builds upon the arguments advanced by Johnson and Frombgen in “Race and the Emergence of Populist Nationalism in the United States” (2009). Johnson and Frombgen made three central arguments: that the US is two nations, not one; that racial attitudes are central to each national identity, and that social movements of a populist character have critically shaped each national identity. They then offered a typology of left and right national identities, each of which had been shaped by populist social movements. This paper seeks to revisit the two nations thesis in the era of Donald Trump on the …

Indian South Africans As A Middleman Minority: Historical And Contemporary Perspectives, Vernon D. Johnson

Political Science Faculty Publications

Beginning in the 1940s, a literature on middleman minorities emerged to demystify the intermediary economic niche that Jews had occupied in medieval Europe. They were viewed as ethnic entrepreneurs occupying the economic status gap. In the 1960s, scholars began to apply middleman minority theory to colonial societies and to American society. More recently, Coloureds in South Africa have been identified as a middleman minority of another type: semiprivileged proletarians occupying an economic status gap in labour between whites and Africans. A political status gap between whites and Africans, both seeking alliances to achieve hegemony, is also occupied by Coloureds. Among …

The Myth Of Meritocracy: Factors Explaining Belief In Meritocracy Within The United States, Kaley Burg

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This study examined data from the 2021 General Social Survey (GSS) to determine what factors influence participants’ view of meritocracy within the United States. Based on existing literature that examines relative power and perception, this study sought to understand the connection between power and belief that America exists as a meritocracy, with the assumption that those belonging to groups deemed as wielding power in society should hold stronger beliefs in meritocracy. Results partially support this hypothesis. Using a multivariate linear regression analysis, those who are older or white assert stronger belief in meritocracy, while those with a greater social justice …

Is There A Future For Arrivecan At The Land Border?, Andrzej Jakubowski, Laurie D. Trautman

Border Policy Research Institute Publications

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the introduction of a number of restrictions as governments around the world sought to implement border management tools that could protect public health. One such example was the ArriveCAN app, introduced by the Government of Canada in November 2020. This advanced data submission tool aimed to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by ensuring arrivals were vaccinated and by facilitating contact tracing. This Border Policy Brief provides a summary of the nearly two-year use of ArriveCAN as a border management tool during the pandemic. We consider its impact on passenger flows through the …

Critical Digital Literacy (Infographic), Emily Spracklin, Christine Espina Dnp, Rn

Western Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Navigate Information Disorder: Using Lateral Reading + Critical Reflection

Learning By Trowel And Error, Kayla Alvarado-Hogan

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In this essay, I speak on how my time at Western Washington University allowed me the space to explore how my many interests interconnected with my Archaeology Major. From choosing Latin America as my preferred area of study to focusing on the methods of Indigenous and Community Archaeology, my experiences at Western helped me find the career goal of working towards an archaeology that won't repeat the wrongs of the past.

The Impact Of Cross-Border Environmental Media And Advocacy At The Skagit River Headwaters, Derek Moscato

Border Policy Research Institute Publications

The regional media of Cascadia has directed significant media attention toward the Skagit River watershed since 2018 as a result of a controversial mining proposal at the international border dividing British Columbia and Washington State. At the center of this con-troversy sits the so-called “Donut Hole” located at the headwaters of the Skagit watershed. As a result of concerns about impacts to wildlife and the surrounding North Cascades ecosystem, opposition to the project was substantial, led by environmental advocates and Indigenous community leaders. In turn, they harnessed extensive media coverage and advocacy to facilitate a larger regional dialogue about the …

Gifted Genes: An Investigation Of College Student Perceptions Of Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Kits, Kate Amos

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This study is based on a classroom-use only pilot survey of college student perceptions of direct-to-consumer genetic tests. These tests can provide information about an individual’s genealogy and ancestry, as well as their medical genetic profile and genetic risk factors. The survey was designed for ease-of-use using Qualtrics (Qualtrics 2022) and distributed using anonymous links and a QR code. A total of forty complete responses were recorded during the twenty-two days the survey remained open, which were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Respondents were mainly in their late teens to early twenties, just over half identified as female, and almost three-quarters …

Gender Through Time And Culture, Kate Wick

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Gender has been viewed as fluid through time. Different identities existed in communities across the globe. How gender is viewed in a western mindset can affect our perceptions of the past. The gender binary that’s been applied so strongly today is an outdated European concept. This binary brings gender roles, which have their own assumptions tied to them. This paper will define many known terms surrounding gender, as well as contemporary gender identities. This will be a look into alternate identities in Native American communities, Native Hawaiians, the Philippines as well as in India, both pre-colonial and post-colonial. Other locations …

No Place Like Homeskillet, Kai Uyehara

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The iconic Sunnyland breakfast spot, Homeskillet, closed after punctuating its ten-year run with a celebratory brunch party. Watch a community built around warm hospitality, hearty comfort food and eclectic decorations gather to bid farewell to a Bellingham favourite in this video feature story. To construct this six minute video, I pulled from my knowledge of storytelling through multimedia learned in my years at Western Washington University earning an English Creative Writing major, a journalism minor and participating in a film production club. This video feature story dwells within a smaller quadrant of journalism: feel-good journalism. Community and hospitality are at …

Cannabigerol Causes A Cb1 Receptor-Dependent Reduction In Food Consumption And Weight Gain, Jack Jones, Josh Kaplan

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Slides describing work leading up to a professional scientific poster, created and presented at psych fest depicting my last two years of work in Dr. Kaplan's BNS lab. I included a reflection paper discussing my time at Western.

Adapting To Challenges: K-12 Education In The Time Of Covid, Connor Farrand

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

During the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disruptions across society were both intense and varying along pre-existing structural and social lines of inequity, especially in the US. Research has shown that this pattern was particularly true in the context of K-12 education. To assess when, why, and how school districts and charter management organizations (CMOs) chose to adopt and execute new policies for the delivery of education during the pandemic, I review existing theories of organizational inertia and analyze four general characteristics of school districts/CMOs for their ability to predict districts’ likelihood of implementing new instructional delivery …

Growing Through Climate Change: Food And Farm Resiliency Post-Disaster, Sarah Quenemoen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This research looks in the Whatcom County agriculture sector's disaster preparedness. It investigates the relationship between the farmers and the community, and looks briefly into different strategies being used or being talked about within the realm of farming and natural disasters.

It's The Holiday Rom-Com Season, Mariah Perez

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This study analyzes and categorizes 25 holiday romantic comedy films released between 1938 and 2021. It examines how this genre of film developed and evolved over time. It concludes that Hallmark and Netflix have both had large influences on the holiday romantic comedy genre. This study also discusses the results of a survey regarding people's holiday rom-com habits and opinions. It determines that audiences' opinions shape genre, and therefore it is likely that future holiday romantic comedies will remain lighthearted and comforting, while also becoming more inclusive regarding sexuality, ethnicity, and culture.

Khahir: A Constructed Language, Kate Panza

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project provides a generative grammar, or description of a language’s rules such that a theoretically infinite number of expressions can be made, of the new language Khahir. Information from the major domains of linguistics – phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics – was synthesized and applied to create a linguistically logical and internally consistent language unrelated to any existing language. Throughout history constructed languages, or conlangs, have been used for a variety of purposes including ease of communication, experimentation in the field of linguistics, and enrichment of a fictional world, but this project, in particular, sought to focus …

Terribly Timely Tariffs, Calvin Golliver

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Mercantilism was an effective system for expanding state power and prosperity in early Modern Europe when three specific conditions existed: weak states, expensive trade, and zero-sum competition. These conditions combined to create a prisoner’s dilemma where all nations engaging in mercantilism was both individually rational and mutually destructive. The significant changes in these three conditions in the late 18th to early 19th century removed the prisoner’s dilemma, making it both individually and mutually rational to engage in a general policy of free trade.

Dungeons And Disorders: Destigmatizing The Mental Health Conversation, Wren Hart

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Games, especially tabletop role-play games, have often been used by individuals to explore parts of their identities or concepts that are bigger than they are. Dungeons and Disorders is an adventure module detailing the quest of heroes destined to save a land plagued by debilitating problems. Dungeons and Disorders combines this tendency with psychological information on mental health disorders, in order to begin destigmatizing the mental health conversation. Players of this module will get to explore dungeons based on mental health disorders, starting with obsessive compulsive disorder and culminating with depression. The final boss of Dungeons and Disorders is an …

The Evolution Of 'Homo'-Nity: An A To Z From Erectus To Sapiens, Hailee Desrosier

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Androids and humans have lived alongside each other for a couple of centuries. However, in the 27th century, the United States began planning a contingency plan in case the androids decided to usurp the humans’ rightful place at the top of the food chain. Annie, a student in college, learned one day that what her government had taught her may not be the whole truth—it may not even be the best course of action. Determined to find a way to right that wrong, she enlisted the help of two professors to travel with her throughout time in order to save …

What Is Political Science? What A Disciplinary Archipelago Says About Political Scholarship And Academia As A Whole, Warren Burroughs

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

“‘Political Science’ is greatly in need of definition” (Smith, 1886, quoted in Sigelman, 2006). This statement is as true today as it was a century and a half ago when it was written in Political Science’s first independent journal’s first article. Throughout its history, the discipline’s purpose and objectives have been contested. A conflict between subdisciplines regarding approaches and desired research outcomes hinders the creation of a comprehensive disciplinary framework. Yet, division is inevitable given the objects of Political Science’s study – people and power. The discipline is having an identity crisis. To illustrate this, Political Science is compared to …

Christians And The Irreligious: What Is Associated With Religious Bias Between Groups?, Lucas Wall

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

With the tremendous rise in the prevalence of atheism and agnosticism in the U.S. in the past several years, it becomes more important than ever to assess intergroup relations between the Christian majority and the rapidly increasing atheist and agnostic minority. This study assesses personal factors that correlate with various levels of participant desire to affiliate with Christians (Progressive Protestants, Conservative Protestants, and Catholics) and the unaffiliated (atheists and agnostics) within a convenience sample. Participant factors studied included political conservatism, agreeableness, openness, social dominance orientation, and religious commitment. While low desire to affiliate is a poor representative of all forms …

Unmasking Climate Change: How The Impacts Of Global Warming Alter Disease Spread And Discovery, Ellie Potts, Andy Bunn, Adam Wright

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

What is the relationship between global temperature increase and the number of communicable disease cases, and is this relationship stronger for denser populations? Climate change and communicable diseases are two intertwined global issues. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, business owners, governments, and general consumers have all realized the scale of benefits and risks of an internationally integrated global economy, and how our level of urbanization can cause rapid disease spread. This pandemic has uncovered our lack of preparation for global emergencies. Climate change not only poses a global emergency but will also increase our world’s likelihood of diseases. …

Improving Student Outcomes In Introductory Formal Logic, Bryce Rosenwald

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Across a variety of educational settings, undergraduate introductory courses in formal logic tend to have high failure rates. In this paper, I explore practical, evidence-based steps that logic instructors can take to improve student outcomes. The topics covered are small class sizes, problem-based learning, clicker questions, group activities, and spaced practice. The effect of small class size is moderated by many variables, including each instructor’s unique characteristics and the pedagogical techniques used in large vs. small classrooms. Problem-based learning and clicker questions are determined to be excellent techniques for introducing content and furthering understanding of content, respectively. Small groups can …

Queering The Birth Experience: Documenting Queer Individuals' Labor & Delivery Experiences, Caitlin Laura Jessica Millard

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This research developed as a qualitative analysis of the experiences of queer individuals who have given birth in Washington State. Until recently, there has been little literature documenting the pregnancy and birth experience of transmasculine and nonbinary individuals, making this a unique project. Pregnancy and Birth are highly feminized and associated with womanhood, leaving pregnant people who do not fall under those designations marginalized. This study utilized grounded theory to analyze interviews to gain insight into the themes that emerged from the experiences of two queer individuals and how their experiences could have better affirmed their identities. The result of …

Tacoma And Health? An Honors Capstone Project Exploring The Social Stratification Impacts On The Health And Well-Being Of Tacoma Communities, Natalie Miller

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Social stratification, with its impacts on people and society, isn’t a new concept for me. But due to the extractive methods of the higher education system, it has been a struggle in most of my classes to do Tacoma-based research rather than focusing on Bellingham. So throughout this quarter, I have been working to connect the broader themes I’ve learned about social stratification with Tacoma-specific research. This project is in the form of an illustrated book which explores the various effects of social stratification on the health and well-being of Tacoma communities. Throughout this paper, I will show some of …

Pursuing Faith In Good Science: A Neuroscience Student's Argument For Including Science In Spirituality, Savannah A. Hastings

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Everyone can enhance their sense of spirituality by embracing science. This point is argued by referencing the science of emotions, consciousness, and perceptual learning, as well as the correlation between a strong a sense of meaning and physical health. The way that the brain produces our experience of being human is particularly emphasized. We have electrochemical brains that can do good in the world.

Don't Judge Me: Declining Judicial Independence In Hungary And Poland, Jonathan Freeberg

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

What can the Hungarian and Polish experiences teach us about the processes of decreasing judicial independence, and how does a decrease in judicial independence affect judicial trust and quality of governance? This paper process-traces the erosion of judicial independence in Hungary and Poland from 1989-2021, highlighting different mechanisms that lead to decreases in judicial autonomy. The cases show that formal reforms and informal changes to the membership of the judiciary are both effective at decreasing the independence of the judiciary. The data does not support that these changes lead to significant changes in judicial independence or quality of governance. The …

'Wokespeak' Woes, Natalie Anderson

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This capstone project is a linguistic investigation into the impact of inclusion-related word use on political activism and performative allyship.

The Vampire Tapes, Emily Bishop

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This podcast series features interviews with five individuals who identify with the term 'vampire.' The interviews focus on how being 'vampiric' affects their day-to-day lives, interpersonal relationships, and view of self.

Episodes range in run time from around 20 minutes to just under an hour.

Each tape in the series focuses on a different individual.

Advancing Technology & Digital Lifestyles: Facilitating A Group Independent Study, Kailey Droz

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

For my senior capstone project, I facilitated a group independent study (ISP) through Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University called Advancing Technology and Digital Lifestyles. A small group of students and I critically and creatively analyzed our relationship with technology, and its impacts on the individual, interpersonal relationships, culture, and society. Prior to facilitating, I did research within the fields of cyberpsychology, social psychology, communication studies, and media studies. I am sharing my syllabus and facilitation notes, my final project (two short stories), an annotated bibliography, and a reflection on the group ISP and my process.

Here …

Effects Of Orthographic Silent ‘L’ On Preceding Vowel Duration, Sylvia Cohen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper discusses the preliminary results of a phonetics/phonology study investigating the effects of orthographic (written) ‘l’ on the pronunciation of English words like ‘walk’ and ‘talk’. These words would typically be transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /wak/ and /tak/, with no /l/ sound present; however, there is some reason to suspect that the written ‘l’ is salient in speakers’ mental representations of these words and may influence their pronunciation. In English (as well as many other languages) vowels before voiced consonants have longer durations than vowels before voiceless consonants. Experimentation by Walsh (1985) has indicated that this …