The Honors Thesis is a research project for which eligible students apply during their junior year and complete in their senior year. Colby departments and programs that have an honors program establish the requirements for the project and its final format. Each student, upon completion of the thesis, is asked to archive his or her project in Digital Commons so that it may be made available to the Colby community and to the world at large.
All theses in this collection are available for review and research purposes at no cost. This open access policy in no way diminishes the copyright responsibility of those viewing or downloading the documents. The authors of these documents retain the copyright to the intellectual property these works represent in their current form.
Honors Theses from 2009
Keys and Orchards: Memory and the Palestinian Diaspora, 1948-Present, Daniela Andreevska
The Effect of Religious Participation and Permanent Income on Suicide Risk: Micro--Level Analysis, Ivan Balbuzanov
Breaking the Cycle: The Rise of Contentiousness in Judicial Nominations, Patrick Morrow Boland
Estimation of Population Reduction and Gene Flow in the Rare Orchid Isotria medeoloides, Philip Crystal
Gendering the Counterinsurgency: Violence Against Women During the Guatemalan Civil War, Sarah K. deLiefde
Changes in Apoptotic Gene Expression Induced by DNA Cross-Linkers, Jordanne B. Dunn
Re-Imagined Communities: Global Climbing on Local Mountains, Eitan Green
The Effects of Exogenous Insulin and Exercise on Glucose and Lactate Metabolism in the Brown Anole, Anolis sagrei, Kristen Marie Hitchcox
Mechanisms of Cytotoxicity of Diepoxybutane, Epichlorohydrin and 1-(Chloroethenyl)oxirane, Rebecca D. Kamins
The Effect of Glutamate on Neurite Outgrowth in Fiddler Crab (Uca pugilator) X-organ Cells, Ruth B. Langton
Avoiding the Fog of Crisis: A Protocol for the Proper Domestic Use of the Military, Brian Lynch
Evaluation of Nocturnal Flight Calls as a Useful Tool in the Study of Avian Migration, Andrew C. McEvoy
Gender Specific Rules in Sport are based on an Outdated Idea of Femininity, Carlie Minichino
Break the Sky: an exploration of ethics with swords and superheroes, Kris Miranda
The Long Game: Hamas, The IRA, and the Politics of Radicalization in Palestine and Northern Ireland, Dan O'Sullivan
One Generation Consuming the Next: The Racial Critique of Consumerism in George Romero’s Zombie Films, Henry Powell
Diagnostics for Ultracold Plasma Experiments, Lauren Rand
Can Parallel Exchange Rates Forecast Commodity Prices?, John F. Roberts
Learning the Lay of Their Land: Data Recording by Maine Land Trusts, Patrick John Roche
Factors Influencing Conservation Success or Failure in Tiger Range States, Megan C. Saunders
The Realization of Eisenstein's Excitation Factor: Grierson, Wiseman, and the Vietnam Documentaries of the 1960s and 1970s, Victoria A. Starr
The Second Oldest Profession: An Exploration of the Fall and Rise of Midwifery in America, Abigail K. Sussman
Negotiating Gender and Lyric Tradition in Two Nineteenth Century Cultures, Po Yin Wong
Honors Theses from 2008
Effects of prenatal choline supplementation on behavioral and neural reactions to social isolation rearing in the rat, Raven Adams
Competition or Community? Manifest and Unexpressed Functions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Sara Benjamin
Coalitions for victory: the necessity of alliance creation for progressive ballot initiative campaigns, Julie Bero
In the Absence of Family: How Ideas of the Substitute Family in Honduran Children's Homes Shape Perception of the Needs of at-risk youth, Stephanie Bowman
Moments of Strength: Iranian Women's Rights and the 1979 Revolution, Caroline M. Brooks
Effects of the anticancer agent Cloretazine on human apurinic endonuclease-1 activity, Jennifer L. Bushee
Effect of Observed Biological and Non-biological Movement on Human Action and Coordination, Walter L. Campbell
Historical Records of Stomatal Indicies in Quercus from the Southeastern U.S, Bradford M. Cantor
Diffeomorphism invariance in general relativity, John P. Chung
Designing a Green Graduation at Colby College, Alaina J. Clark
The Selective Synthesis of Oxacalix[6]arenes and the Exploration of Azacalix[n]arenes, W. Christian Crannell
Self-destructive Behaviors of Adolescent Girls and Boys, Carolyn A. Curtis
The Effect of Orientation to Growing Season Sunlight on Stomatal Parameters of Q. rubra in the Belgrade Lakes Region, Central Maine, Rachel G. Daly
Hamiltonian constraint analysis of vector field theories with spontaneous Lorentz symmetry breaking, Nolan L. Gagne
Decisions to abrogate personal liberty: ethics of conscription in the United States, Jacqueline Shuttleworth Grady
Language of Sex: Moral Socialization and Reproductive Education in Public Schools, Melyn Heckelman
State Political Action Committee Financing and the 2008 Presidential Election: A Detailed Look at Mitt Romney and the Commonwealth PACs, Melyn Heckelman
Reactions of Atomic Carbon with Acid Chlorides, Daniel B. Herrick
Foundations and interpretations of quantum mechanics, Cory Johnson
Separating People and Wildlife: Zoning as a Conservation Strategy for Large Carnivores, Courtney L. Larson
Temperature and magnetic field dependence of the electronic excitations in the nickel chain compound NINO, Lucas LaViolet
Movement patterns and feeding behavior of the limpet tectura testudinalis (Müller) along the mid-Maine Coast, Joshua Lord
Microhabitat Selection by the Tortoiseshell Limpet, Tectura testudinalis (Müller), in Tide Pools on the mid-Maine Coast, Emily R. Lyczkowski
Pressure Perturbation Calorimetry and Guest-Host Chemistry ofNDMG and N-MAP with p-Sulfonatocalix[6]arene, Cassandra Newel
Pressure Perturbation Calorimetry and Guest-Host Chemsitry of NDMG and N-MAP with p-Sulfonatocalix[6]arene, Cassandra Newell
Carbon Neutrality at Colby College, Jamie K. O’Connell
Phosphorus Primer for Maine’s lakes, Lindsay B. Philips
Inhibition of cellular thioredoxin reductase by the anticancer prodrug cloretazine, Tyler R. Schleicher
Representations of Grief in Akhmatova’s Requiem and Pushkin’s the Bronze Horseman, Hillary Smith
"System of Silence": Philadelphia Orphanages and the Limits of Benevolence, 1780s-1830s, Brian Sweeney
Advocating at the margins: women’s NGOs in China, Ling U
Effects of context of natural and artifactual objects on categorization, Linsey Walker
Cytotoxicity of Diepoxybutane and Epichlorohydrin in Relation to Stages of the Cell Cycle, Megan L. Watts
Using Variable Stomatal Sensitivity to CO₂ in Relict Conifers to Reconstruct Ancient Atmospheres and Predict Future Implications of Climate Change, Kerry A. Whittaker
Honors Theses from 2007
Can the business cycle be used to create predictable mutual fund outperformance?, Michael Aquino
Where did all these books come from? The Publishing Industry and American Intellectual Life, Maro N. Asadoorian
Agent of Change: Trickster in Ojibwa Oral Narratives and in the Works of Louise Erdrich, Patrick B. Benton
Towards the Synthesis of Biomimetic Tungsten Complexes, Eric Paul Bergh
Biogeochemical model for the eutrophication of East Pond, Maine, Bernadette Bibber
Rawls and Health Care, Elizabeth H. Coogan
Gauguin : Generating Art Using Genetic Algorithms & User Input Naturally, Thomas E. Cook
“Nothing that is so, is so”: Indeterminate Language in Shakespeare, Matthew K. Crane
Geographic distribution of genetic Variation in the Rare Orchid Isotria medeoloides , Emily Devlin
Divergent effect of social cohesion on economic growth in East Asia and Latin America, Horacio Diaz Adda
Demographic and Religious Changes in Sixth and Seventh Century Romano-Byzantine Edessa, Merle Eisenberg
Exploring opportunity in America -- immigrant entrepreneurship and rags to riches success, Anna Erdheim
Messy Love: Collection of Short Stories, Mindy Favreau
Apple and The Tree: Shakespeare’s Use of Father-child Relationships in Character Construction, Elizabeth Finn
Women Making Progress?: a Study of Wide Sargasso Sea as a Response to Jane Eyre, Kaitlin M. Gangl
Concomitant polymorphism in 1,2-bis(9-anthryl)acetylene, Rebecca Goldstein
Complex Adaptive Systems Approach for Investigating Genetic Epistasis, Thomas A. Goth
Anhedonia and depression: Anticipatory, Consummatory, and Recall Deficits, Kaitlin Hanley
Demon Rum, Devious Politics: the Lessons of Neal Dow’s Crusade for the Maine Prohibition Law, Andrew J. Herrmann
Developing a Tool to Assess Human Health Impacts of Purchasing, Kaitlin C. Himmelmann
Religion and Renunciation in Wordsworth: the Progression of Natural Individualism to Christian Stoicism, Geoffrey L. Meldahl
Intramolecular Chemistry of ß-acetoxyethylidene and Photochemical Generation of Vinylidenes, Jennifer M. Nguyen
Optimizations for hardware-software partitioning using WalkSAT, Andreea Olea
Detailed Mechanistic and Optimization of the Photochemical Production Method of Superoxide, Ta-Chung Ong
POV-IT: the POV-Ray Interactive Tutorial, Eleanor O'Rourke
Too Many Bad Cooks Spoiling the Broth? Effectiveness of NGOs in Addressing Child Labour in El Salvador, Ivica Petríková
Short History of Waterville, Maine, Stephen Plocher
In Any Weather : a Collection of Short Stories, Stephen J. Plocher
World Bank -CPA conflict: the Struggle to Define Human Rights and Development in the Philippines, Adam B. Robbins
Collective Moral Responsibility, Allyson Rudolph
Museo de la memoria: an exploration through memory of ESMA, Cornelia Sage
Hearing Arnold in a new space : building a transformational-theory patrimony, Whitney Simmonds
Obstacles and Stepping Stones to the Hero’s Pedestal: Reunified Germany’s Selective Commemoration of Resisters to National Socialism, Suzanne J. Swartz
Immunological effects of written disclosure in athletes, Kristen Thatcher
Voices of the Poor: Poverty and Growth in Albania, Magda Tsaneva
Two essays in the Indiana family cap provision, Aimee Williams
External Control of Electron Temperature in Ultra-cold Plasmas, Roy O. Wilson
Dialectics of Diaspora Space: a Study of Contemporary, Diasporic, South Asian Fiction, Christopher A. Zajchowski
Honors Theses from 2006
League of their own: the competition for Jewish-American identity in the novels of Philip Roth, Rebeccah Amendola