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, has the opportunity to publish their project in Digital Commons so that it may be made available to the Colby community and to the world at large.

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Honors Theses from 2024

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An Endangered Sport: Examining Sentiments of Climate Anxiety Through the Perspectives of Cross Country Skiers, Isabel J. Seay

Honors Theses from 2023

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Thanks, It's Second-Hand: Shifting Values of Second-Hand Clothing in Mexico City, Sofia Arleo

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Stereotype Threat in Older Adults’ Episodic Memory Tests: Susceptibility and Protection, Talia Barrett

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A Close Analysis into the Portrayal of Female Protagonists Through the Lens of Gendered Authorship: Specifically looking into the works of Jane Austen, Frances Burney, John Cleland, and Samuel Richardson, Isabella G. Beyloune

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The Lie-brary of Congress: Misinformation’s Grip on the American Legislative Process, Caleb Bitting

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Tracing North Atlantic Continental Erosion Events During the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, Cecilia T. Bowe

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The Art of Influence: A Study of Leverage in US-Israel Relations, Joshua Brause

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Elliptic Curves Over Finite Fields, Christopher S. Calger

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Does tssH deletion in Paraburkholderia bonniea affect its symbiosis with Dictyostellum discoideum?, Anna Chen

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Examining the Impact of Living Arrangements on Children's Academic Achievement, Rachel G. Coan

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InstaDAMN –The Power of Instagram’s Platform As An Instigator and Indicator For Offline Political Participation Among Young Adults, Natalie Davidson

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When in Rome, Do as Meloni and Salvini Do: Dissecting the Potentially Extreme Nature of the Political Communication of Italy's New Right-Wing Populist Duo, Thomas S. Erie

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Indigenous Storytelling as Decolonial Praxis, Ceremony and at Colby, Georgia Goodman

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Food and Fuel: Investigating expert perspectives on the intersection of solar development and farmland in Maine, Ellie Hankin

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Pluralistic Ethical Personalism, Qifan Hu

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Changes in Ecosystem Processes and Functional Traits over an Elevational Gradient, Tiana Issa

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Detecting High-Lying Rydberg States using Two-Step Electromagnetically Induced Transparency and Frequency Modulation Spectroscopy Techniques, Kate Jensen

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Portraits of Practice: A Case Study on Elementary Schools Successfully Implementing Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, Catherine "Cat" Merkle

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When Welfare Bites Back: The Consequences of State Intervention on the Future Attitudes and Participation of Children, Claudia L. Miner

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The Effect of Blue Mussel (Mytilus edulis) Extinction on Ecosystem Function in the Gulf of Maine Rocky Intertidal, Sophia K. Montague

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Geology, Uranium, and Apartheid: South Africa’s Nuclear Program and the International Politics of the Cold War, Andy Rightmire

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From Schleswig to Anschluss: The Plebiscites and Referendums of Interwar Germany, Matthew J. Rocha

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Map, Census, Museum: Imagining the Malaysian Nation-State and the Malay Identity, Jackson Rockett

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A Call Away: Investigating a Solution to Healthcare Access Barriers in Remote Communities, Tamsin Rogers

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On the Pursuit of Developer Happiness: Webcam-Based Eye Tracking and Affect Recognition in the IDE, Tamsin Rogers

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Finding the Common Denominator: Understanding the Shared Experiences of Female Math Majors, Abigail R. Rosenbaum

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Jewish Presence in the Venetian Empire: A Challenge to Venetian Mythology, Avery Rosensweig

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Trends in Cyanotoxin Production Potential in China Lake: an eDNA Analysis of Microcystis and Dolichospermum and the Environmental Drivers of Cyanotoxin Production, Gennifer M. Rubin

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Merchants of Blood and Gunpowder: The English Arms Trade in West Africa, Jaime K. Schneider

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Testing Evolutionary Conservation of Sex Determination in Lepidoptera Using CRISPR/Cas9 Gene Editing, Sophia Schroeder

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Biomechanics of Mantis Prey Capture, Danielle S. Taylor

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Food as a vector for change: lessons from the third sector on improving livelihoods with nutritional knowledge in Medellín and Bogotá, Solomon Treister

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I versus We: Social Regulations Exacerbated Tension Between Individualism and Collectivism during China’s Twenty-first Century Public Health Emergencies, Duan Wang

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Petroleum and the Politics of Decolonization in Indonesia: A Study of Economic Development and Nationalism, Jan P. Wenger

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Who’s Laughing Now? Satire’s Effect on Negative Partisanship, Emma West

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Complexities of Community Consultation in Chile's Lithium Industry, Isabella R. Whelan

Honors Theses from 2022

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The Legislative Branch Revolves Around the White House: A Copernican Understanding of the Evolving Relationship Between the President and Congress, Lukas K. Alexander

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The Bittersweet Tooth: Understanding French Identity Through the Colonial Empire, Commodity Fetishism, and Pâtisserie, Clarisse D. Allehaut

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PFAS Environmental Contamination in Central Maine, Megan H. Andersen

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Investigation of the LonB Protease as a Key Regulator of Carotenoid Production in Haloferax volcanii, Katherine M. Andre

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Analyzing Mental Health Curriculums: Recommendations for the Implementation of a Mental Health Curriculum for Middle Grade Students, Lauren A. Bendheim

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Apparatus Improvement and Characterisation for Experiments on Ultra-cold Plasmas., Jakub Bystrický

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Representation Theory and its Applications in Physics, Jakub Bystrický

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The Role of Socioeconomic Status in Cognition and Brain Health Across the Lifespan, Erica Chung

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El cruce de fronteras cinematográficas de Carlos Reygadas: la experiencia afectiva de Japón, Luz Silenciosa, y Post Tenebras Lux, Minori K. Cohan

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The Effects of Personality and Risk Preferences on Effort-Based Behavior: A Game Theoretic Approach, Hannah M. Davidsen

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"She had a Bok to Print, and it was her own Case": Elizabeth Cellier's Malice Defeated as a Critical Contribution to 17th-Century Political Discourse and Postwar Pamphlet Culture, Serena Desai

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Growing Green: The Barriers to Sustainability in the Recreational Cannabis Industry in the State of Maine, Georgia M. Dettmann

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Is Monetary Policy Neutral? The Effectiveness of Monetary Policy Transmission across the Income Distribution, Cameron Dyer

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‘The Making of Mountains:' The Development of Chair-Lift Technology in the American Skiing Industry, George M. Eisenhauer

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St. George’s Food Access Initiatives: Navigating Food Inequalities, Forging a Way to Food Choice Freedom, and Transgressing Culinary Borderlands in Lake County, Colorado, Mannon R. Frykholm

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Discrimination Among College Football Head Coaches, Yusuke Fukuda

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The Perceptions and Practices of Japanese Identity in Contemporary France, Sara Gardner

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“They Were Planning on It”: Recasting the 1967 Buffalo Uprising as a Student-Driven Insurgency, Matthew P. Gawley

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Community Interventions to the Food Insecurity Crisis Inuit Currently Face in Nunangat, Alyssia R. Getschow

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Is France Having a Populist Moment?, Emma Gilmore

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Infill Development: A Contested Solution to California’s Crises, Conrad Hampson

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Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era: Spatial Spread and Fiscal Outcomes of the Commission Government, Daniel T. Hiller

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The Chosen One?: Reflections on Mid-Century Egyptian Nationalism, Gamal Abdel Nasser's Charismatic Leadership, and the Suez Crisis of 1956, Owen P.S. Hobbs

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“…To Represent the Needs of the Residents—Not the Needs of the Outsiders” California’s Housing Crisis and the Dilemma of Local Control, Ravi S. Joshi-Wander

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“Green” Marketing in the Apparel Industry: The Spectrum of Veracity, Stephanie R. Keane

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Memories and New Beginnings: Chinese American Restaurants and Food as a Contact Zone in Early-Twentieth Century California, Nicholas Kim

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Double Trouble: The Development and Use of a Novel Spatial Memory Task to Study Depression in a Female Rodent Model, Ekaterina L. Koelliker

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Understanding the Role of Race in American Medicine, Fariel C. A. LaMountain

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Whose Nation is This? Conceptualizing Burmese National Identity Through Case Studies of Inter-Ethnic Conflict, Jason Leong

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Cellular Automata and Multi-scale Simulation of Infection in D. discoideum, Mingyang Li

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Philosophy and Music: A Search for Truth, Zhengzhou Li

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A Prosaic People? Literature, Propaganda, and National Identity in Second World War Britain, William L. Maines

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The Impact of Trauma-Responsive Voice-Centered Practice on Students with Learning Differences, Elizabeth S. Marsh

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Science and Sadness: Critiques On How We Handle Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia, Katherine Martinez

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The New Mainers: An Exploratory Analysis of Healthcare Experiences in the Somali Bantu Community, Jordan R. McClintock

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The Multifront Battle Waged Against Female Autonomy: A Comparative Study of Ancient Medical and Literary Texts, Leah K. Montello

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Epistemic Classism in Elite College Mathematics Education, Silas Olsen

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The Power of One: Majority Leadership Power in the United States Senate, Andrew Taylor Ordentlich

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Bean to Buck: Examining the Effects of the Global Coffee Commodity Market on Smallholders in Colombia, Alexander Ozols

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Two Sided Matching: A Study of Underemployment, Benjamin E. Plevin

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"It’s Just Another Thing”: Perceptions of Well Water Quality and Barriers in an Arsenic Hot Spot, Linzy Rosen

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Characterizing Cellular Stress, Hippocampal Function, and Behavior in a Novel Rat Model of Alzheimer's Disease, Anne A. Schulman

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Cultivating Family Empowerment in Schools: The Experiences of Marginalized Families in Special Education, Rachel-Marie F. Sinco

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Decoding Cyclic Codes via Gröbner Bases, Eduardo Sosa

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IMPACTS OF PROFAMILIA PROGRAM SPREAD ON CONTRACEPTIVE USE AND FERTILITY RATES IN COLOMBIA DURING ITS INTRODUCTION, Katherine C. Specht

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Maternidad en España: Una investigación sobre cómo las mujeres navegan los límites patriarcales para ampliar visiones y realidades de la maternidad, Katerina Tanasijevic

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Assembling Place: White Supremacist Formations at a Place-Based Educational Institution, Emma Terwilliger

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Analyzing the Free Energy of Ions Sampling a Voltage Gated Sodium Ion Channel, Isabel Varghese

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"It's Not About the Polar Bears": Evangelical Christian Arguments for Environmentalism, Teresa D. White

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Challenges of Constructing Entrainment Map for Arbitrary Circadian Models, Yuxuan (Nelson) Wu

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Modeling Jadera haematoloma’s Phenotypic Variation in the Context of its Developmental Plasticity, Michael C. Yorsz

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Decomposing Manifolds in Low-dimensions: from Heegaard Splittings to Trisections, Suixin "Cindy" Zhang

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Gravity as a Gauge Theory in the Poincare Group, Yu Zhi

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Dynamic Double Auctions: An Analysis of Secondary Sneaker Market and its Future as an NFT Marketplace, Chris Zhu

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NFT Sneaker Marketplace Design, Testing, and Challenges, Chris Zhu

Honors Theses from 2021

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Social Capital UnMASCed: The Role of Social Capital in State-Level Economic Growth, Meredith H. Allen

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A Generalized Polar-coordinate Integration Formula, Oscillatory Integral Techniques, and Applications to Convolution Powers of Complex-valued Functions on $\mathbb{Z}^d$, Huan Q. Bui

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MOT-based Lifetime Measurements of Potassium-39 5p1/2 and 5p3/2 States, Huan Q. Bui

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Una deconstrucción espacial: Movimiento Maricas Bolivia y la resistencia Indígena cuir, Cooper J. Bussberg

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Socrates and the Divine Mission of Political Friendship, Ronahn I. Clarke

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Investigating the AGN-Merger Connection Using Close Galaxy Pairs in the CANDELS Fields, Sean L. Dougherty

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Golden Mountains: Pike's Peak, Western Capitalism, and the Making of the Colorado State: 1858-1876, Jason T. Dunn

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Gold Mining Districts and Path Dependence, Jason T. Dunn

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The Transcendental Foundation of Kant's Cosmopolitanism, Daniel J. Ellison