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.
Honors Theses from 2023
Thanks, It's Second-Hand: Shifting Values of Second-Hand Clothing in Mexico City, Sofia Arleo
Stereotype Threat in Older Adults’ Episodic Memory Tests: Susceptibility and Protection, Talia Barrett
The Lie-brary of Congress: Misinformation’s Grip on the American Legislative Process, Caleb Bitting
Tracing North Atlantic Continental Erosion Events During the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, Cecilia T. Bowe
The Art of Influence: A Study of Leverage in US-Israel Relations, Joshua Brause
Elliptic Curves Over Finite Fields, Christopher S. Calger
Does tssH deletion in Paraburkholderia bonniea affect its symbiosis with Dictyostellum discoideum?, Anna Chen
Examining the Impact of Living Arrangements on Children's Academic Achievement, Rachel G. Coan
InstaDAMN –The Power of Instagram’s Platform As An Instigator and Indicator For Offline Political Participation Among Young Adults, Natalie Davidson
Indigenous Storytelling as Decolonial Praxis, Ceremony and at Colby, Georgia Goodman
Food and Fuel: Investigating expert perspectives on the intersection of solar development and farmland in Maine, Ellie Hankin
Pluralistic Ethical Personalism, Qifan Hu
Changes in Ecosystem Processes and Functional Traits over an Elevational Gradient, Tiana Issa
Portraits of Practice: A Case Study on Elementary Schools Successfully Implementing Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, Catherine "Cat" Merkle
When Welfare Bites Back: The Consequences of State Intervention on the Future Attitudes and Participation of Children, Claudia L. Miner
The Effect of Blue Mussel (Mytilus edulis) Extinction on Ecosystem Function in the Gulf of Maine Rocky Intertidal, Sophia K. Montague
Geology, Uranium, and Apartheid: South Africa’s Nuclear Program and the International Politics of the Cold War, Andy Rightmire
From Schleswig to Anschluss: The Plebiscites and Referendums of Interwar Germany, Matthew J. Rocha
Map, Census, Museum: Imagining the Malaysian Nation-State and the Malay Identity, Jackson Rockett
A Call Away: Investigating a Solution to Healthcare Access Barriers in Remote Communities, Tamsin Rogers
On the Pursuit of Developer Happiness: Webcam-Based Eye Tracking and Affect Recognition in the IDE, Tamsin Rogers
Finding the Common Denominator: Understanding the Shared Experiences of Female Math Majors, Abigail R. Rosenbaum
Jewish Presence in the Venetian Empire: A Challenge to Venetian Mythology, Avery Rosensweig
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
Merchants of Blood and Gunpowder: The English Arms Trade in West Africa, Jaime K. Schneider
Testing Evolutionary Conservation of Sex Determination in Lepidoptera Using CRISPR/Cas9 Gene Editing, Sophia Schroeder
Biomechanics of Mantis Prey Capture, Danielle S. Taylor
Food as a vector for change: lessons from the third sector on improving livelihoods with nutritional knowledge in Medellín and Bogotá, Solomon Treister
Petroleum and the Politics of Decolonization in Indonesia: A Study of Economic Development and Nationalism, Jan P. Wenger
Who’s Laughing Now? Satire’s Effect on Negative Partisanship, Emma West
Complexities of Community Consultation in Chile's Lithium Industry, Isabella R. Whelan
Honors Theses from 2022
The Legislative Branch Revolves Around the White House: A Copernican Understanding of the Evolving Relationship Between the President and Congress, Lukas K. Alexander
The Bittersweet Tooth: Understanding French Identity Through the Colonial Empire, Commodity Fetishism, and Pâtisserie, Clarisse D. Allehaut
PFAS Environmental Contamination in Central Maine, Megan H. Andersen
Investigation of the LonB Protease as a Key Regulator of Carotenoid Production in Haloferax volcanii, Katherine M. Andre
Analyzing Mental Health Curriculums: Recommendations for the Implementation of a Mental Health Curriculum for Middle Grade Students, Lauren A. Bendheim
Apparatus Improvement and Characterisation for Experiments on Ultra-cold Plasmas., Jakub Bystrický
Representation Theory and its Applications in Physics, Jakub Bystrický
The Role of Socioeconomic Status in Cognition and Brain Health Across the Lifespan, Erica Chung
El cruce de fronteras cinematográficas de Carlos Reygadas: la experiencia afectiva de Japón, Luz Silenciosa, y Post Tenebras Lux, Minori K. Cohan
The Effects of Personality and Risk Preferences on Effort-Based Behavior: A Game Theoretic Approach, Hannah M. Davidsen
Growing Green: The Barriers to Sustainability in the Recreational Cannabis Industry in the State of Maine, Georgia M. Dettmann
Is Monetary Policy Neutral? The Effectiveness of Monetary Policy Transmission across the Income Distribution, Cameron Dyer
‘The Making of Mountains:' The Development of Chair-Lift Technology in the American Skiing Industry, George M. Eisenhauer
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
Discrimination Among College Football Head Coaches, Yusuke Fukuda
The Perceptions and Practices of Japanese Identity in Contemporary France, Sara Gardner
“They Were Planning on It”: Recasting the 1967 Buffalo Uprising as a Student-Driven Insurgency, Matthew P. Gawley
Community Interventions to the Food Insecurity Crisis Inuit Currently Face in Nunangat, Alyssia R. Getschow
Is France Having a Populist Moment?, Emma Gilmore
Infill Development: A Contested Solution to California’s Crises, Conrad Hampson
Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era: Spatial Spread and Fiscal Outcomes of the Commission Government, Daniel T. Hiller
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
“…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
“Green” Marketing in the Apparel Industry: The Spectrum of Veracity, Stephanie R. Keane
Memories and New Beginnings: Chinese American Restaurants and Food as a Contact Zone in Early-Twentieth Century California, Nicholas Kim
Double Trouble: The Development and Use of a Novel Spatial Memory Task to Study Depression in a Female Rodent Model, Ekaterina L. Koelliker
Understanding the Role of Race in American Medicine, Fariel C. A. LaMountain
Whose Nation is This? Conceptualizing Burmese National Identity Through Case Studies of Inter-Ethnic Conflict, Jason Leong
Cellular Automata and Multi-scale Simulation of Infection in D. discoideum, Mingyang Li
Philosophy and Music: A Search for Truth, Zhengzhou Li
A Prosaic People? Literature, Propaganda, and National Identity in Second World War Britain, William L. Maines
The Impact of Trauma-Responsive Voice-Centered Practice on Students with Learning Differences, Elizabeth S. Marsh
Science and Sadness: Critiques On How We Handle Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia, Katherine Martinez
The New Mainers: An Exploratory Analysis of Healthcare Experiences in the Somali Bantu Community, Jordan R. McClintock
The Multifront Battle Waged Against Female Autonomy: A Comparative Study of Ancient Medical and Literary Texts, Leah K. Montello
Epistemic Classism in Elite College Mathematics Education, Silas Olsen
The Power of One: Majority Leadership Power in the United States Senate, Andrew Taylor Ordentlich
Bean to Buck: Examining the Effects of the Global Coffee Commodity Market on Smallholders in Colombia, Alexander Ozols
Two Sided Matching: A Study of Underemployment, Benjamin E. Plevin
"It’s Just Another Thing”: Perceptions of Well Water Quality and Barriers in an Arsenic Hot Spot, Linzy Rosen
Characterizing Cellular Stress, Hippocampal Function, and Behavior in a Novel Rat Model of Alzheimer's Disease, Anne A. Schulman
Cultivating Family Empowerment in Schools: The Experiences of Marginalized Families in Special Education, Rachel-Marie F. Sinco
Decoding Cyclic Codes via Gröbner Bases, Eduardo Sosa
IMPACTS OF PROFAMILIA PROGRAM SPREAD ON CONTRACEPTIVE USE AND FERTILITY RATES IN COLOMBIA DURING ITS INTRODUCTION, Katherine C. Specht
Maternidad en España: Una investigación sobre cómo las mujeres navegan los límites patriarcales para ampliar visiones y realidades de la maternidad, Katerina Tanasijevic
Assembling Place: White Supremacist Formations at a Place-Based Educational Institution, Emma Terwilliger
Analyzing the Free Energy of Ions Sampling a Voltage Gated Sodium Ion Channel, Isabel Varghese
"It's Not About the Polar Bears": Evangelical Christian Arguments for Environmentalism, Teresa D. White
Challenges of Constructing Entrainment Map for Arbitrary Circadian Models, Yuxuan (Nelson) Wu
Modeling Jadera haematoloma’s Phenotypic Variation in the Context of its Developmental Plasticity, Michael C. Yorsz
Decomposing Manifolds in Low-dimensions: from Heegaard Splittings to Trisections, Suixin "Cindy" Zhang
Gravity as a Gauge Theory in the Poincare Group, Yu Zhi
NFT Sneaker Marketplace Design, Testing, and Challenges, Chris Zhu
Honors Theses from 2021
Social Capital UnMASCed: The Role of Social Capital in State-Level Economic Growth, Meredith H. Allen
MOT-based Lifetime Measurements of Potassium-39 5p1/2 and 5p3/2 States, Huan Q. Bui
Una deconstrucción espacial: Movimiento Maricas Bolivia y la resistencia Indígena cuir, Cooper J. Bussberg
Socrates and the Divine Mission of Political Friendship, Ronahn I. Clarke
Investigating the AGN-Merger Connection Using Close Galaxy Pairs in the CANDELS Fields, Sean L. Dougherty
Golden Mountains: Pike's Peak, Western Capitalism, and the Making of the Colorado State: 1858-1876, Jason T. Dunn
Gold Mining Districts and Path Dependence, Jason T. Dunn
The Transcendental Foundation of Kant's Cosmopolitanism, Daniel J. Ellison
Artificial Reefs: a History, a Science, a Technology, Mairead D. Farrell