University Honors Program Blog
Intellectual Omnivores Unite
You are invited to celebrate the research of your UHP peers at the University Honors Program Research Showcase!
Enjoy brief presentations and ask questions Friday, April 27th from 1pm-3pm in the Club Room of the Honors Townhouse. Let your fellow UHPers know how proud we are of their dedication and willingness to take intellectual omnivorous risks!
Please let Ben know ASAP if you’d like to present! (benfaulkner@gwu.edu.)
You are invited to celebrate the research of your peers at the University Honors Program Research Showcase!
Enjoy brief, casual talks and ask questions Friday, April 28th from 2pm to 5pm in the Club Room of the Honors Townhouse. Let your fellow UHPers know how proud we are of their dedication and willingness to take a risk in order to contribute and disseminate original work as active scholars!
And if you have research you’d like to present, let Catherine know by Monday, April 24th to be included in the program!
All members of the University Honors Program are cordially invited to this years Elliott Undergraduate Scholars Symposium on Wednesday, April 19th!
The Elliott School Undergraduate Scholars program is an enhanced independent research opportunity for outstanding Elliott School juniors and seniors. After months of research and writing, this year’s cohort will be presenting their work April 19th from 10:00am – 2:00pm in Lindner Family Commons. A number of Honors students will be presenting this year, and their names are bolded on the schedule below. We would love for any and all to attend, ask questions, and support them in their presentations!
10:05 am to 11:05 am
Political Participation, Identity, and Power in Asia
Phoebe Bui, Stephanie Gill, Yian Ke, Eun Kyung Na, Dyuti Saunik
Moderated by See-Won Byun, Graduate Student Mentor
11:15 to 11:55 am
Do We Matter? Leveraging Identities in Times of Conflict
Clare Platt, Kaly Moot, Lacy Myrman
Moderated by Luci Prosapio, Graduate Student Mentor
12:00 to 12:30 pm
Transnational Terror in the West
Helen Christy Powell, Seth Harrison
Moderated by Daniel Schwartz, Graduate Student Mentor
12:40 to 1:30 pm
Development, Investment, and the New Economy
Nicholas Johnson, Jiahui Lin (Joyce), Margaret O’Connor, Cindy Zhang
Moderated by Andrew Arveseth, Graduate Student Mentor
Congratulations to winners of the UHP SURE Award for the spring 2017 semester! Students who win the Sigelman Undergraduate Research Enhancement Award use the funds to further their own research under faculty supervision.
These UHPers will be sharing more about their research experiences toward the end of the spring semester, so keep an eye out to learn more about their work!
The following blog post was written by Linda Ryan, a CCAS junior studying dance and exercise science.
The year was 2015. It was eleven-thirty PM. I was in my room, holding a can of Pringles in one hand and scrolling through my Luther Rice Research Proposal on my laptop with the other. My faculty mentor had sent her recommendation a few days earlier, I was finished proofreading, and it was time to click “Send.”
Jump ahead a few months to April – the third floor of Gelman. Finals were nigh. I was writing a paper in my pajamas. And I had just received an email saying that GW was giving me a grant to do research in England and France that summer.
Fast forward a couple times more and you’d see me choreographing in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum; taking notes on the doorknobs in King Louis XIV’s bedroom; dancing outside of Tube stations, on the banks of the Seine, and all over the Chateau of Versailles; and now preparing to present that choreography in GW’s MainStage Season later this month.
It’s a weird story – but it happened to me. And (something like) it can happen to you too, if you apply for a Luther Rice Research Fellowship. The Rice Fellowship offers a unique opportunity to execute a funded, high-level, independent research project during your undergraduate career. You decide what to study, where to go, how to do it, and what the product will be. GW provides the means to make it happen.
My Rice Fellowship sent me on a solo trip to Europe – where will yours send you?
Last week’s Research Showcase saw presentations from original research performed by UHPers this year.
Eliza Goren‘s research stemmed from her research assistantship with Prof. Josef Przytycki from the Mathematics department. They spent the semester create a program based in knot theory. She helpfully explained knotting and unknotting through DNA transcription, drawing from an interest in DNA that begin with her Scientific Reasoning and Discovery class with Prof. Hammond!
Ben Helfand presented the findings of his senior thesis, researched through the Enosinian Scholars program. Advised by Prof. Nathan Brown, Ben researched the incorporation of human rights laws in constitution and domestic legal system of Tunisia after the Jasmine Revolution. He even travelled to Tunisia with the help of the SURE Award!
Eileen Emerson compared local and national TV and newspaper coverage of the 2015 Baltimore protests after death of Freddie Gray in police custody. Advised by Prof. Kim Gross, she wanted to find out which coverage was more racialized, sensationalized, legitimizing or delegitimizing through language and images. Eileen also is a SURE Award winner!
Pooja Shivaprasad worked on her senior thesis with Prof. Hossein Askari comparing the migration of refugees to oil rich and oil poor countries. Despite the frustrating lack of available data, Pooja found that oil rich countries take in fewer refugees, and that shared borders are more significant than shared language in refugee intake.
Eva Martin considered the UN’s treatment of human trafficking. Advised by Prof. Ingrid Creppell (Deputy Director of the UHP!), Eva developed an ambitious proposal for a dedicated UN Office on human trafficking, combining the resources of various offices on crime and human rights to greater effect.
Congratulations to our presenters for completing an incredible year of research!
Less than a week ago, Asepsis launched a crowdfunding effort for the construction of 231 toilets for 231 families in Odisha, India. This effort will be the first step Asepsis is taking on it’s journey to redefine the way we see the sanitation crisis and how we solve it.
To do so, not only will we be reaching out to donors, but will be activating networks of artistic, creative, and passionate minds from a variety of backgrounds around the common theme of sanitation. And we’re doing this by launching a photo competition called the #ComingClean Challenge that will run in tandem with the crowdfunding campaign. The winner of this competition will join us on an all-expenses-paid trip to India to report on the work we have did with ASHA — illustrate what went right and what we can do better — and help us document the sanitation crisis more generally.
But more about the project first.
Our Work With ASHA
The large scale of this project will help make two villages in Odisha, India open defecation free. Working with our on-the-ground partner, ASHA (Association for Sanitation and Health Activities), we will cooperate with the community to improve sanitation through comprehensive and inclusive training programs that ensure long-term success. Our team met them in India this past summer and were instantly taken with the commitment and know-how of their staff. As a young organization looking to help do our part as quick as possible, we decided that working with the them would be the best possible way to do so.
Click here to help support our crowdfunding effort and learn more!
The #ComingClean Challenge
Asepsis understands that the sanitation crisis cannot be solved simply with the construction of toilets. Rather, we need to change the way we think about and interact with it. What we need is for the story of this social injustice to be told, for it to come to light and for the true depth of its impact to be fully grasped.
The #ComingClean Challenge will ask photographers from around the world to submit one photo that tells the story of any social injustice — anything from poverty to homelessness to racial-ethnic relations. The winner of this competition — as decided by a panel of judges comprised of Pulitzer Prize winners, journalists featured in major publications such as The New York Times, and some of the leading minds in human rights as well as social media outlets like Instagram and Facebook — will be able to accompany Asepsis on an all expenses paid trip to Odisha, India.
Why? Asepsis is committed to redefining the way we see the sanitation crisis. Like social injustices that plague communities around the world, it is in the refusal to talk about sanitation and keep it hidden from the public discourse that the greatest harm is done. The #ComingClean Challenge is meant to change this phenomenon by not only helping document the sanitation crisis with our partners ASHA, but by also shining a light on social injustices that exist around the world. This challenge will heighten the visibility of these issues and the photographers that were able to capture them, creating a powerful catalyst for change.
To view the sanitation crisis as a social injustice is to change the conversation to one that compels us to action. But it’s not difficult to see it as such. 2.4 BILLION people lack access to sanitation systems, 780 million still struggle to find clean water, and 2,200 children die of preventable, diarrheal diseases every single day. These numbers are staggering and constitute the classification of sanitation worldwide as not only a social injustice, but a humanitarian disaster.
And this humanitarian disaster, this social injustice on a massive scale needs to be documented. Asepsis is trying to do this in an innovative way, putting the tangible benefits of our crowdfunding effort and work with ASHA alongside a photo competition that will give photographers around the world an amazing opportunity to help tell the world a story they so desperately need to see and hear. And only then, can we begin #ComingClean.
To learn more about the #ComingClean Challenge, visit us at: http://www.asepsis.org/#coming-clean.
The following blog post was written by UHP student and SURE Award winner Sarah Freeman-Woolpert.
This past winter, I traveled to Bosnia and Herzegovina to conduct interviews for my senior thesis on how divided ethno-national identity affects collective youth activism and civic engagement in Bosnia today. With funding from the Sigelman Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) Award, I spent two weeks interviewing young activists and university students about methods of youth engagement with the country’s current socio-political problems, like a 60% recorded youth unemployment rate and the corrupt, ineffective political system divided along ethno-national lines.
Traveling during the holidays gave me an intimate lens into the lives of local people who hosted me during my stay. I was welcomed warmly into the homes of many families who treated me as a member of their family during their holiday celebrations. I spent New Year’s Eve in the divided city of Mostar, in an unheated house with an older couple. Together, we huddled under blankets and had a long, wonderful conversation despite not speaking more than a few words of each others’ language. A week later, I spent Orthodox Christmas with a family in East Sarajevo. We ate roast lamb for breakfast, then I lay around watching the Kardashians with the family’s two teenage daughters.
At the end of my trip, I had recorded 16 hours of interviews and gained a more nuanced understanding of the issues facing young people in Bosnia today, and the ways youth engage with these problems—or choose not to engage at all. But I also left with a deep appreciation for the local culture and customs, which has influenced my desire to return to the region after graduation. I plan to continue researching inter-ethnic youth relations in post-conflict societies to get at the heart of how conflicts perpetuate between generations, addressing the roots of disagreement to prevent these from transforming into future violent conflict.
The following post was written by UHP student and SURE Award winner Jenny Hamilton.
Research doesn’t always go as planned.
That’s what I learned with the help of a UHP SURE Award, and it is a valuable lesson to be sure. My research explores the impact of popular definitions of democracy on democratic legitimacy – essentially, it investigates the idea that how people define democracy impacts whether they consider it to be the best form of government.
I applied for the SURE Award last fall to finance electronic crowd sourcing of a survey in the United States. Most of my data came from Afrobarometer, a survey conducted in thirty-three African countries. I wanted to create a matching dataset for the United States, so that I could have a consolidated democracy as a comparison case. After considerable research, I decided that electronic crowdsourcing was the way to go. The results would not be nationally representative, but they would be as close as you could get on a budget. Having secured the funding, I looked up coding to create the survey. I obtained permission from Afrobarometer to use items from their questionnaire and worked with GW’s Internal Review Board to ensure the project met ethical standards. After a beta round and a few modifications, I launched the survey and results poured in. Everything went (roughly) according to plan.
A few weeks later, I presented my thesis for peer review. During the session my friend said, “Jenny, I’m going to tell it to you straight. The United States does not belong in your paper.” I has a sinking feeling, but I knew she was right. Almost an entire continent reduced in comparison to a single country… it had seemed like a good idea, but now I wondered I had been thinking. A few weeks later, my friends celebrated when I told them I had excised the United States from my draft.
Even though it won’t be in my paper, I know that my data is not useless. Obtaining that data taught me how to deal with ethical review forms, how to apply for funding, how to construct a survey, and a little bit of coding. It made me a more capable researcher. I also know that the data still has an interesting story to tell, perhaps in another paper.
Despite your best laid plans, you never know where your research will lead you. But almost always, you will discover something new, even if it’s not what you intended.
The following post was written by UHP student and SURE Award winner Kathryn Coté.
As a biological anthropology major, I was interested in studying skeletal material as part of my senior thesis. Fortunately, the National Museum of Natural History has some of the largest skeletal collections in the world, and it’s only a few Metro stops away from campus! Receiving a SURE Award offset the cost of my many Metro trips to the collections and allowed me to conduct research in forensic anthropology at the Smithsonian (thus furthering my endless quest to become Temperance Brennan from Bones).
For my thesis, I chose to study a method that uses morphological changes in the acetabulum (the socket on the side of the pelvis that articulates with the femur) to estimate age-at-death in adult skeletal remains. The method was originally developed using a predominantly white male population, but research suggests that the acetabulum is highly population dependent as an age-at-death marker. I calculated the accuracy of the technique across populations and sexes using black and white individuals in the Smithsonian’s Terry Collection in order to determine whether the method was broadly applicable.
Surprisingly, the method was equally applicable across sexes and ancestries. Percent accuracy did not vary to a statistically significant degree between black females, black males, white females, and white males. This is most likely due to the broad age ranges that the method uses to classify unknown remains. However, with such broad age classifications and an average percent accuracy of 46.6%, the method remains insufficient for use in a medicolegal context, despite being equally applicable across groups.
Conducting independent research has been an extremely rewarding experience that has allowed me to organize every step of the research process. I was responsible for conducting a literature review, identifying a quantifiable gap in the literature, designing an experiment to address this gap, finding researchers who were willing to support my project, efficiently carrying out my experiment, and interpreting my results. This experience has allowed me to hone my research skills and I am extremely grateful to everyone at the UHP and NMNH that made this project possible.
