Oglethorpe University’s graduating honors students — the largest group in recent history — have successfully completed and presented their honors theses, despite the many obstacles presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Oglethorpe’s Honors Program gives students the opportunity to further challenge themselves in the classroom and beyond. By converting courses into honors courses, students participate in cross-disciplinary classes at a level beyond traditional class requirements. This allows them to forge closer relationships with peers and faculty from various disciplines who share a common enthusiasm for learning. The Honors Program concludes with the honors thesis, where a student develops and defends their own independent project.
“These are exceptional students, and I am so impressed with their grit and hard work,” said Dr. Seema Shrikhande, director of the honors program and professor of communication studies. “Our honors program is very demanding, and these students did the work.”
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, students had the added challenge of completing much of the work remotely. Representing a variety of disciplines, this year’s honors students presented their theses online during the Liberal Arts and Sciences Symposium on April 22-23, 2021.
- Length-dependency of FAP93 assembly in Chlamydomonas cilia | Presenter: Courtney Stuart (Advisor: Dr. Lea Alford)
- Female Candidates and Voter Turnout: An Empirical Study on the Effects of Nontraditional Candidate Spending on Voter Behavior | Presenter: Fatima Boumahdi (Advisor: Dr. Cassandra Copeland)
- Worse Singers or Harder Songs? Pop Music Melodies from the 1970s through the 2010s | Presenter: Alison Curl (Advisor: Dr. Timothy Powell)
- Bridging the Gap: Updating Representations of Slavery in Museums in the Southern United States | Presenter: Nyree Dowdy (Advisor: Dr. Nicholas Maher)
- Convivencia and Music in Medieval Iberia | Presenter: Samantha Foster (Advisor: Dr. Brent Runnels)
- Abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir: Implications and Why now? | Presenter: Sidhant Sharma (Advisor: Dr. Nicholas Maher)
- The Syrian Civil War: Why Did it Get So Bad? | Presenter: Addison Furst (Advisor: Dr. John Orme)
- A Qualitative Study Examining Black Women’s Experiences within Maternal Healthcare | Presenter: Ron’Nesha Bryant (Advisor: Dr. Janelle Pham)
- We Make Life: Self-Authoring in The Waves | Presenter: Milo McGehee (Advisor: Dr. Sarah Terry)
- Intraflagellar transport is not required for flagellar-associated protein 93 (FAP93) assembly in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii cilia | Presenter: Reagan Goodwin (Advisor: Dr. Lea Alford)
- The Collective Memory and Collective Amnesia: Japan’s Occupation in the Korean Peninsula | Presenter: Nina Lopez (Advisor: Dr. John Orme)
The presentations can be viewed in the playlist below. Graduates will be honored and hooded by their honors advisors during the Class of 2021 Commencement ceremony on May 22, 2021
