Eligibility
All students enrolled in SOCI480, Senior Seminar, who have achieved
a cumulative GPA of 3.3 are eligible to participate in the honors
program.
Requirements
Successful completion of a senior thesis in the Senior Seminar.
Successful completion of revisions to the senior thesis in accordance
with the recommendations of the candidate’s honors committee.
Successful oral defense of the honors project.
Procedures and Timetables
1. Notifications.
Students who wish to participate in the honors program shall
notify the chair of the sociology department no later than the
second week of the fall semester.
2. Formation of Honors Committee.
The honors committee is a three-member panel of faculty that
supervise and evaluate the honors project. Two members of the
committee shall be drawn from the permanent faculty of the sociology
department, and college regulations stipulate that one member
of the honors committee must be drawn from the faculty of another
department at Macalester College or another university or college.
One of the two sociology faculty members shall serve as the honors
project adviser of record and chair of the honors committee. Honors
candidates shall select a project adviser no later November 1st
in the fall of their graduating year. With the advice and consent
of the project adviser, honors candidates shall select the other
members of the committee, otherwise called readers or examiners.
One reader shall come from the sociology department faculty and
be appointed no later than the end of the fall semester. The second
reader shall be appointed no later than March 1st.
3. Oral Defense.
The chair of the honors committee shall schedule an oral defense
of the honors project no later than the third week of April. Upon
deliberation immediately after the oral defense, the honors committee
may elect to (1) pass the honors project, (2) issue a conditional
pass and defer approval of the honors project pending the completion
of further revisions deemed appropriate by the committee and subject
to the final approval of the chair of the honors committee, or,
(3) withhold approval for lack of sufficient progress.
4. Final Editing.
The Office of Academic Programs formats honors projects to add
them to the holdings of the Wallace Library. Students are responsible
for formatting their thesis in accordance with OAP guidelines
and submitting the requisite copies to their office in the first
week of May.
View the full text of STUDENT HONORS PROJECTS in
DigitalCommons@Macalester
2007
Ellen Bracken, "Off the Beaten Path: Rural
Students and the Pursuit of Higher Education"
Rural students, on average, graduate from high school at lower
rates and go to college at lower rates than students from suburban
and urban areas. For my project, I interviewed 8 college students
who graduated from rural high schools. I asked them about their
experiences in rural schools and communities, and about the transition
to college. I found that rural high schools in many cases were
not well equipped to prepare students for college, and that the
students I interviewed had to work independently of their schools
and communities in order to pursue higher education.
Winner, third prize in the Midwest Sociologists
Society Undergraduate Competition.
Ashley DeMinck, "The Origins of Truth and
Reconciliation Commissions"
The recent spread of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs)
around the world marks a dramatic shift from retribution and war
tribunals to reconciliation and restorative justice. What factors
have led to this remarkable transition? This study looks to distill
the influence of both international and domestic actor and demonstrates
that both factors are essential to the creation of a TRC. The
research demonstrates the varied influence of both international
actors, who offer significant resources in some cases and play
a supportive bystander role in others, as well as sub-national
organizations that have also been found to vary in composition
and structure, specifically the roles of the church.
Elizabeth Newman, "From Political to Personal:
Forming Feminist Identities"
I noticed that while many of my peers shared feminist beliefs,
not all of them would call themselves feminists. I interviewed
female college students to determine the events and influences
of feminist identification and the processes of developing these
identities. I found that positive opinions of feminism and feminists
in social networks, such as families or peer groups, encouraged
identification while women who rejected a feminist identity attributed
this to a lack of knowledge and activism.
Winner, first place in the Midwest Sociologists
for Women in Society Undergraduate Paper.
Audrey Peer, "Selecting Environments: The Mediating
Influence of College Choice on Binge Drinking"
Existing programs to decrease binge drinking on college campuses
focus on students’ activities and aspects of college life;
however, these programs have had much success. One potential reason
for the poor performance of these interventions is that they are
poorly targeted. In my paper, I use sociological theories of homophily
– the idea that people with similar preferences cluster
together – and data from the Harvard School of Public Health
College Alcohol Survey to examine if students’ characteristics
prior to college can explain binge drinking behavior. I find that
a student’s pre-college drinking behaviors and exposure
predict the likelihood that the student will attend a college
with a high level of binge drinking and this likelihood –
net of any individual and college-level effects – has a
strong association with the likelihood of a student binge drinking
in college.
Thomas Phelan, "Jazz and the Academy"
Jazz has gone from the much reviled, raucous music of places
of ill-repute in New Orleans to a youth fad to the nation’s
popular music and finally into its current state as a high art
form with relative commercial obscurity. The recent entry of jazz
as a high art form provided me with an opportunity to examine
how higher education institutionalizes culture. I interviewed
jazz professors to understand how they developed curriculum and
the role of creativity in jazz education. My results indicate
that there is a high level of creativity in the curriculum but
little creativity in the structural aspects of jazz programs.
I suggest that as disciplines move from a culture of informal
instruction into a bureaucratic institution they lose some, but
not all creativity.
Stephanie Phillips, "Japanese-Brazilian Return
Migration: Pushes, Pulls, and Prospects"
Japan's economic situation and need for foreign labor present
challenges when attracting and incorporating an influx of newcomers
and pose questions relevant to previously established theories
of migration. By examining public policies and the experiences
of Japanese-Brazilians or Brazilian nikkeijin--migrants of Japanese
descendants born in Brazil. I argue that Japan's immigration policy
is a key determinant in the migration of Brazilian nikkeijin to
Japan and, subsequently, that this policy plays an integral role
in shaping the Japanese-Brazilians' environment in the host society.
This case reveals how policy plays a significant role in shaping
migration flows and illuminates possible motives behind and inconsistencies
between pre- and post-migration policies.
2006
Eileen Boyce, “What Happened
to the Girl Next Door? Examining the Social Aspects of Anorexia
Nervosa.”
My honors thesis examined the social forces that influence the
development of anorexia nervosa in young women. While psychotherapeutic
studies locate the causes of eating disorders within the individual
and conflict theory views anorexia nervosa as a product of social
pressures, neither body of thought adequately provides an account
of what social factors influence the development of an eating
disorder in a young woman. I developed a sociological perspective
on anorexia by drawing on theories of deviant behavior. I tested
my hypotheses with data from the National Longitudinal Study of
Adolescent Health. My logistic regression analysis showed that
anomic states caused by strained familial relations and the early
experience of physical development influenced the likelihood that
a young woman will manifest anorexia nervosa. Results suggest
the need for more longitudinal studies of adolescent development
examining what socioeconomic forces are influential elements in
the socialization of self-concept in youths.
Amelia Cotton Corl, “Better Students, Better
Test Scores? The Minnesota Basic-Skills Test and Influential Achievement
Factors.”
For my senior thesis, I used a data set that I helped to compile
in the summer of 2005 on educational testing in the state of Minnesota.
Using the analysis from the summer as a starting point, I conducted
linear regression analysis to examine the impact of student body
characteristics, teacher quality and spending measures on the
percentage of student bodies that pass eighth-grade graduation
examination. I found that student body characteristics have the
greatest effects but that the precise effects vary for reading
and math achievement. These results have implications for both
education policy and sociology. Further research in this area
would shed light on the ways in which school funding and specific
education programs can be enhanced to raise the percentage of
students passing graduation examinations in Minnesota.
Demoya Gordon, “Policing Sexuality in America’s
Churches: Theological, Congregational and Political Influences
on Regulation of Same-Sex Behavior.”
Prize Winner, North Central Sociological
Association Undergraduate Student Paper Competition, 2006. Also
Prize Winner, Alpha Kappa Delta (International Sociology Honors
Society).
I decided to examine the regulation of same-sex behavior in US
churches because I am fascinated by the fact that not only are
religion and sexuality issues that have been at the forefront
of American social and political discourse in recent times, but
that they have come to an interesting intersection in the issue
of religious attendance and participation by openly same-sex attracted
persons. Sociologists have recently been giving a lot of attention
to the issue of church growth and decline, but there have been
no studies dedicated to systematically analyzing the factors that
influence a given congregation's likelihood of regulating same-sex
behavior. Following other recent sociological work on religion,
I formed hypotheses concerning congregational regulation of same-sex
behavior based on theories related to theological and doctrinal
tradition, political ideology, socio-demographic factors, church
competition, and threats to the social status quo. As expected,
my analysis provided support for the influence of theological
and political ideology, but other factors also exercised significant
influence. Most interestingly, I found that congregations in states
with anti-sodomy laws in place are less likely than those in states
where these laws have been repealed or invalidated to regulate
same-sex behavior. This finding indicates a need for further research
into the interaction between political and moral/religious policing
of sexual behavior.
Katherine Malnor, “Fat Teen Trouble: A Sociological
Perspective of Obesity in Adolescents.”
My project used data from the AddHealth survey given to adolescents
nationwide in 1994 to examine sociological factors (such as social
class and family environment) and their influence on obesity in
adolescents. Through my work on this project I have gained valuable
experience working with the SPSS computer software (which is lots
of fun!). My initial results were inconclusive; however, by restructuring
the way I define my dependent variable (obesity) I am hoping to
find more significant relationships between obesity and the independent
variables as I complete further statistical tests.
Cristobal Ramon, “Institutional Activism: Variability
and Consistency in the Development of Worker-Owned Cooperatives.”
Prize Winner, Midwest Sociological
Society Undergraduate Student Paper Competition, 2006.
For my senior honors thesis, I compared behavior in older and
younger cooperatives in a Midwestern metropolitan to see how economic
and social changes shaped the behavior of these firms. I discovered
that older firms from the 1970s initially created niches, attracted
customers, and copied other successful democratic enterprises
to strengthen the cooperative movement's presence in the city's
whole food market. After the movement collapsed, however, newer
firms and firms from the 1970s focused on meeting demand for their
products in different markets by using strategies developed by
older cooperatives to strengthen their organizations and market
niches. In this sense, older firms were primarily oriented toward
a social movement while newer ones behaved more like businesses
that sought suitable models of organization, demonstrating how
social and economic factors work together to shape the behavior
of activist organizations like worker-owned cooperatives.
Ian Ritz, “Playing for an Active Community: Youth Sports
Participation and Civic Engagement.” Prize Winner, Midwest
Sociological Society Undergraduate Student Paper Competition,
2006.
Sports have had a tremendously positive impact on my life. I
have learned a great deal about myself and with other people through
my sports experience but in the world of sociology, sport as an
institution is often heavily criticized (and rightly so for a
number of reasons). Motivated to delve into the study of sports
for myself, I investigated a possible connection between two disparate
subjects in sociology: sports participation and civic engagement.
There has been no empirical work done linking the two and based
on the understanding of the types of relationships and values
associated with them, I asked if sports participation as a youth
help to explain civic engagement later in life? Using multivariate
analysis of a large, nationally representative dataset, I found
that even after controlling for variables that are known to influence
civic engagement, youth sports participation positively correlates
with civic engagement in the form of volunteering.
Jennifer Singleton, “Negotiating Change: An
Analysis of the Origins of Ghana’s National Health Insurance
Act.”
My honors thesis focuses on the processes that led to the adoption
of the National Health Insurance Scheme of Ghana in 2003. This
health care financing system mandates that every Ghanaian citizen
obtain health insurance and provides government subsidies for
those unable to afford adequate coverage. This scheme replaces
the previous 'Cash and Carry' system, which required upfront payment
for all medical services, thus limiting health coverage to the
wealthy few. This new health insurance program runs counter to
the characterization of developing countries' neo-liberal policies
that reduce government involvement in social services. Why did
Ghana adopt this reform? While there were no strong domestic movements
promoting the reform of the 'Cash and Carry' system, there was
a significant role played by various international institutions.
The IMF and World Bank seem to have added a humanitarian focus,
creating an atmosphere in which state spending on citizen healthcare
needs was acceptable. Additionally, the USAID-funded organization
Partners for Health Reform Plus played a significant role in the
adoption of the National Health Insurance Scheme by conducting
a health financing survey which the Ghanaian Ministry of Health
subsequently used as a guide in drafting the National Health Insurance
Bill. My analysis has revealed that there is a significant gap
in the literature concerning the interactions that take place
between 'developing' nations such as Ghana and international institutions
and organizations. Through my research it has become clear that
any analysis of policy formation must include both domestic and
international factors as no state is wholly unaffected by international
influences.
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