2020 Honors Project Presentations

Thank you for visiting the 2020 Honors Project Presentations website!

Each of our students submitted a video presentation about their Honors Project to share with the greater Babson Community in lieu of our standard in-person Honors Program Presentations. You may click on a student by name below, or simply scroll down the page to view the presentations that pique your interest. At the very bottom of this page you will find a form to submit any comments or questions for individual presenters.

Congratulations to the Class of 2020 Babson College Honors Program!

Aiswarya Arul

Advisor: Virginia Rademacher

Now I Know My ABCDs (American Born Confused Desis)

This honors thesis looks at the narrative of Indian American young women via interviews, analyzing the intergenerational tensions between themselves and their immigrant parents. Due to conflict in values and the struggle to balance Indian heritage with American norms, specifically in the fields of gender roles and societal expectations, Indian American women struggle with alienation that manifests in forms such as mental illness, value conflict, identity crisis, alcohol abuse, etc. Alienation, here, is defined as the feelings of inadequacy and the lack of belonging.

Camila Benedetti

Advisors: Stephen Spiess & Jon Hodge

Analyzing Feminist Discourse: Ecriture Feminine in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores

This work explores French feminist theory ecriture feminine in Garcia Marquez's novella through the concepts of authorship, language and the body. After extensive literary analysis, the work reaches a complex conclusion which demands for an alternative non-binary linguistic theory.

Maria Bravo

Advisor: James Hoopes

Gender Within Institutionalized Places: An Analysis of the Catholic Church with Contemporary Society

This honors thesis examines gender ideals within institutionalized places, and how that ideal aligns or contrasts contemporary viewpoints of gender. As a self-identified feminist as well as a practicing Catholic my whole life, I have always been interested in the construct of gender expectations and norms, and the feminine ideals that are expected of females from a patriarchical society. This project explores the many facets of religious teachings and societal views and provides a deep analysis of the relationship between societal changes in the 20th and 21st centuries and Catholicism through the scope of gender.

Michelle Buslov

Advisor: Dessislava Pachamanova

A Text Analytics Framework for Donation Campaign Descriptions

This thesis looks at the intersection of text analytics and the nonprofit sector. By creating a text analytics framework that nonprofits are able to use, donation campaign descriptions can be analyzed to improve their effectiveness. Through this framework, nonprofits can use R, an open-source programming language to better understand what types of words,n-grams, and topics are more likely to be funded by donors. In this thesis, a case study is done using teacher donation campaign and there are some clear links between the need for language within the descriptions regarding learning goals versus material objects. Although this is just a case study specific to the nonprofit education space, it exemplified the relevancy of text analytics within donation campaign descriptions and creates an opportunity for more research to be done regarding donation campaign text and other nonprofit sectors

Gregory Clancy

Advisors: Erin Escobedo & Eric Chan

The Effects of Transportation on the Value of Commercial Real Estate

This honors thesis focuses on the impact of the Assembly Row transit oriented development on commercial properties in Somerville, Massachusetts. My hypothesis that the Assembly Row development as a whole was a statistically significant predictor of commercial real estate values within 2 miles of Assembly Row within a relevant time frame, but that demographic and transit variables will be less significant because they change too slowly to impact value within the same time period was supported by the data and analyses. In addition, the data uncovered significant income inequality and gentrification in Somerville around key Assembly Row development dates.

Jose Damasceno

Advisor: John Edmunds

Fintechs and the New Credit Environment in Brazil

Through several case analyses and interviews, this project gathered qualitative and quantitative data to point out current impediments for the advancement of the credit availability in Brazil. Adding to such an initial approach, this project analyzes technologies that solve those impediments, such as Crowdfunding, Blockchain, Apps and Artificial Intelligence.

Isaac Darwiche

Advisor: Terry Reilly

Paths to Profits for Owners in the MLB: Is Winning The Best Option?

This project analyzes the different strategies that Major League Baseball owners can take in order to create short and long term financial value. The paper dives into the valuation of a baseball franchise through linear regression and statistical analysis, utilizing these results to provide insights into potential paths to value such as TV contracts and the signing of star players. Overall, the project builds on previous team valuation practices to provide owners with a clear-cut road to a higher valuation.

Ursula Dedekind

Advisor: Jennifer Tosti-Kharis

A Recommended Playlist for You: An Exploration of the Attitudes and Activities of the Emerging Music Entrepreneur

This honors thesis explores, currently, how can newly emerging musicians leverage entrepreneurial attitudes and activities in order to sustain a career in the music industry. My methodology for this project involved the qualitative interviewing of ten young musicians who are pursuing or have a desire to pursue music professionally as well as three industry professionals. Through this study, I found that those musicians who have an understanding of the importance of identifying as an entrepreneur, have a deep awareness of their entrepreneurial motivations, engage in entrepreneurial activities, and balance their business knowledge with their artistic compulsions, will have a competitive edge over those who do not subscribe to such practices.

HoKwong Andrew Fu

Advisors: Anjali Bal & Jon Hodge

The Unreal in Real Estate: Consumer Storytelling Theory and the Enactment of the Ruler Archetypal Myth in New York City's Billionaire's Row

This work explores consumer storytelling theory in the context of the New York luxury real estate market. By analyzing consumer enactment of both the hero and the ruler archetypal myths on Zillow listings in New York, we were able to correlate price of the property with mythic enactment, paving way for further exploration of the monetary translation of mythic empowerment.

Xianle Jin

Advisor: George Recck

Path Towards Sustainable Solar Energy Systems in Ghana

The study first focuses on evaluating various factors that have contributed to the increased solar adoption in Ghana. Given that Ghana has established an objective of achieving 10 percent renewable energy in its total energy mix by 2020 in the Strategic National Energy Plan (SNEP), the study evaluates the current progress towards the goals outlined in the plan and proposes a utility-scale project for a 20MW solar plant in the Wa Municipal District of Ghana. The proposal analyzes the financial, social, and environmental implications of the proposed project and the effectiveness of different implementation strategies.

Austin Mankouski

Advisor: Paul Schmitz

The Mankouski Story: Rural Polish Immigrants and Their Legacy

This honors project is based on the story of Polish immigrants, the Mankouskis, who arrived in the United States at the turn of the nineteenth-century and moved to rural upstate New York to farm. The goal of this project is to use the Mankouski family story, along with secondary research, to understand why Polish immigrants left their native land to come to America, the values they brought with them, and how they adapted those values in order to succeed in rural America and create a legacy to pass on to their descendants.

Tara Masjedi

Advisors: Lauren Beitelspacher & Joanna Carey

To Give or Not to Give to Charity? Exploring Alternative Disposal Strategies to Limit Consumers' Impact

My honors thesis discusses current issues with disposal methods consumers use to dispose of their unwanted clothing and the unexpected societal and ecological impacts that come along with those methods. More specifically, my project looks at the pros and cons of charity disposal and how only 20% of garments donated to charity ultimately make it to the sales floor. Through exploring alternative, more sustainable strategies such as the Re:newcell method and composting, individuals can limit the environmental impact of their purchasing and disposal decisions.

Maren Mellen

Advisors: Anjali Bal & Paul Schmitz

The History of Women in Baseball: The "Forgotten Narrative"

There is a widely accepted myth that the sport of baseball is only for men. Buried somewhere in the sport's history lies a rich narrative of female baseball players and teams from the 1800's to today. This paper uses primary media sources to evaluate the social, cultural, and institutional factors that have prevented women from fully participating in the national pastime.

Ashley Mukasa

Advisor: Kevin Bruyneel

Inmate Rehabilitation In the Age of Mass Incarceration: An Analysis on Effective Rehabilitative Programming in Massachusetts, West Virginia, and Texas correctional facilities

This honors thesis analyzes the effectiveness of in-house rehabilitation programs within Massachusetts, Texas and West Virginia correctional facilities as told by inmates. This paper discusses the evolution of American incarceration with a specific focus on the changes of its scale, purpose and effectiveness. My thesis, supported by survey results, examines the perceived benefits and areas of improvement regarding in-house inmate rehabilitation programming, and analyzes the level to which inmates feel prepared to re-enter society. The perceptions made by inmates are compared to publications made by state correctional departments regarding their facilities’ rehabilitation programs. With this comparison I am able to scrutinize whether or not in-house rehabilitation programming execution aligned with what was publicized especially with regards to the department’s mission statement.

Quyen Nguyen

Advisor: Richard Hanna

The Effect of Operational and Cost Transparency on Consumers' Attitudes toward a Company's Ethical Behavior and Purchase Intent

This paper examines the effect of operational and cost transparency on consumers' attitudes toward a company's ethical behavior and their purchase intent. Utilizing Everlane as a model for an online experiment, this study provides insights about operational and cost transparency while also pinpoints the most suitable strategy to help ethical and sustainable fashion companies improve consumers' purchase intent.

Michelle Ong

Advisor: Stephen Spiess

Life After Death: The Post-Mortem Narratives of Yasuhiro Takemoto and Stan Lee

This research project examines the obituaries of Yasuhiro Takemoto and Stanley Lieber (Stan Lee), two important artists who passed away within the past 2 years. The scope of the research focuses on the role of master narratives, the drivers of artistic success, the value of art and the artist, as well as the inherent bias and subjectivity of obituaries, a medium assumed to reveal the "objective truth." In sum, the research reveals that an ideal life is not defined only by the living, but also by the discussion and discourse regarding the deceased.

Inedaba Oruwariye

Advisor: Elizabeth Swanson

Unconscious Contributions to Bloodshed: Examining Wartime Rape in Democratic Republic of Congo as a case study of Post Colonial Trauma

This thesis uses wartime rape to explore the long term impacts of colonialism in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It's plethora of natural resources has created a perpetual state of violence since the colonial ruining of King Leopold II in the 1800's. That violence is physically and brutally committed onto the bodies of women as over 400,000 women have been raped. Western understanding of conflict in DRC not only neglects it's colonial history but is also accustomed to Africa's continuous state of war. This mindset, although unconscious, contributes to the endless carnage of DRC.

Tyler Patterson

Advisor: Jessica Simon

Double Deprivation: The Privilege of Race and Education

Matthew Ryan

Advisor: Richard Cleary

Exploring the Impact of Fantasy Sports and Gambling on Media Generation and Consumption

This project examines the impact of fantasy sports and gambling on media generation and consumption, and follows how the media landscape continues to evolve in response to changing consumer preferences in the sports realm. Among a complex legal and regulatory environment, sports fans ultimately continue to be attracted by new and exciting methods by which to consume content, and those who purvey the content have been consequently compelled to alter their strategies and supplement their traditional methods. In this video, I review the scope of my project, and explain how a strategically designed survey led to fruitful conclusions and well-supported hypotheses.

Juan Saca Bahaia

Advisor: Elizabeth Bryson

Understand the Causes and Relevance of Reduced Fish Output for the Well Being of El Tamarindo Community, and Propose Solutions to Ensure the Continuity of the Community.

This project examines the different drivers of fish stock reduction on the El Tamarindo beach, El Salvador. At the same time it looks at how this reduction is actively affecting the livelihood of the El Tamarindo community. Looking at consumer waste as the primary driver of reduction in fish stocks in the area, through the project it was found that the primary cause is the use of unsustainable fishing techniques. After a couple of surveys, and talks with the community, NGOs and local government, this project looked at the drivers of fish stock reduction, looked how this affected the community, and at the same time provided some possible solutions to mitigate the current situation.

Erica Schwegman

Advisor: Elizabeth Swanson

Haitian Poverty - Developing Poverty Reduction Strategies by Increasing Education

I have been working with non-governmental organizations in Chriaque, Haiti since 2015, but my philanthropic acts have simply provided a bandaid on top of the massive wound that Haiti has been suffering through. By better understanding these issues, it was my goal to develop an education-based strategy plan for Haiti. This plan focuses on making education more readily available to children throughout rural Haiti, as well as increasing the number of young girls attending school.

Disha Sethi

Advisor: Mary Pinard

Tempest, Rooks, Breakage: Ground Reality

This honors paper explores nature in the works of Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, and Mary Oliver. It involves an overview of the history of nature poetry, biographies of each of the poets, and close readings and analysis of their works. As part of my project, I have also developed a full length collection of original poetry that has in part been inspired by my research. To view Disha's full poetry reading, click here: This (Un)Forgiving Place

Ted Sirbaugh

Advisor: George Recck

An Expanded Analysis on Changes to Golf Course Architecture

This project examines the factors that have caused golf courses to change over the years, and seeks to understand the negative impacts. After identifying the consequences associated with the current trend, by using a combination of analytical and anecdotal analysis, the project then explores potential future solutions.

Mara Steiu

Advisor: Steven Gordon

Blockchain in Education

This paper discusses blockchain-in-education applications and introduces start-ups and organizations that implement them: the digitalization and decentralization of educational certifications and the enhancement and motivation for lifelong learning. In parallel, the study discusses potential challenges that blockchain-in-education applications developers and beneficiaries may face, such as data privacy legislation, lack of funding, and scalability limitations.

Kate Tank

Advisor: David Blodgett

Rethinking Soybean Production: The Alarming Future

This project explores the topics of United States soybean production and the variety of production practices that are utilized in the industry. Through analysis of past research, interviews with industry experts, and farming data and reports, I identify specific areas, like production practices, that have the potential to be enhanced in order to optimize the industry as a whole. My project finds that there needs to be an ideological shift in terms of the policies and practices that make up United States agriculture. This shift is defined by the adoption of long term land conservation strategies that work to consider the impending consequences of a changing climate.

Qifei (Freda) Yuan

Advisor: David Blodgett

A Consumer Offer: Innovative Strategies of Western-Style Fast Food Chains in China

This honors paper focuses on the innovational strategies developed by Western-style fast food chain restaurants and their impacts on consumer behaviors in the Chinese market. Through survey and group interviews, the author investigated factors that influence one’s consumption preference and brand loyalty for Western-style fast food chains. Innovation is examined from three domains: menu innovation, digital transformation, and healthy and upscale brand images. The paper concludes that while innovation is not the primary consumer value held by Chinese fast food diners, it can serve a distinguishing factor for global chains to compete in the contemporary Chinese market.

FengYi Zhou

Advisor: Julie Levinson

Progressive or Regressive? Representation of Female Characters in Japanese Anime

Modern day Japanese animations, or anime, frequently present a seemingly contradictory portrayal of female characters - they are extremely powerful yet their appearances are sexualized. This honors project is inspired by this contradiction and focuses on female representations in anime from the past two decades. The research goal is to find out whether such contradiction is progressive to gender norms in Japan or pander to social progress.

Page updated

Report abuse