Welcome to the Public Policy honors thesis page. The projects presented here are the result of a year-long process begun by our honors students in January of 2020. These students have produced 30 projects that cover topics as diverse from health care for Somalia refugees to the importance of free speech on college campuses. Student have done everything from interviewing policy experts, crunched databases, and analyzed Tweets. The result is an important array of studies that are both thought provoking and intellectually rich. We recognize their hard work and dedication, and thank their thesis advisors for helping students complete their projects.
Class of 2021 Honors Thesis Papers
Autumn Barnes – Addressing Barriers to HIV Treatment Retention and ART Adherence Through Behavioral Interventions: A Scoping Review of People Living with HIV Who Inject Drugs
Sarah Bond – The Enabling Factors & Barriers to the Passage of the Immigrant Children’s Health Improvement Act: A Florida Case Study
Yuexuan Chen – Strategies for Infectious Disease Containment Based on Testing Fail High-Risk Subpopulations: Cultural Practices of Testing in TB, HIV and Covid-19 in the United States
Anna Chulack – Delaying Child Marriage in the World’s Most Afflicted Country: Evaluating Whether or Not Ethiopia’s ‘Berhane Hewan’ Intervention Program Could Be Replicated with Success in Niger
Alyson Diaz – ‘Feminicidio’ Media Framing of Ciudad Juárez Feminicidios
Alex Dodenhoff – Examining Public Discourse of AI in the United States
Caroline Doherty – Farmworker Perceptions of Living Conditions, Work Safety, and Work Hours
Thea Dowrich – Coming Home to Bull City: A Program Evaluation of Durham’s Local Re-Entry Council
Barbara Euripides – Analysis of Human Trafficking in North Carolina: Examining partnerships amongst anti-human trafficking stakeholders in North Carolina
Katja Gilman – The Art of Effective Arts Programs: Characteristics of Arts Programs in American Universities
Alexandra Johnson – The Effects of Collective Identity Theory on Local Congolese Refugees
Sophia Katz – Wasted Energy: Re-Directing Investment Into Renewables Through Environmental Policy
Anna Klingensmith – Women as Agents in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism: a Comparison between Europe and the Middle East and North Africa
Erin Lee – ‘Fires From Across the River’: An Analysis of American Racial Discourse in the Korea Daily and Amongst Its Readers
Jesse Lowey – Predicting the Chances of Clearance and Conviction for Shootings
Noah McThenia – Organizing Online: Political Participation on Reddit
Amina Mohamed – A New Life: Exploring the Maternal Healthcare Experiences of Somali Refugee Women in North Carolina
Savannah Norman – Assessing the Evaluation Methods of the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s Latin American Compact Projects
Braelyn Parkman – A History of Coal Ash Policy in North Carolina
Victoria Pinter – Hispanic Families’ Utilization of Social Benefits: A Regional Analysis
Swathi Ramprasad – Are Numbers Objective? An Analysis of Computational Risk Assessment’s Impact on Underrepresented Communities
Jose Rosario – Anti-Haitianismo and Sentencia 168: An Analysis of Anti-Haitian Stereotypes in Three Dominican Newspapers
Luke Sommer – Finding a Middle Ground: Free Speech and Inclusivity
James Toscano, Jr. – Whose Ballots Are Rejected and Why? Demographic Dynamics of Provisional Ballots in North Carolina
Kathleen Vern – Factors of Successful U.S. Arms Influence Attempts under the Trump Administration
Audrey Vila – The Effects of Gentrification on Calls to Service Utilization: A Case Study of Durham, NC
Adam Wilck – A New Frontier for Protest: Exploring the Implications of Social Media Use on the 2019 Global Protest Wave
Ellie Winslow – Gender Pay Inequality in Professional Sports: How Policy Shapes a Consistent Divide
Andrew Zheng – #VoterSuppressionGoneDigital: Exploring the Language and Use of Voter Suppression in Social Media