Senior Student Work Exemplars

On this page, you will find examples of beautiful work from the past year.  For a compilation of all Senior Projects, go here:
2018 Senior Projects. 

Senior Thesis Finalists: 2018

In the senior thesis, students are tasked with a true academic challenge--develop a research question on a topic they are interested in, research that question using academic sources and techniques, and report their findings in a 10-20 page paper.

In this paper, students are expected to be writing at the college level or beyond, and they are challenged to think deeply about their topic and critically analyze the evidence and arguments they are using to answer their question.

The papers linked to the right are the best examples of the 2018 papers, and were chosen as finalists for the Senior Thesis Award in that year.  The name that is linked in RED is the paper that was ultimately chosen as the best thesis.
WINNER- Claire Leffler- How can recurring patterns and forms found in nature be explained mathematically and why are humans visually drawn to recreating these patterns? 

Lily Bisantz- To what extent does the sexualization of young girls and women in Western culture perpetuate sexual violence?

Dylan King- What in the past 50 years has led to the economic recession of Puerto Rico and how has hurricane Maria impacted the island?​​

Quinn Luthy- How do confessional poets use form to create meaning?

Ben Malone- What are the potential future roles of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies in the economy?

Izzy Simpson- How can the fundamental structure of the stock market be utilized to predict market price fluctuations?​​​​

Rollin Leavitt- Do the NOD2 and TLR4 bacterial receptor proteins have differing transcription factor dimer preferences, and can this preference account for the observed inhibitory interaction between these two proteins?

Senior TED Talk Finalists: 2018

For their TED Talks, students are tasked with transforming their thesis topic into a 15-18 minute presentation in the style of a TED talks.  Talks should be informative, inspiring, and above all, leave the audience wanting to know more about their chosen topic.  Below are the finalists for the TED Talk Award of 2018.  The talk with the title in BLUE is the talk that was ultimately chosen as the best talk of that year.
WINNER- Izzy Simpson- Predicting the Stock Market with Emergent Intelligence
Ben Malone- The Future Roles of Blockchain Based Cryptocurrencies
Rollin Leavitt- The Role of Protein Transcription Preferences
Dylan King- The History of Puerto Rico's Economic Collapse
Lily Bisantz- The Link Between Sexualization and Sexual Violence
Todd Laffaye- The Most Promising Treatments for Alzheimers