Category: Oral Presentation

Planning for the Future: The International Future Time Orientation and Life Project Scales

Presenter(s): Madeleine Smith—Educational Foundations

Faculty Mentor(s): Jenefer Husman

Throughout the years, extensive research has been done on what influences people’s decisions . What prompts a student to apply to one school over another? Do future goals really influence a student’s academic performance in a class? Researchers have found that psychological future and personal goals play a vital role in an individual’s present behavior, decision making, and self-concept . More specifically, future time orientation (FTO) is the degree to which people’s thoughts of the future influence their present-day actions (Husman & Lens, 1999) . Similarly, the theory of Life Project (LP) refers to a set of short to long-term goals that shape self-concept and identity (Little, Salmela-Aro, & Phillips, 2017) . This project will develop an International Future Time Orientation Scale and Life Project Scale working in conjunction with research teams in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Uruguay, and the United States . FTO and LP constructs have recently been created by Portuguese research teams . The remaining research teams will conduct focus groups for construct evaluation . This evaluation will focus on main constructs such as distance, connectedness, and extension from FTO as well as organization, engagement, and identity from LP . The structures of both scales’ factors will be analyzed quantitatively with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis . The development of reliable international FTO and LP scales are a necessary instrument as they could be applicable to larger populations . Overall, this exciting research focuses on what influences an individual’s decisions and can greatly benefit prospective psychological and educational studies .

Estrella Symbolic Portrait

Presenter(s): Kat Sincuir Alvarez—Anthropology/Cinema Studies

Faculty Mentor(s): Lynn Fujiwara

Session 2: Common Reading

This art was created as an inspiration from the significant amount of symbolism Helena Viramontes portrays of Estrella within the book of Under the Feet of Jesus . To begin, Estrella explains her agony and confusion when she thinks back to the ‘Sun Maid’ raisins logo, as it is a happy white woman . Estrella could not feel more different than the woman in the box . She is a Latina with a pained face as her hands are all cut from the grape vines . I found this to be incredibly important to her character, the vines in my painting symbolize her entangled chains that only bring her down to the field work she is so stuck in . When drawing Estrella, I wanted to recreate her as the young lady I imagined her to be, beautiful, broken, dirty and sad . While she may dream of tomorrow and is a strong character I chose to draw her vulnerable side as that is what almost everyone fears, and yet that is what makes us most human . Our experiences make us the people we are, and for Estrella, the reality is that she is hopeless and yet she decides to be hopeful . Her eyes hold a small galaxy of stars, the one’s she is both named after and looks up to in an attempt to reach for a better tomorrow . Lastly, Estrella
is clutching to wood as she is clutching to the barn . Since the beginning of the book, Estrella had a feeling that was almost spiritual with the barn, while it was falling down and it was old, there was some sort of refuge within it . And yet, she struck a deal with Perfecto to tear it down if it meant he could go to the clinic . Alas, she leaves Alejo alone in the hospital and she goes back into the barn to look at the stars . What will be of the barn?

The 2008 Economic Crash and the Breakdown in Venezuelan Democracy

Presenter(s): Garret Simmer—Political Science

Co-Presenter(s): Jon Laus

Faculty Mentor(s): Matthias Vogel

Session 5: It’s a Small World After All

This project highlights the economic policies adopted by the Venezuelan government during and after the 2008 financial crisis and its impacts on the stability of democracy in Venezuela . To gain an understanding of the experience of the populace, we trace news reporting on the crisis in Venezuelan daily publications which we contextualize with reporting from an international perspective and academic publications on economic data and social policy . Our study will illuminate how Venezuelan democracy eroded through the breakdown of institutions following economic collapse . This project’s aims are to identify some of the root causes for the Venezuelan economic crisis and the sustained disparity experienced by the Venezuelan people . We are going to show the connection between economic and political issues and their impact on political efficacy in a democracy . Our results show: as Venezuela’s economy experienced greater economic stress, the government was able to take more drastic action threatening its democracy . Political shifts are often the result of economic fluctuations on the national and international scale . When considering relevant concepts such as globalization, media’s influence, and regional issues, it becomes clear that Venezuela’s backslide into authoritarianism was inextricably linked not only to the national economy but the global economy .

Abortion legalization in Spain: A window into the history of Spanish reproductive rights

Presenter(s): Monica Silverman—International Studies

Faculty Mentor(s): Yvonne Braun

Session 3: The Way We Were

My thesis research analyzes the social and political history of abortion legalization in Spain, and explores the implications of this history for modern reproductive health discourse and policy throughout the country . Abortion was officially legalized in Spain for the first time in 2010 and saw much political and social backlash . The contemporary policies regarding reproductive rights in the

country are deeply connected to events during the almost 40-year-long dictatorship of Francisco Franco . From 1939, right after the Spanish Civil War, up until his death in 1975, Francisco Franco ruled Spain under a fascist dictatorship, maintaining control through repressive means and implementing a politically and socially conservative plan for Spain in collaboration with the Catholic Church . This relationship between church and state produced an environment in which a narrow version of religious morality dictated women’s autonomy in the public sphere and over their own bodies . This thesis explores the historical ties to the gendered policies and societal norms which were constructed in Franco’s Spain and largely persisted through democratization . Drawing on secondary sources, I specifically argue that rigid gendered ideologies and systematic disenfranchisement of women has been pervasive in Spanish society under both fascist and democratic regimes . Patriarchal systems of oppression have thereby persisted despite political change . Additionally, I have discovered that Spain has made enormous progress relating to reproductive justice even as there are still significant areas for improvement . A strong Spanish feminist movement continues to fight for these improvements, including equitable access to reproductive healthcare and education .

Policy Mapping onto Bodies: The nexus between immigration policy, local community support networks, and migrant health outcomes in Tijuana

Presenter(s): Samantha Sidline—International Studies

Faculty Mentor(s): Kristin Yarris

Session 1: Time for Your Check-Up—Decolonizing Global Health

The implementation of new policy at the US-Mexico border has only exacerbated the humanitarian crisis experienced by border communities and asylum-seekers . The Migrant Protection Protocols are already affecting asylum-seekers attempting to enter the United States from Mexico . Policies like the MPP disenfranchise migrants by creating the conditions in which fleeing families are vulnerable to a system that is unsupportive of their rights, exposing them to various forms of violence and hostility . Families must now wait in Mexico for unspecified periods of time for the duration of their immigration proceedings . Inevitably, policies like this one produce environments of uncertainty and neglect the framework which recognizes immigration as a determinant of health . This thesis aims to position the current asylum-seeker experience at the US-Mexico border as one at the whim of frequent United States policy changes and how this instability may impact migrant health negatively . The reality of asylum-seekers’ experiences is detailed through my participant observation research in Tijuana, where the effects of the MPP are lived day-to-day . Interviews with community workers addressing the humanitarian crisis at the border deconstruct the embodiment of such policies in asylum-seekers while simultaneously demonstrating how community support can aim to negate the harmful impacts of policy . This research will show how policy determines the livelihood of asylum-seekers coming into the United States and recognizes community networks’ role in migrant community health and fostering solidarity .

Optical access to auditory cortex for in-vivo two-photon calcium imaging

Presenter(s): Raj Shah—Human Physiology

Faculty Mentor(s): Santiago Jaramillo, Beth McCarry

Session 5: The Wonders of the Brain

In vivo two-photon calcium imaging is a powerful tool that enables measuring activity of hundreds of individual neurons simultaneously . To understand how the brain makes predictions about sounds, we will use this imaging technique to measure how neurons from the auditory cortex of awake mice respond to expected and unexpected sounds . To image activity at the neuronal level, optical access is achieved via implantation of a cranial window . However, the auditory cortex is not easily accessible during surgery due its lateral location and large muscles and arteries around the ears . Here, we report an updated protocol for cranial window implantation over the auditory cortex for use in two-photon calcium imaging . With optical access to the auditory cortex, we are able to use in-vivo two-photon calcium imaging to evaluate sound-evoked responses of hundreds of auditory cortical neurons . These data will allow classifying and mapping the location of neurons that represent either predictions about a stimulus or errors in these predictions .

Dimana? Disini: The effects of migration and political strife on the Chinese Indonesian family, name, and identity.

Presenter(s): Kezia Setyawan—Journalism

Faculty Mentor(s): Sung Park, Tuong Vu

Session 4: Cultural Considerations—The Other

Dimana? Disini . Translated, this means, where are you/us? I/We are here .
Over the span of many generations, Chinese Indonesians have migrated to all corners across the globe . I hope to reckon and reflect upon how my family has changed and how others in our community have . This professional project will explore how identity and values shift through the lens of migration and assimilation for Chinese Indonesians . I have conducted in-person interviews in English and Indonesian and taken portraits of each interviewee . Through the process, I have tried to parse together patterns that show similarities in perspectives and what are contradictions . The final work is split into different components, one aspect is the literature review, which provides context and background information that informs contemporary Chinese Indonesian existence, timelines that illustrate historical events and family migration illustrating the changes in familial names over generations, and a series of studio lit portraiture on location with captions from their interview on what informs who they are . The project matters because it is a multimedia journalistic package that has many different entry points for the audience to engage with cultural identities different than their own .

Equilibrium Solutions for 2-Dimensional Nonaxisymmetric Disks

Presenter(s): Daniel Sellers—Physics

Faculty Mentor(s): James Imamura

Session 5: To the Moon and Back—Relativity Matters

In this study we seek equilibrium solutions for compressible, self-gravitating, 2-dimensional nonaxisymmetric disks . Such structures arise in binary star systems and other systems where tidal forces arise such as in the Earth-moon system . These disks are governed by a Scalar Momentum Equation (SME) and a partial differential equation describing hydrodynamic flow within the disk (Stream Function Equation) . We solve these equations using a self-consistent field approach . At each iterative step, the Stream Function and gravitational potential are approximated at all grid points using Guass-Seidel iteration . These quantities, taken with the SME and appropriate boundary conditions are used to find an updated guess for the density distribution .

Guass-Seidel algorithms are applied to the relevant partial differential equations which have been discretized using a finite central-differencing technique . These solvers are implemented in python and verified using analytical solutions for simple cases, such as axisymmetric disks with uniform density . We find that our solvers converge to the analytical solutions over many iterations .

Parameters for the overall equilibrium solutions are taken from Andalib’s 1998 Dissertation focused on 2-D self-gravitating systems . Present work is focused on reproducing some of the presented solutions as both a check on our equilibrium solutions and as a starting point for further research .

Quantifying the spatial morphology of organic films through polarization- dependent imaging

Presenter(s): Madelyn Scott—Chemistry, Physics

Faculty Mentor(s): Kelly Wilson, Cathy Wong

Session 2: Cells R Us

Organic semiconducting materials are appealing, green alternatives to conventional semiconductors because they can be solution-processed into flexible films . However, solution-processing fabrication methods can be prone to morphological disorder, meaning that crystalline structures in the
film exhibit a variety of sizes and shapes . A large degree of morphological disorder inhibits the electronic functionality of a film for use in technological devices . Examining how film morphology varies with different deposition conditions allows us to connect the physical properties of organic semiconducting films to macroscopic perturbations in their formation environments . In this work, we used a homebuilt microscope to image the polarization-dependent absorption of organic films, and developed an image analysis software package to characterize their spatial morphology . A series of pictures are collected of the sample, rotating the polarizer between each image . For every pixel in the image, the absorption signal as a function of polarization angle is fit to a sinusoidal curve . These fits are employed to assign pixels in the image to discrete aggregate domains within the film . Quantitative domain metrics are computed to describe the morphology of the film . Several organic films are produced under different deposition conditions and their resulting morphologies are compared . By better understanding the relationship between deposition conditions and film formation, existing solution-processing techniques can be further controlled and refined to achieve target physical properties in organic semiconducting materials .

Peirce’s phenomenological grounding of Science and Matters therein

Presenter(s): Timothy Schatz—Philosophy, Math

Faculty Mentor(s): Scott Pratt, Erin McKenna

Session 1: It’s a Science Thing

Any survey of C .S . Peirce’s philosophy will reveal a vast but shattered continent . Hence, any reader who ventures beyond a single text will have to ask themselves how they are to regard the relation of these texts . I am aligned with the unitary interpretation, espoused by the late Dr . Joseph M . Ransdell, and so affirm the Peircean system as essentially phenomenological . The divisions of science, or systems of science, maintains three divisions: mathematics, philosophy, and special science . Phenomenology finds its home in philosophy, and it is here where knowing first encounters being . As such, following Peirce’s underlying gestures towards positive philosophy, post-Kantian empiricism, realism, and christen mysticism, phenomenology naturally arises as ground and loci of his philosophy, insofar as it places the subject in a living world . In the first division of this work, the general system of phenomenological reflection reveals a form of knowing which is inherently human in which beings are known as a world and not disparate things . This reflection is threefold in which reflection folds back onto itself to reveal the triadic structure of Being . Thus the second division shall take up the triadic structure, the categories, in phenomenological detail qua their expression in being . Lastly, this paper culminates in the general architecture of phenomenology, which serves as the ground for Peirce’s Weltanschauung, that is, his conception of the cosmos .