June 2008

Seniors Earn Departmental Honors

Twenty Austin College seniors earned departmental honors this spring, preparing and defending theses in oral argument in biology, chemistry, Spanish, communication arts, economics and business administration, English, history, mathematics, music, political science, psychology, and religion. Admittance to the Departmental Honors Program is by invitation only to students who have excellent independent research potential and has performed at an exceptional level in the department.

2008 Departmental Honors Graduates

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Phillip Cartwright
Honors in Economics/Business

Hometown: Plano, Texas
Majors: Business Administration and Economics
Minor: Music
Thesis: Reevaluating Good-to-Great Companies
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Jerry Johnson
Committee Members: Dr. Daniel Dominick and Dr. Kevin Simmons
Future Plans: After graduation from Austin College, Phillip plans on finding work in the Dallas – Fort Worth area.  He is also considering graduate work in Business Administration and/or Music Technology.

Good to Great, by Jim Collins, was released in 2001 and instantly found its way into the libraries of business people, religious leaders, and students across the globe.  The premise was simple; any organization could leave mediocrity and achieve greatness.  Collins used empirical research, countless interviews, and a team of diligent thinkers to find and dissect eleven companies that moved from average to high performance.  From these results, Collins found several key principles (primarily management and leadership factors) which were consistent within each high performance company.  He then suggested that adherence to these principles could move a company from “good to great.”  However, the research and subsequent publication failed to acknowledge other common factors of fiscal success (economic factors, public relations, etc).  Updated information on the original companies over more recent years would be needed to support (or contradict) Collins’ findings.

In order to test Good to Great’s ideas, I reanalyzed the market performance of each good-to-great company over a short term period (five years) and a long term period (twenty years).  I then compared each company with the general market according to Collins’ own requirements.  Most of the companies failed to maintain their high performance since the release of Good to Great.  I researched leadership changes, market changes, and other newsworthy information that might indicate why these companies had weak performances.  Many of the performance changes seem to be due to either economic troubles or litigation instead of changes in management or leadership.  Although the principles described in Good to Great are intuitively sound, a company must pay attention to other factors if it should increase its fiscal performance.

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Kathleen Cluchey
Honors in Classical/ Modern Languages-Spanish

Hometowm: Plano, Texas
Majors: Spanish and Religious Studies
Thesis Title: La Ruptura Femenina: Las Escritoras y Sus Propias Voces en el Siglo XVI y XVII (The Feminine Rupture: Women Writers and Their Own Voices in the 16th and 17th Centuries)
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Lourdes Bueno
Committee Members: Dr. Patrick Duffy and Dr. Terry Hoops
Future Plans: Kathleen will stay in Sherman after graduation for one year and then she will move with her husband, Adam, to New Jersey where she will be working on her Masters of Divinity at Princeton Theological Seminary.

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Janice Dean
Honors in Religion

Hometown: Plano, Texas
Major: Religious Studies
Minor: Asian Studies
Thesis Title: The Spectacle of Dongba Religion: Negotiating Minority Identity in Modern China
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Ivette Vargas
Committee Members: Dr. Todd Penner, Dr. Terry Hoops, and Dr. Don Rodgers
Future Plans: Janice plans to get a job to teach either near Dallas or in Taiwan before she goes to graduate school.

This thesis is an exploration of the risks involved in the preservation of cultural identity in modern day minority groups in China. Through the lens of the Naxi minority situated in Yunnan Province, I show that attempted assertions of identity can foster the trivialization as well as the elevation of cultural and religious symbols. Therefore, in the “acts of preservation", the Naxi reflect a paradoxical image of themselves and their culture. As scholars have noted, identity can be defined in numerous ways. This paper addresses identity as a changing phenomenon affected by constructions from outsider groups and shaped by the national discourse. Specifically, this study is concerned with how the Naxi people negotiate their identity as agents living under dominant cultural norms and a Communist country undergoing rapid economic development. This study reflects the dynamics and tensions between identity transformation and preservation efforts in mainland China. These tensions will be examined through a study of religious narratives and symbols, commoditization, institutions, and modern performances.

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Robby Dullnig
Honors in Communication Arts

Hometown: Garland, Texas
Majors: Communication Studies and English
Thesis: Contextualizing Caryl Churchill’s Far Away: A Production Process
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Kirk Everist
Committee Members: Dr. Kathleen Campbell and Dr. Alex Garganigo
Future Plans: Robby has applied to the MLitt./MFA program in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in Performance at Mary Baldwin College as well as the MA program in Classical Acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. Robby hopes to work in the professional theatre and perhaps eventually earn a PhD. in theatre or literary studies. 

For his thesis work, Robby directed a production of Caryl Churchill’s Far Away, an absurdist piece critical of current international politics. The work contextualized the production by focusing on themes of childhood and teaching. Robby also performed extended research on Antonin Artaud’s concepts of hieroglyphic language and theater of cruelty and used his findings to develop a simple but bizarre aesthetic for the show.

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Laura Ellington
Honors in Biology

Hometown: Greenville, Texas
Majors: Biology
Minors: Spanish
Thesis Title: Proteasome Activator PA28g Controls Degradation of Tumor Suppressor p53 in a Proteasome-Dependent Manner
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Lance Barton
Committee Members: Dr. Kelly Reed and Dr. Brad Smucker
Future Plans: Laura plans to attend Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the fall to pursue a career in ophthalmology.

Proteasomes are multicatalytic proteases that are essential for cellular function but require binding to specific proteasome activators to degrade proteins. The function of proteasome activator PA28g is unclear; however, it has recently been demonstrated to bind to and promote degradation of cell cycle inhibitors p21^Cip1, p16^INK4a, and p19^ARF-1, and has been linked to tumor suppressor p53 regulation. This study examined the potential role of PA28g to enhance p53 degradation. By demonstrating p53-PA28g interaction and determining half lives of p53 in wild type and PA28g^-/- murine embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs), our results showed that p53 is stabilized in PA28g^-/- MEFs. Also, inhibiting proteasome function resulted in p53 accumulation in WT MEFs and a slowed but continued degradation of p53 in PA28g^-/- MEFs, which suggests that this interaction is proteasome-dependent. A direct relationship between PA28g and p53 could not be deduced from the coimmunoprecipitation data; however, when combined with the work of Zhang and Zhang (2008), these data suggest a novel proteasome-independent function of PA28g to interact with the previously established p53 inhibitor mdm2 in order to promote p53 degradation.

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Claire Gardner
Honors in Psychology

Hometown: Plano, Texas
Major: Psychology and Art
Thesis: Constructivist Self-Awareness and Substance Use Patterns:  Comparison Between a College and a Drug Court Sample
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Karen Nelson
Committee Members: Dr. Dan Setterberg and Dr. Henry Gorman
Future Plans: Claire will be working as a medical technician for a psychiatrist in Fort Worth, Texas for a year and then plans to attend graduate school to pursue a degree in either clinical psychology or neuroscience. 

The correlation between self-concept, sensation seeking and substance use patterns in 26 randomly and conveniently selected Austin College students and 30 Grayson County Drug Court participants, ranging in age from 19 to 52 years old was investigated.  Participants were administered the Self Description Questionnaire III (SDQIII), which measures components of self-concept, the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory-IV (SASSI-IV) and the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) or the Texas Christian University Drug Screen (TCU), which measures substance dependence risk, and the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS). Self-concept items were compared to substance dependence risk ratings using a series of three stepwise, multiple linear regressions on SPSS.  The first two linear regressions compared ASI or TCU ratings to SDQIII items and SSS scores (adjusted R² = .104; F_1,54 = 7.354, p = .009), and then SASSI-IV ratings to the same SDQIII and SSS scores (adjusted R² = .185; F_1,54 = 13.489, p = .001), indicated a correlation between academic self-concept and risk of substance dependence.  The final multiple linear regression replicated the former, however excluding drug court participant data, indicated a correlation between SSS scores and risk of substance dependence (adjusted R² = .121; F_1,54 = 4.427, p = .046).  Contrary to previous findings, hypotheses about spiritual (Beitel, Genova, & Schuman-Oliver, 2007; Saunders, Lucas, & Kuras, 2007; Marciglia, Kulis, Nierei & Parsai; 2005), emotional (Zack, Toneatto, & MacLeod, 1999; Jackson & Sher, 2003; Lewis, Phillippi, & Neighbors, 2007), and opposite sex relation self-concept (Wetherill & Fromme,2007) were not supported.  Implications for further research are discussed.

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Alberto Gutierrez
Honors in Classical/Modern Languages-Spanish

Hometown: Austin, Texas
Majors: Biology and Spanish
Thesis Title: Mujeres del Quijote y Su Impacto en el Personaje  Masculino (Women of Quixote and Their Impact on Male Character)
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Lourdes Bueno
Committee Members: Dr. Julie Hempel and Dr. Terry Hoops
Future Plans: Alberto plans to extend his involvement in the field of healthcare while working in the Austin area.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s Quixote establishes an early juxtaposition of physical appearance, tendencies, and reasoning methods between the popular knight Don Quixote and his loyal squire Sancho Panza. Such differences are slowly revealed to result from variations in lifestyles and ambitions in which the women involved play a critical role. Dulcinea del Toboso and Teresa Panza, the most important female characters in the lives of these men, bestow upon them an array of characteristics that ultimately define the better portion of their being. The influences of these and other women also serve to create and stabilize an ideal world in which chivalry and adventure may thrive.  

Other women worth mentioning because of the way they interact with the protagonists and cause a significant impact on their lives include Marcela, a countrywoman whose story helps solidify the understanding that the reality of any given situation depends upon who tells its story. There is also the duchess, a woman whose capriciousness and selfish need for entertainment results in irreparable damage to the knight’s imagination. Between women that either shape or destroy ideology, there are others like Maritornes, Altisidora, and Dueña Rodriguez who serve to expose a more realistic side of Don Quixote by demonstrating that, like any other man, he possesses desires of intimacy to which he partially surrenders.

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Mark Hamilton
Honors in English

Hometown:  Austin, Texas
Majors:  Biology and English
Minors:  Anthropology and Chemistry
Thesis Title: Methods of Madness in Celine and Sacks: Searching for the Borders of Thought.
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Roger Platizky
Committee Members: Dr. Peter Anderson and Dr. Terry Hoops
Future Plans:  Mark hopes to conduct biomedical research in the future at a major institution. 

Analysis of madness in the humanities and sciences is central to understanding human reality.  Despite the humanities and sciences mutual consideration of madness, these disciplines construct madness in contrasting ways.  While the humanities focus on literary forms of madness that divide human reason and non-reason, the sciences analyze madness in terms of chemical abnormalities in organic neural networks.  The medical discipline, which must use scientific empiricism to treat the abstract human mind, may be seen as a bridge between the metaphysical methods of madness considered by literature, and empirical methods of madness described by science. 

This thesis analyzes the writings of two physician authors, Ferdinand Celine and Oliver Sacks.  Celine’s novels depict a mad world in which human awareness of self leads to an inherent madness of humanity.  Sacks analyzes specific neural dysfunction in patient case studies and uses this dysfunction as a basis to consider reality.  Taken together, these authors help to elucidate any borders that exist between scientific and literary forms of madness.  Ultimately this analysis leads to a continuum in which the madness itself requires both literary and scientific definitions in order to exist.  As such, the literary/scientific threshold is dissolved and an indistinct border exists in its place.

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Mark Hamilton
Honors in Biology

Hometown: Austin, Texas
Majors: English and Biology
Minors: Chemistry and Anthropology        
Thesis Title: Microarray Analysis of PA28g Affect on Saccharomyces cerevisiae Demonstrates Proteasome-Dependent Enhancement of Cellular Mitosis.
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Lance Barton          
Committee Members: Dr. Kelly Reed and Dr. Bradley Smucker
Future Plans:  Mark hopes to conduct biomedical research in the future at a major institution. 

Proteasomes require activation to degrade proteins, which involves a conformational change allowing protein access to the proteasome catalytic core.  Proteasome activator 28g (PA28g) is present in the nucleus of many eukaryotic cells and contributes to proteasome activation.  Previous research implicated PA28g only in proteasome activation; however, recent research has implicated PA28g in the selective degradation of cell cycle regulators.  This selective degradation implies a direct role for PA28g in the regulation of cellular physiology.  In order to better clarify PA28g’s role in transcriptional regulation, DNA microarray technology was used to examine PA28g effects in yeast.   Yeast transfected with PA28g were arrayed for gene expression changes.  General analysis demonstrated genes related to cell growth, protein synthesis, and metabolism had enhanced expression.  Specific analysis of orthologs of known PA28g targets revealed enhanced expression of the cell division cycle proteins Cdc11, Cdc12, Cdc33, and Cdc60, and the Cln2 protein, all of which function at the G₁ and M phase checkpoints where PA28g is suspected to act in mammalian models. Further microarray analysis of cells containing constituitively active proteasomes show negation of all observed PA28g effects.   Taken together these data indicate PA28g works in the yeast cell in a proteasome-dependent manner analogous to mammalian cells to enhance cell growth and proliferation.

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Rebecca Lake
Honors in Political Science

Hometown: Royse City, Texas
Majors: Political Science and History
Thesis Title: Justice for All?: The Unequal Disposition of Felony Cases in Texas
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Nathan Bigelow
Committee Members: Dr. Frank Rohmer and Dr. Michele Helfrich
Future Plans: Rebecca will attend Harvard Law School with the hopes of pursuing public interest law.                                   

While tradition in American criminal law evokes ideas of justice including the right to  trial by a jury of one’s peers, the vast majority of felony cases find disposition in the guilty plea based on a system of plea bargaining.  In the year 2006, an average of sixty-six percent of felonies in Texas ended in a plea of nolo contendere or no contest guilty plea with multiple counties even reaching one hundred percent.  This thesis sought to examine the elements that influenced the guilty plea rate in Texas felony cases for the year 2006 by utilizing multivariate regression analysis.  The chapters included analysis of both aggregate felony cases as well as particular felonies such as robbery and manslaughter.  The initial hypotheses argued that increases in prosecutor resources would decrease the plea bargaining rate as prosecutors gained the tools to pursue trial as well as that when individual resources decreased, plea bargain rates would increase as defendants lost the ability to adequately contest charges.  The regressions also tested scholarly arguments such as the caseload pressure theory.

The findings show that in multiple categories, the resources of individuals have a significant impact on the type of disposition for felony cases, particularly in property crimes.  As individual resources decline, the guilty plea rate increases, demonstrating that defendants with greater financial support are more likely to pursue trial rather than a plea deal.  The analyses support the prosecutor resource hypothesis in some cases, although without the strength of the first finding and with theoretically important exceptions.  In some categories, control variables such as race also played a role in the disposition of cases.  The presence of race as a factor in crimes such as driving while intoxicated demonstrate potential racial biases by law enforcement and/or prosecutors in the criminal justice system.  The results lead to provocative arguments for the unequal prospects of particular individuals within the criminal justice system based on their financial circumstances and even race.

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Anne Laski
Honors in Political Science

Hometown:  Lubbock, Texas
Majors: International Relations and Economics
Minor: French
Thesis: Government Expenditure, Development, and Rural-Urban Migration: A Case-Study on India
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Don Rodgers
Committee Members: Dr. Nathan Bigelow and Dr. Melanie Fox-Kean

Rural-urban migration represents one of the greatest challenges facing the developing world today, especially as lagging urban infrastructures become increasingly stressed by population inflows.  Understood in this phenomenon is the underlying factor of rural underdevelopment, usually linked with poverty, high birth rates, and a high land to labor ratio.  Using a multivariate regression, this study focuses on India’s expenditure in rural development in order to demonstrate correlations between areas of government investment and any mitigation of rural-urban migration.  The dependent variable tested is the net change in the number of intra-district migrants within states between 1991 and 2001.  The sample consists of the Indian states, eliminating some due to insufficient data.  The explanatory variables include state-wise expenditures on irrigation programs, road infrastructure, primary education programs, the Indian Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS), and the National Public Distribution Service (PDS), among others.  The data compiled was collected from the 2001 Indian census and indiastat.com.  This study hypothesizes that the first three expenditures will not contribute to a decrease in migration while the last two will have some impact in decreasing migration.  An Original Least Squares model produced results demonstrating significant impacts in migration variation from the variables of irrigation expenditure, roads and bridges expenditure, and foodgrain liftings of the PDS, among others.  Education and EAS expenditure were determined to be statistically insignificant in this model.  

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Melanie Mason
Honors in History

Hometown: Decatur, Texas
Majors: History
Minors: Spanish
Thesis Title: Roy Bedichek: His Early Years and Friendships
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Light Cummins
Committee Members: Dr. Vickie Cummins and Dr. John White
Future Plans: Melanie will be in the Teacher Program at Austin College, working toward a certificate for 4^th to 6th grade Social Studies.

After immigrating to Texas as a young boy, Roy Bedichek created a legacy with his work in the University Interscholastic League. Like typical young adults, Bedichek went through several key steps in his development before he began the work that would take him to retirement. Key events in his life such as Bedichek’s career at the University of Texas, his years of post-graduation wandering, a homesteading attempt and the growing relationship with the woman who would become his wife, provide the timeline for this work.  This thesis uses Bedichek’s letters to examine his friendships in the context of his developmental landmarks.  The interaction between Bedichek and his friends and family in these correspondences serves to demonstrate the influence of these relationships on his early life.  Bedichek’s letters offer an intriguing look into the early years of a figure with a relatively small historical stature.  The aim of this work is to shed light on a part of Roy Bedichek’s life and present a comprehensive study of his development into the man he became.

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Nicole Moore
Honors in Music

Hometown: Houston, Texas
Majors: Music and Business Administration
Thesis: Expanding the Global Christian Narrative: Music as a Tool of Religious and Cultural Subjugation and Liberation in Christian Communities of Indonesia, India, and South Africa
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Wayne Crannell
Committee Members: Dr. Daniel Dominick and Dr. Janet Lowry
Future Plans: Nicole will be spending the next two years teaching English as a Second Language with Teach for America in Memphis, Tennessee. She hopes to then pursue graduate school and find a career in the international not-for-profit sector.

The incorporation of Western Christianity into the non-Western world reflects a large part of the picture of colonization in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Along with a foreign religion, many Christian missionaries also brought traditional Western church music and advocated these styles as the true and correct way to worship. In many of the non-Western settings, true conversion to the faith was not seen as simply believing the Gospel message, but as a complete alteration of one’s cultural lifestyle into Western patterns. As Christianity and Western ideals began to take hold in many non-Western communities, the indigenous music of the region became a sign of uncivilized, heathen practices. Instead of celebrating native music, people were taught to appreciate Western styles and to seek pure imitation of these cultivated art forms. The effects of this repression of native musical styles, especially from the church, are still being negotiated in present times as many non-Western Christian communities across the world still sing mostly Western style hymns that have little connection with their indigenous cultures. Communities in Indonesia, India, and South Africa each show evidence of the cultural musical repressions by missionaries and colonizers, but also reflect evidence of recent attempts to develop native worship styles that express a culturally grounded Christian faith experience.

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Will Radke
Honors in Economics/Business

Hometown: San Antonio, Texas
Majors: International Economics and Finance as well as Asian Studies
Thesis Title: Informed Counterfeiting: Circumnavigating Legal Avenues with Third Shift Goods
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. David Griffith
Committee Members: Dr. Dan Nuckols and Dr. Don Rodgers
Future Plans: Will has the position of Analyst for Goldman Sachs Reality Asia Pacific Limited based in Singapore working on a developing market real estate fund.  

By some estimates, consumer goods produced without complete intellectual property rights comprise a staggering 20 percent of goods in the Chinese market.  The methods of intellectual property theft are becoming more complex, often resulting in a myriad of negative economic, legal, social, and political implications that hamper economic efficiency.  The various methods used to create and distribute these goods challenge the binary restrictions of either counterfeit or legitimate goods described in previous research.  This thesis reports on a field study of intellectual property practices in China conducted by the author but more importantly addresses why certain types of counterfeiting are more prevalent than others.  Interviews with United States government officials, Chinese government officials, manufacturers, and intellectual property lawyers uncovered the use of the term “third shift good” to describe a specific form of intellectual property theft previously undocumented in the economics literature.  A third shift good is produced with specific, often illegal knowledge of the intellectual property, whereas pure counterfeiting has no direct or inside knowledge of the intellectual property.  Since a third shift good is a counterfeit with real expertise and mostly seen with licensed products where the licensor typically has little control or oversight at the factory, it can be distinguished from gray market activity, parallel imports, and manufacturing overruns.  Since this type of counterfeiting remains undocumented in previous academic research, this thesis contributes to building a significant background of the issue.   The salient contribution of this thesis is the application of Gary Becker’s model from Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach which is used to analyze interviews.  It suggests third shift activity is more difficult to monitor and enforce than counterfeit but has certain positive benefits.

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Thomas Rhodes
Honors in Music

Hometown: Odessa, Texas
Majors: German and Music
Thesis Title: Opera In Modern Times: The Mechanization Of The Art
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Daniel Dominick
Committee Members: Dr. B. Wayne Cranell and Dr. Truett Cates
Future Plans:  Thomas will be attending Carnegie Mellon’s Master of Arts Management program with the support of a merit-based scholarship.

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Cicily Smith
Honors in Mathematics

Hometown: Fort Worth, Texas
Major: Mathematics and Spanish
Minor: Physics
Thesis: Investigations of Non-Euclidean Snell Geometry
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Jack Mealy
Committee Members: Dr. Kerry Brock and Dr. Andra Troncalli
Future Plans: Cicily will spend the next two years pursuing an M.S. in industrial engineering at Texas A&M University.

The discovery of non-Euclidean geometry was a groundbreaking event that impacted many fields including mathematics, science, and philosophy. In the current day, spherical and hyperbolic geometry are only a few examples of this category. Now it includes a collection of “geometric universes” that possess many fascinating and perhaps even counterintuitive characteristics.

The goal of this paper was to examine a type of non-Euclidean geometry for which a systematic investigation appears to be lacking. We call this category of systems by the name of Snell geometry. We illustrate why this geometry can be classified as non-Euclidean, and make the case for why we believe it is particularly worthy of study. In examination of some basic dynamics of Snell geometry, we explore characteristics of digons and triangles on this surface. The highlight of this paper is the definition and proof of the existence of an infinite-sided polygon which we call the Snell-horocyclic regular polygon. We achieve this by looking at a specific case, then generalizing to create a category of such polygons. We conclude by presenting a selection of open problems for future exploration.

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Szende Szabo
Honors in Classical/Modern Languages – Spanish;
Honors in Political Science

Hometown: Uricani, Romania and Buenos Aires, Argentina
Majors: International Relations and Spanish 
Thesis: Comparative Study Between Romania and Turkey and Their Fulfillment of European Union Accession Requirements.
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Don Rodgers
Committee Members: Dr. Frank Rohmer, Dr. Hunt Tooley 
Future Plans: Next year Szende will be attending The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M, College Station and will be pursuing a Master of Public Service and Administration. 

The European Union (EU), after the expansion to twenty-seven nations, became the world's largest trading bloc and it has plans for further growth. After expansion towards the east and reuniting the so called European family, many questions have arisen about Turkey’s status as an EU candidate country. The study is a comparison between Romania and Turkey and their fulfillment of EU economic and political requirements. The study provides a comparison between Romania’s and Turkey’s economic performance as related to the Copenhagen Criteria and attention is placed on gross domestic product (per capita and real growth), transition to market economy, privatization of state owned enterprises, macroeconomic state, inflation, and corruption. Then, the study focuses on a political comparison between Romania and Turkey, centering primarily on secularism, human rights, minority rights, civil and political rights (freedom of expression and freedom of religion), and the political elite.

Consequently, the economic comparison of the two countries shows that Turkey has performed at the same level or better than Romania. On the other hand, the political observation points to the idea that Turkey compares favorably to Romania in terms of the rule of law and democracy, but there is still room for improvement in the area of human rights. Still Turkey has come a longer way in relative terms than Romania. Thus it can be concluded that Romania and Turkey are extremely similar cases and if Romania was admitted in the EU on the basis of the Copenhagen Criteria, then Turkey should have been as well. On the other hand, if the EU has ‘secondary’ reasons for the exclusion of Turkey, then these reasons should be stated. If this is the case (which the study shows as likely to be true), then some of the secondary reasons for Turkey’s exclusion from the union could be attributed to its status as a Muslim country, culturally and religiously, with a very large population that is regarded as un-European.      

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Austin Trantham
Honors in Political Science

Hometown: Flower Mound, Texas
Major: Political Science
Minor: History
Thesis Title: The Jurisprudence and Judicial Statesmanship of Roger B. Taney
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Frank Rohmer
Committee Members: Dr. Nathan Bigelow and Dr. Hunt Tooley
Future Plans:  Austin will begin graduate school this fall to earn a Master in political science.  His long-term goal is to earn a Ph.D. in political science with a focus on American politics and teach at the collegiate level. 

Roger Brooke Taney of Maryland served as the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1836 to 1864. Taney’s early rulings on cases involving the obligation of contract, the commerce clause, and judicial supremacy continued the precedence of John Marshall and have been praised by present-day scholars.  His majority opinion in the infamous 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, however, would severely damage his judicial reputation and has elicited critique from current observers. With conflicting viewpoints regarding his judicial statesmanship, how should Taney’s time as Chief Justice be seen in the present day?

This thesis closely examines Taney’s jurisprudence and judicial statesmanship through a discussion of his political beginnings in the Jacksonian period, the precedents set by his immediate predecessor John Marshall, and a close analysis of the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision.  Relations between Taney and Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War era and recent scholarship of the Chief Justice are also considered to form an overall opinion of Taney’s judicial career and historical legacy.  Through understanding the political events, legal cases, and social divisions present during this time and how they affected and influenced the Supreme Court, one can better grasp present the jurisprudence and judicial statesmanship of Roger B. Taney. 

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Robert Vance
Honors in Mathematics

Hometown: Austin, Texas
Major: Mathematics
Minor: Biology
Thesis Title: Calculus on Manifolds
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Jack Mealy
Committee Members: Dr. Don Williams and Dr. Tony Tanner
Future Plans: Next year Robert will be attending graduate school at Rice University in Mathematics.

In a Calculus course, the study of derivatives and integrals is restricted to a relatively small set of functions and domains.  The functions studied in the discussion of derivatives are from the real line, the plane, or 3-dimensional space into the real numbers.  Similar limitations exist for the study of integrals, and the domains that are integrated over are mostly very simple.  The purpose of this thesis is to learn how some of these restrictions can be lifted.  

Derivatives of functions from arbitrary dimensional space into another arbitrary dimensional space are defined and shown to be a relatively simple generalization of the derivative presented in a first semester Calculus course.  The integral of a function from arbitrary dimensional space to the real numbers is also defined formally, and then expanded to include the integral of differential forms.  Then the restrictions on domains of integration are loosened to include manifolds, essentially a curved version of n-dimensional space.  This culminates in a generalized version of Stokes' Theorem which can be used in place of the major integral theorems of Calculus:  The Fundamental Theorem for Line Integrals, Greene's Theorem, the original Stokes Theorem, and the Divergence Theorem.

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Geoffrey Wescott
Honors in Economics/Business

Hometown:  Houston, Texas
Major: Economics and Business Administration
Thesis: The Income Effects of Bilingualism in the United States Latino Labor Markets
Thesis Advisor: Dr. David Griffith
Thesis Committee: Dr. Melanie Fox-Kean and Dr. Julie Hempel
Future Plans:  After graduation, Geoffrey will begin work with Archon Group, L.P. in Dallas, Texas.

Previous research indicates that self-employed entrepreneurs experience higher incomes than those who work for a firm.  It has also shown that self-employed entrepreneurs, when compared to employed individuals, experience smaller returns from a higher education.  Further, human capital theory suggests that fluency in two languages will increase the income potential of an individual.  My study investigates these relationships among Latinos living in the United States and finds that bilingual language ability does not increase income potential for a U.S. Latino.  The thesis also documents that self-employed U.S. Latino entrepreneurs experience smaller returns from higher education and earn significantly higher incomes than U.S. Latinos employed by a firm.

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June 2008

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Kelly Wiggins
Honors in Chemistry

Hometown: College Station, Texas
Major: Chemistry
Thesis: Synthesis and Characterization of Bisurea Organogelators with Varying Alkane Linkers C5-C12.
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Andy Carr
Committee Members: Dr. Karla McCain and Dr. David Baker
Future Plans: Kelly will be attending graduate school to obtain a PhD in organic chemistry at the University of Texas in Austin and hopes to pursue a career in academia.

Bisurea organogelator molecules of the type [(3,5 OR)C6H3(CH₂NHC (=O)NH)]2(C2H4)n (R = C_nH_n+2 and n = 3 or 6) have been shown to be efficient organogelators when the tail length (R) is sufficiently long enough, typically ten carbons or more. The conventional synthesis of these gelators is limited to gelators where n = 3 or 6 because of the use of di-isocyanates which are only commercially available in lengths of six or twelve carbons. The new method forms an isocyanate on the core molecule via an amine intermediate. This isocyanate can be reacted with diamines to form gelators with linkers from five to twelve carbons. The bisurea gelators synthesized by this method gel chlorinated solvents between 0.45 and 0.90 wt%, aromatic solvents between 0.23-2.3 wt%, and alkane solvents between 0.03-0.26 wt%.  The ureas with the shorter linkers gel the aromatic and alkane solvents at lower critical concentrations while the ureas with the longer linkers gel the chlorinated solvents at lower critical concentrations. Synthetic protocol, yields, and study of gelation properties will be presented.  

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