The Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (AHS) Capstone is a semester-long project that builds upon prior coursework and allows students to produce a polished piece of original work. Past projects have included papers suitable for publication, art installations, computer games, and more. This collection contains final AHS work in a variety of mediums, for projects from 2006 to the present.
Heritage language learners, learners who speak a language at home but have never been taught the language formally, face very different obstacles when it comes to language acquisition when compared to second language learners. For this reason, existing introductory Korean language courses do not address their needs. However, these learners are motivated to become fluent in Korean because it ties them to their heritage and therefore are willing to challenge themselves. In the course of three lessons, this project will discuss a few key mistakes that Korean heritage language learners make. Then, the lessons will address a proposed way to address these issues. These lessons will start from an explanation of the alphabet and conclude with the students reading short passages. These lesson plans are able to encompass all of this information because they include rubrics for grading, homework assignments, potential word lists, readings, supplementary PowerPoints and media clips that can be useful for the lesson.
I interviewed a number of individuals about their core life philosophies and how they came to develop them (their mini-life stories). I then presented these interviews through short narrative profiles in a book format, and at the end provide an analysis that pulls from the fields of psychology, anthropology, and education research to look at what we can learn from these individual's stories.
Project‐Based Learning (PjBL) has been shown to be an effective method to enhance student learning, particularly in science and engineering (S&E) fields. However, the implementation of a PjBL environment plays the deciding role in the students’ interest and learning outcomes. This paper presents a comparative study of two PjBL courses, Physics Laboratory and Engineering Design, which have similar intended goals and features but different implementation related to self‐direction and student autonomy. Classroom observations and interviews with both students and faculty are analyzed using Grounded Theory. Stefanou et al.’s framework of autonomy support within the PjBL paradigm is identified as a data source and is then used to analyze both courses. We further discuss the implications of the course goal implementations on student interest and affect, and argue for a more comprehensive PjBL model in introductory college‐level S&E courses.
Throughout my Olin career I’ve developed a passion for vocal percussion (VP), also known as beatboxing. As the name suggests, it consists of creating percussive sounds with your mouth. I love it and I hope you do too. For my AHS Capstone, I've performed vocal percussion for three songs: Take On Me, Grace Kelly, and Shit Catapult.
Japanese translation provides an interesting challenge, and the complexity of each language greatly contributes. Technical papers in particular provide a unique set of challenges. I selected a paper titled “冠詞誤り訂正時における訂正根拠の提示” – I translated this as “Presenting Correction Basis during Article Correction”. This paper was written be members of the Tohoku University Inui-Okazaki Laboratory, and focuses on a graduate student’s project. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method that helps people who do not speak English as a first language with a common type of error. Although the tests were run on a relatively small scale with a relatively minor application, the technical and conceptual techniques tested have larger implications.
Companies are facing a wider and wider gap between the number of engineers graduating from college and the number of engineers needed in the work force. The cause of this discrepancy comes from the lack of enrollment in and completion of engineering degrees. While the total number of students graduating from college has steadily increased over the last decade, the number of students graduating with an engineering degree has decreased. One possible reason for this is the lack of exposure that engineers get in the media and the negative stereotypes that come when there is exposure. There are many engineering organizations who have recently started focusing their efforts on increasing the number of engineers appearing in popular TV shows and movies in addition to improving the image that is portrayed by these engineers. While there are many different types of efforts, the one with the most positive result has been forming connections between producers and writers and real life engineers.
Having studied and written short stories for a few years, I wanted to try and expand that to the next logical step: a novel. Or in this case, a novella. Starting with research in the how-to department, I built a fantasy world, central narrative, characters, plot, and tried to tie it all together with humor in one big story. The document with “background” in the title is all the information an author needs to build a believable world – the mythos, locations, major characters, economy, and much more. The story itself was not finished, but has quite the start to it. This also was a study into the realm of writing humor, seeing as spoken comedy and written comedy are two different beasts entirely. The end result is simple though: a story with the intent to entertain.
Politics and social media are becoming increasingly interrelated. This paper explores that relationship and analyzes what it takes to run a successful social media campaign.
I wrote the first rough sketches of each of these roughly fourteen-and-a-half-and-a-half poems over a span ranging from the fall of 2008 (my first semester at Olin) to the spring of 2012 (my final semester at Olin). I wrote them for fun; to see if I could; to fill writing portfolios; and in one case, for a girl I had a crush on at the time. (It didn’t work out; c’est la vie.) In my last semester, I come back to each of these poems to review, revise, and rewrite, to polish and edit and make them as good as it was in my power to make them at the time. With the help of Professor Alison Hickey at Wellesley College, I have sought to unite this final (insofar as any collection that will doubtless undergo countless future revisions can be said to be final) chapbook around themes of dreams and doubts, love and sorrow, good and evil, story and adventure.
I spent a semester working closely with models to improve my figure drawing. My final deliverable became creating finished drawings of several interesting poses I had worked closely, and repeatedly, with throughout the semester.
With a concentration in theatre, I created a magic show from scratch. Over the course of the semester, I researched both the effects (more commonly known as magic tricks) in a variety of styles, especially mentalism, along with the patter, or script, that is integral in making a good effect into something utterly amazing. I chose a certain set of effects and accompanying patter to put on a show and performed it in the Olin Dining Hall in front of a number of my peers.
This infographic and accompanying paper look at the three primary dimensions of Hezbollah’s activities: social services, militia, and political party to answer the question “why do the otherwise reasonable people of Lebanon support Hezbollah?” The paper and infographic focus on conveying the key information to the reader that is necessary to begin to understand the situation. Hezbollah is favored in Lebanon because they represent Lebanese nationalism militarily, lead Lebanon’s otherwise distrusted government, and provide necessary social services in the under-represented Shi’a Muslims in Southern Lebanon. Over the course of the semester, I worked to research Hezbollah in-depth, design this infographic, and write this paper.
The Sonnet is a 4:18 minute track representing a semester’s worth of research into the dubstep genre of electronic dance music, synthesizer programming, poetry melodization, multi-track-recording based music composition techniques, and multi-instrumentalism. The work combines a jazz influenced keyboard groove over a dubstep influenced shuffled half-time vocal percussion rhythm with a bass drop section featuring a heavy wobble bass instrument programmed from scratch in the Csound open source sound programming language. The whole song accompanies the processed singing of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “The Sonnet.” Aside from the lyrics, all composition and recordings were produced by the author, including an additional saxophone solo, all singing, all vocal percussion, all keyboards, and the bass.
The Franklin W Olin Players (FWOP) are a student-run, student-driven, student-everything organization. Its members are passersby, stopping to put on shows for about four years, and then taking with them what they brought and what they learnt. There is a huge potential for institutional memory, which will be helpful in making FWOP a more efficient and better organization. This Guide to Stage and Production Managing for FWOP is an attempt at documenting lessons learnt while serving as stage manager or production manager for shows - often both. The spirit behind the document is one of openness, and members who have gone through similar journeys are encouraged to modify the contents of the guide to help it stay relevant in a changing world.
In 1998 a gay college student was kidnapped, beaten and left to die outside of Laramie, Wyoming. At that time, the world focused its attention on this act of hate and the members of Tectonic Theatre Project made the decision to travel to Laramie and interview people from the town. They made six trips to Laramie over the course of a year and a half and conducted over two-hundred interviews. The play “The Laramie Project” is a series of monologues and conversations edited from those interviews as well as journal entries from members of the company and other found texts. While the show itself is queer in subject, aspects of queer theory were used to influence decisions surrounding staging, location of the show and other performance considerations. For detailed explanation of decisions made and research done in the production of the show, please refer to the production book which is in the Olin Library.
Siege warfare was an integral aspect of Rome’s dominant military. The Romans used siege ramps, siege towers and battering rams in conjunction to assault enemy fortresses. Siege ramps provided stable mechanisms for siege engines to take position adjacent to enemy walls. Siege towers cleared the defender’s ramparts of any resistance. Battering rams breached walls so that Roman infantry could assault the enemy. All of these machines would not have worked without the others. A prime example of the use of these machines is the siege of Masada during the Great Jewish Revolt.
This curriculum will guide high school students through a year long engineering design process which spans several courses offered at Olin College, namely Design Nature (DN), User-Oriented Collaborative Design (UOCD), and Principles of Engineering (POE). Chronologically, this course covers areas of opportunity, users and user values, ideation, sketching, sketch modeling, CAD modeling, and physical prototyping. The goal of this course is to expose high school students to a different flavor of engineering design and prototyping. This course will provide students with the basic knowledge and analytical skills needed to develop a meaningful and practical design based on a relevant problem statement, user needs, and user values. Unless otherwise noted, these lesson plans were developed by student in Olin College’s Engineering Discovery organization in the 2011-2012 school year.
During my junior year of college, I traveled to India to live and work there for six months with the intent of doing more spiritual learning of the Vedas in a traditional, Indian setting. The Vedas, ancient Indian scriptures, and their supporting body of knowledge not only offer spiritual wisdom but countless methods to cope with day-to-day stresses in life with the goal of eventually becoming enlightened. However, what I encountered in India was far from my intended goal, and my original plans fell through. The situations forced me to reevaluate my mental models for how I should be structuring my lifestyle both in India and back in the USA and to make changes to my lifestyle. The goal of my project is to recount my experiences in India and connect them with the Vedic knowledge and wisdom that I gained during my time there. The intent of including the wisdom from the Vedas and other Veda-influenced Sanskrit bodies of literature in the project is to demonstrate that ancient wisdom is still applicable thousands of years later in our modern world and modern lifestyle, and that, in many cases, human woes and needs have not changed.
From a historical background in chair design and analysis of contemporary trends in design and fine art, I develop a personal philosophy of design through the ‘dissertation’ of a chair. I describe how I sought to make my design thematically and functionally relevant to my peer group. As part of the larger Millenial generation, young professionals among my peers confront economic difficulties and the delaying of traditional “markers of adulthood” such as homeownership, while increasingly living in urban apartments. I develop a design for a chair, titled ‘ORGANISM’, which balances concepts of stability and uncertainty while referencing both our past in childhood and our continued growth.
Bethlehem is regarded as the traditional birthplace of Jesus and the city of David. The town of approximately 25,000 people houses one of the oldest Christian communities in the world and attracts Christian pilgrims from near and far, especially during the Christmas season. Despite its importance as a Christian holy site, Bethlehem’s Christian population has steadily declined in the last hundred years. Today, more Bethlehem Christians live abroad than in the town itself. Just 50 years ago, Christians made up 70% of Bethlehem’s population. Today this number has dwindled to 18%. These Palestinian Christians consider themselves direct descendants of Jesus’ first followers. Yet why has their presence so dramatically declined in the area where Christianity began? The fact that the Christian population is quickly diminishing has repercussions on the region as a whole.
Traditionally, photographs have represented single moments in time, but the photographs in this series represent a compression of discrete moments into a single frame, in a way similar to Peter Funch's Babel Tales series. In each of my images, I've combined up to eighteen different photographs, taken of the same location over a period of about thirty minutes, to create a digital tableau. After removing all human figures from the scene using bits and pieces of several photos, I repopulated the composite with individual characters selected from the original series of photos.
This paper explores, through personal interviews and a review of relevant literature, the roles that the French, English, and Haitian Creole languages play in the lives of Haitian immigrants in the Boston area and how these language subtleties affect their healthcare interactions.
Living in Milwaukee for six months, I got the chance to explore the local environmental movement in detail. In this paper, I profile three key environmental organizations: Growing Power, Transition Milwaukee, and the Urban Ecology Center. Then, I suggest improvements for each organization individually and for the Milwaukee environmental movement as a whole. I also made a condensed brochure for each of the three organizations giving an organization overview as well as suggestions for improvement.
Connor Stokes and I worked together to pursue two methods of expanding our knowledge of nonverbal communication and skill at encoding and decoding facial expressions. First, each week we worked through one chapter of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) Training Manual. Each chapter describes how to encode and decode several new action units (AUs), details the subtle differences between these new expressions, explains how the AUs change appearance when in combination, and provides a number of videos and pictures to practice scoring. I kept simple notes of my progress through the manual in my FACS Journal, included in my final deliverable. Second, each week we alternated between designing and conducting simple field experiments. We designed and completed five such exercises: Facial Expression Reproductions (Making Faces) Decomposing Emotional Expressions What Makes a Genuine Smile? Comparing Action Units Across Media Facial Expression Differences Across People and Contexts We both improved significantly in our ability to encode and decode facial expressions according to the official FACS manual. We also improved our fluency in identifying facial expressions in the real world and our general familiarity with the literature on nonverbal communication through our semi-weekly field exercises.
In this paper I will attempt to show that intelligence is a hegemonic concept and that treating it as such reveals insight into our society. Social hegemony is most easily defined as the mode in which civil power is exercised (whereas, for example, state power is exercised through direct domination). Social hegemony’s great power comes from the normalization that hegemonic concepts experience. Regardless of an ideology’s content, hegemony will cause people to believe that it is simply common sense. It is my belief that aspects of intelligence enjoy such broad public acceptance that they can be usefully treated as hegemonic concepts. While the definition of intelligence is extremely unclear, the understanding that aspects of its definition are seen as common sense can help policy-makers attempt to combat the powerful normalizing force caused by hegemony.
The work aimed to create an original musical, The Rise and Fall of the Blackbird Brewing Company, as an AHS capstone project in music composition in musical theater. It focused on music composition and songwriting. Creativity was highly valued as it seemed that original and unique compositions simply did not exist anymore even in the award winning compositions.
The goal of this report is to examine recent case studies in online organizing and evaluate them within a community organizing framework, ultimately looking to find areas of commonality and difference that could inform new approaches to either method. In particular, I will examine Barack Obama’s successful 2008 Presidential campaign, the 2006 student-organized walkouts protesting a draconian immigration law proposal, and the distributed online model that organizations like 350.org have used to organize international protest actions with a small, centrally located staff.
The primary goal of my AHS Capstone project was to identify how female engineers/tradespeople are represented in the media and how this reflects real life. I was particularly interested in understanding how systemic forces that discourage women from entering and remaining in engineering/trades were reflected in imaginary worlds, value systems, etc. I found that the dichotomy between masculine/feminine and technical/social was strongly reflected in the media I analyzed. Despite characterizing women as capable of pursuing technical tasks, there was still an underlying assumption that those tasks were masculine. In addition, I found that the systemic forces which discourage women from non-traditional careers were reinforced in discussions of workplace culture that equated freedom of speech with the freedom to tell inappropriate, dirty jokes and harass coworkers. By developing a background in feminist philosophy prior to going down this path, I was well-versed in the implications of these dichotomies. Feminist philosophy has concerned itself with clarifying what it means to be feminine vs. masculine and uncovering unconscious bias in structures such as scientific discovery.
This project was an exploration of the recent social movement known as the New Atheists. In order to better understand the ramifications of such a phenomenon emerging, two models are proposed and examined critically. First, it is asked whether it may be appropriate to imagine atheism as a religious movement based on the sectarian types proposed by Bryan Wilson. Secondly a comparison is made to another contemporary social movement: gay rights, and a second model is developed. Finally, to test the validity and applicability of these models, a separate text is addressed and analyzed for evidence that supports or contradicts either hypothesis of similarity.
Many threads of American political thought rely on two distinct moral and political philosophies: Natural Law and Political Liberalism. The first teaches that there exists objective moral truth and that this truth is discoverable through human rationality alone; this causes it to teach that the legitimacy of laws is based on their adherence to the truth. The second teaches that a diversity of comprehensive moral views is inevitable in a free society and that these views must be respected; this causes it to teach that the legitimacy of laws lies in their removal from any specific comprehensive view. This paper presents both philosophies and analyzes them in light of each other. It also presents an argument, based in Natural Law, against governmental recognition of same-sex marriage, as a tool to further explain the tenets of Natural Law and how Political Liberalism might respond to them.
My AHS Capstone Disciplinary Deliverable is a children's historical fiction novel inspired by the American Girl series. In "Meet Carolyn," the title character is a bright 11-year-old girl growing up in Levittown, NY, in 1957. She wishes to enter a new science fair at her school, but is urged not to by her parents and her school enemy Richie, who believe that science fairs are only for boys. Carolyn is insistent in entering the fair, however, and learns many lessons about science and life in her quest to win first place. This novel gave me the opportunity to explore a wide variety of subjects, including the changing roles of women in American society in the 1950s, the art of writing children's literature, and how to apply historical context to a work of fiction.
The elderly in Taiwanese society have always held a special status. Traditionally, inheriting the many cultural Chinese norms for the old aged, the elderly are revered and respected. However, with the economic and societal changes that have occurred in Taiwan in the 1970s, increasingly the position and role of the elderly within the Taiwanese family, and therefore society, has changed. The aim of this work is to explore the relationship between the changing elderly status in Taiwan and the Taiwanese societal development in the 1970s. Specifically, by looking at how Taiwanese family dynamics have changed through the 1970s, as well as the formation of a Taiwanese civil society, a relationship can be drawn between the two variables.
goals : strengthen personal artistic experience thorough the creation of a site-specific marble piece; expose the community and passersby to the process and progress of sculpture
This project is a translation, from Spanish into English, of selected short stories by Ana Maria Matute, a prolific Spanish author. The works translated are Bernardino, Don Payasito, La Rama Seca, and Los Chicos.
My AHS capstone project aims to provide the reader with an introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In doing so, I examine the merits and potential consequences of the one-state and two-state solutions in the context of the region’s history and of the present day realities on the ground. To do this, I first provide a brief history of the conflict and explain the key issues. I then examine how each of the proposed solutions addresses the key issues and describe arguments both for and against their implementation.
On the morning of October 2, 1985, Rock Hudson died of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). By this date, 12,000 were dead or dying of AIDS and hundreds of thousands were infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Five years had passed since the first gay men began suffering from strange diseases like Pneumocystis carinii, Kaposi’s sarcoma, and toxoplasmosis. These men died not long after acquiring the rare diseases—mysterious deaths from “gay cancer,” an untreatable disease that wasted their immune systems. By 1982, the acronym AIDS had superseded “gay cancer,” and in 1983, the United States Department. of Health and Human Services declared AIDS its “number-one health priority.” Still, AIDS had not crossed the threshold to becoming a household name. Only with the passing of Rock Hudson did AIDS gain a face, an identity. To most Americans, it was now “the disease that Rock Hudson died of.” Among thousands of puzzling deaths, it was the death of a celebrity that finally drew the attention of the American public.
Typography – the study of typefaces, their histories and visual interpretations – is a cornerstone of graphic design. Over the course of the semester, I performed extensive research on typography and applied the knowledge I gained in the creation of my final deliverable, six posters advertising a diverse set of nightclubs.
This is the script produced for Benjamin Small's AHS Capstone project. It is part of Act I of a musical entitled "The Rise and Fall of the Blackbird Brewing Company", with libretto by Benjamin Small and music by Erik Kennedy. The stated purpose of this project was to create a piece of musical theater, and in doing so, learn about that creative process and more specifically, whether it was mechanical and rote or freeform and ethereal.
For my project, I compared the German novel "Das Parfum" and its English translation, "Perfume." I used the technique close reading to compare the two editions. I wrote an academic paper focusing on the differences between the two - specifically, how the process of translation altered the novel. I found that the translation diminished the symbolic meaning of "Das Parfum," in which scent is often equivalent to soul. Overall, this project helped me look at German literature in depth and improve my language skills.
It’s hard to constantly please everyone Most leadership goals can be executed with the Badge Program It is hardest to Take Action Girls like doing things, and in groups are willing to try more Only expect girls to do one thing at a time, multi-tasking creates problems
This project was a study of the history of the steel industry in Nineteenth century America. I thought the time period was interesting, as it represents the time when America evolved into a recognizable industrial society – quick transportation via railroads, rapid intercontinental communications, the development of standardized parts as well as factories, and the development of the modern corporation. I am also fascinated by the metallurgy and chemistry of steel, for reasons as yet unclear to me. My deliverable involved the writing of four papers, each one of which investigated a particular aspect of the steel industry. My 1st paper looked at the antebellum period, before the development of Bessemer or open hearth steel, when the iron trade was a craft-based industry. My 2nd paper looked at the life of Andrew Carnegie as a lens through which to view the business of making steel during the ear of cheap steel. The 3rd paper looked at the chemistry involved in the different techniques for converting iron ore to salable steel product, and the 4th paper looked at the mechanical developments that allowed American steel producers to be the most efficient in the world.
In this document, we will examine the parallel practices of existing microfranchises. We start by introducing the definitions used to discuss these microfranchises and the businesses referenced for this study. Then, we examine the analogous organizational decisions made to achieve economies of scale, reduce necessary man-power, and continuously improve the model. After, we find the strategies on-ground which makes these organizations successful in "selling their products," and finally, discuss the applicability of this model beyond the developing world.
Ancient societies had a universal curiosity about the heavens. This is no coincidence; astronomic cycles are highly important for determining expected daylight and nightlight, time of day, length of the season, and time of year, factors that affected everything from hunting habits to crop cycles. As a general rule, the knowledge to predict the course of the heavens was vitally important for daily life. Astrolabes are a tool that collapsed observed heavenly rotations into a small, easy-to-use model, allowing a learned user to predict the state of the heavens at specific times. This one task allows the user to solve a wide array of astronomical problems, such as telling the current time or determining when the sun will set. In addition, the astrolabe also gives the user a framework for parsing the heavenly rotation into understandable, predicable phenomena, giving the illusion of power over the heavens. The astrolabe was a portable celestial model and had a strong general utility, suitable for a broad range of problems involving the heavens. This utility made it easily adapted by various medieval cultures, but once adapted, astrolabe technology became specialized for the specific tasks valued by each culture. However, astrolabe adaptation was not limited to astronomic functionality, but to symbolic functionality as well. This adaptation is consistent with the theory of interpretive flexibility, where users determine how a technology specializes until the technology is replaced by an even more specialized device. Persian, European, and Mariner’s astrolabes all show this progression, either in the functional or symbolic aspects of the astrolabe.
My arrangement of “One Man Wrecking Machine” (OMWM) is structurally very similar to the original arrangement of the song by Guster. It follows a very standard rock/pop song structure: introduction, verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, verse, chorus, outro. I have specifically chosen to retain this structure because I believe that it is a logical progression that tells a story and retains the interest of the listener. In the Guster version, the piece begins simply with just a few voices. During the first verse, there is only a single vocalist and the bass line. As the piece progresses, the number of voices and the complexity of their parts build until they reach a climax during the solo. After the solo, there is a dénouement. A verse begins with only the lead vocal line and bass line. This is followed by a chorus with most of the voices again, and then a brief outro. This structure retains listener interest throughout the whole piece because it follows a story arc. There is exposition, development, climax, and dénouement. The listener remains engaged to see where the story is heading. Similarly, my arrangement builds in complexity until the end of the solo section. To create this complexity and listener interest, I do a few things. First, I start with fewer voices and add more as the piece progresses. Next, rather than simply repeating the verse for a third time after the first chorus, I modulate the key twice. This thwarts listeners’ expectations as to what is coming next and adds harmonic complexity. After this, the song returns to the original key for the chorus, but uses a mixed meter of ¾ and 4/4 time (mm. 55‐58) to break up the repetition of 8‐beat phrases which predominate for most of the piece. The song climaxes with the solo section leading into the bridge (mm. 93‐100), and then it returns to a smaller number of voices for the recapitulation of the verse and chorus.
The goal of the elementary education system is to provide children with the support and direction necessary to develop the intellect, independence, stability, skills, and motivation to thrive and be successful in childhood and the later years of their lives. The definition of “successful” varies though, and may include anything from being able to manage disabilities to achieving great awards. However, many elementary schools provide the same basic structures and supports to help all children strive towards and achieve their potential. Schools provide the basic necessities of life, space for the children to learn and move, other resources and school supplies, teams of professionals trained to meet the education, mental, and emotional needs of the children, and the classroom teacher who fights for, works with, and focuses on the students every school day. The classroom teacher is also often undervalued despite all the work he or she does for the students, the children’s parents, the administration, and the school. While it is the school system that provides the teacher for the students, it is the teacher who gives the students the guidance, enthusiasm, and aptitude for learning the things that are crucial for a meaningful life. For this reason, it is not surprising that many people can conjure up an image of a “good” teacher they have had in their life without necessarily crediting the school where they met that person. What, though, are the qualities that this individual has to be remembered so positively? Was he or she fun, enthusiastic, or inspiring? Did she get to know and take an interest in each child individually? Did he push you to do what you thought you were not capable of? It is difficult to put into exact words why a teacher had an important impact on a life, but the reason could possibly be seen through their teaching.