Honors College Graduates Tackle 'Real World' in Undergraduate Research

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Honors architecture student Nick Pierce envisioned mixed-use developments anchored by big box stores in his honors thesis, which focused on scenario planning for Fayetteville in 2030.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – When Honors College students walk across the commencement stage this Saturday, they’ll be celebrating something beyond completing the courses required for their degree. One hundred percent of them have engaged in substantive undergraduate research, producing a capstone honors thesis under the direction of the University of Arkansas’ most active faculty researchers.

Take Melissa Hinds, for example. A finance major in the Sam M. Walton College of Business, she wondered what has happened to the top executives at banks that received a government bailout during the 2008 credit crisis. Did government intervention interrupt self-correcting mechanisms, such as job loss for poor managers, possibly extending weakness in the market? Armed with access to an online business database and an Excel spreadsheet, Hinds “went executive hunting.” 

Her findings? Close to half of the top executives working in financial institutions that received government assistance in 2008 continue to hold the same position in their firm or a position of higher responsibility. She found that they continue to receive substantial compensation and in some cases, their salaries have even gone up.

“Nearly 50 percent is a substantial number,” said her faculty mentor, Juan Manuel Sanchez, an assistant professor of accounting. “I believe Melissa’s findings represent the tip of the iceberg in an interesting body of research examining how executives of banks that were bailed out fare post-financial crisis – and the impact that this has on the market.”

Honors College students conducted similar in-depth research across campus. Among the standouts from the 286 honors theses produced this year:

• Biomedical Research: Kristen Byrne, a poultry science major in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, conducted research on chickens to shed light on the role that the innate immune system, the body’s first line of defense against attack, plays in the onset of vitiligo, an incurable autoimmune problem that causes loss of skin pigmentation. Her findings led to the identification of biomarkers for the disease that may assist in the treatment and prevention of vitiligo in humans. “The role of innate immunity has not been looked at extensively in the research on autoimmune diseases, in general,” said faculty mentor Gisela Erf, who holds the Tyson Endowed Professorship in Avian Immunology. “Kristen’s findings are a great starting point for further research, which is exactly what an honors thesis should be.”

• Communication Disorders: Micah Borges, a communications disorders major in the College of Education and Health Professions, wanted to find out whether computer gaming helps or hurts those with attention deficit disorder. He and his faculty mentor, Fran Hagstrom, who heads the department of rehabilitation, human resources and communications disorders, designed a study involving college-age students and Tetris, a puzzle video game. Preliminary findings indicate that individuals who scored higher for attention deficit disorder tended to focus intensely on the game – but were less able to shift their attention when directions were given. “They’re using game training to increase attentiveness in people with ADD, but Micah’s study suggests that skill won’t necessarily transfer to the setting where it’s needed most – the classroom,” Hagstrom said. “His study underlines the complex interface between technology and attention, a critical area of research given all of the technology available to students today.”

• Historical Analysis: Drawing on letters, diaries and reminiscences by Confederate veterans, history major Lacey Carnahan conducted groundbreaking research on the 46-day Siege of Vicksburg that devastated the Confederacy. She demonstrated how memories of the siege have been passed down and reinterpreted to support the “Lost Cause” ideology developed by white Southerners as a way of coping with their loss. “If they could not win the war then they were going to fight to win the battle for historical memory,” Carnahan wrote in her conclusion. Mentor Daniel Sutherland, professor of history in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, praised her work as a “fresh direction” requiring two very different perspectives on events. In addition to learning the particulars of the Vicksburg campaign, Sutherland emphasized that Carnahan “had to compare those events to the memory of what happened, all of which required a degree of sophistication normally seen in the work of advanced graduate students and seasoned scholars.”

• Solar Cell Technology: David Fryauf, an electrical engineering major in the College of Engineering, was involved in a project that may lead to a better understanding of the performance of photovoltaic devices that could be used to power space vehicles. The project, which is funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, involves coupling metallic nanoparticles to devices such as solar panels that convert light into current, enhancing the performance of the devices tenfold. “If we send something out in space, we need reliable high-performance devices that could work in a harsh environment,” said mentor Omar Manasreh, a professor of electrical engineering and director of the optoelectronics laboratory. “David’s contribution was significant enough to include in a technical paper recently submitted for publication.”

• Urban Planning: Nick Pierce, an architecture major at the Fay Jones School of Architecture, engaged in scenario planning for Fayetteville in 2030, when the population is expected to double. He envisioned walkable urban clusters around “big box” stores; these developments would be graced with schools, parks, offices and high-density housing. “Instead of being anomalies along the highway, anchoring nothing but a parking lot, the big box can be reinvented as a modern market place, similar to the way historic city markets functioned in the past,” Pierce said. “They’re not only buildings of trade but also function as catalysts for city growth and character.” Pierce worked under faculty mentor Stephen Luoni, the director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies.

Honors College Dean Bob McMath said that the depth and breadth of mentored undergraduate research in the Honors College is unique.

“What makes the University of Arkansas honors experience stand out, in addition to the financial resources we offer, is the strong student-faculty interaction,” McMath said. “The ratio of honors students to honors faculty campuswide is about 6:1, and these honors theses provide the best evidence of how our students benefit from working with the university’s most research-active professors. I’m proud of each and every one of our honors graduates.”