I write a modern revamp of the 1960 romantic comedy-drama film The Apartment, intentionally filling it with topical issues and touching upon (post)modern concepts such as intertextuality and parody. Additionally, I contextualize my creative work with an academic supplement that gives weight to my various stylistic and content choices, and bring them into conversation with those utilized by the original 1960 film.

In the past decade, a significant shift has emerged around immigration policy, as advocates and policymakers have made various efforts to pass state and local policies related to immigrant integration or restrictions. This thesis offers original insights into current dynamics in immigration federalism through interviews with lawmakers and community activists in Arizona, a leading state when it comes to restricting the lives of undocumented immigrants. Advancing a new framework that connects the lived experience of officials and activists to partisanship, policy, key events, demographics, and racializing events, this thesis bridges isolated bodies of scholarship on immigration and seeks to demonstrate how every person (not just immigrant) are part of America’s current challenges to become a more inclusive nation of immigrants.

Something Like Human explores corporate social responsibility through a triple lens, providing a content analysis using previous literature and history as the standards for evaluation. Section I reviews the history of corporate social responsibility and how it is currently understood and employed today. Section II turns its focus to a specific socially conscious corporation, Lush Cosmetics, examining its practices considering the concepts provided in Section I and performing a close analysis of its promotional materials. Section III consists of a mock marketing campaign designed for Lush in light of their social commitments. By the end of this thesis, the goal for the reader is to ask: Can major corporations be something like human?

Communication skills are vital for the world we inhabit. Both oral and written communication are some of the most sought-after skills in the job market today; this holds true in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Despite the high demand for communication skills, communication classes are not required for some STEM majors (Missingham, 2006). STEM major maps are often so packed with core classes that they nearly exclude the possibility of taking communication courses. Students and job seekers are told they need to be able to communicate to succeed but are not given any information or support in developing their skills. Scientific inquiry and discovery cannot be limited to only those that understand high-level jargon and have a Ph.D. in a subject. STEM majors and graduates must be able to translate information to communities beyond other experts. If they cannot communicate the impact of their research and discoveries, who is going to listen to them?<br/>Overall, the literature around communication in STEM fields demonstrate the need for and value of specific, teachable communication skills. This paper will examine the impact of a communication training module that teaches specific communication skills to BIO 182: General Biology II students. The communication training module is an online module that teaches students the basics of oral communication. The impact of the module will be examined through the observation of students’ presentations.

In 2020, the world was swept by a global pandemic. It disrupted the lives of millions; many lost their jobs, students were forced to leave schools, and children were left with little to do while quarantined at their houses. Although the media outlets covered very little of how children were being affected by COVID-19, it was obvious that their group was not immune to the issues the world was facing. Being stuck at home with little to do took a mental and physical toll on many kids. That is when EVOLVE Academy became an idea; our team wanted to create a fully online platform for children to help them practice and evolve their athletics skills, or simply spend part of their day performing a physical and health activity. Our team designed a solution that would benefit children, as well as parents that were struggling to find engaging activities for their kids while out of school. We quickly encountered issues that made it difficult for us to reach our target audience and make them believe and trust our platform. However, we persisted and tried to solve and answer the questions and problems that came along the way. Sadly, the same pandemic that opened the widow for EVOLVE Academy to exist, is now the reason people are walking away from it. Children want real interaction. They want to connect with other kids through more than just a screen. Although the priority of parents remains the safety and security of their kids, parents are also searching and opting for more “human” interactions, leaving EVOLVE Academy with little room to grow and succeed.

Collective human attitudes influenced by macro-forces that impact environmental issues are partially correlated to our behaviors for the good and the harm of the planet. In this thesis, I will explore how collective human attitudes contribute to pro-environmental behaviors, common and pre-existing frames of mind on major conservation dilemmas, and finally suggest future directions on how humans could be inclined to take on more environmental responsibility through an increase in human-environmental connectivity. It is found that humans are largely driven by institution structures, education, and social influence. In conclusion, more efforts should be placed to further analyze these structural incentives for pro-environmental behaviors and use them to make environmental stewardship more accessible for all people and diverse circumstances. This can be done by evaluating the human dimensions of what influences human attitudes and behaviors, how to use these forces to systematically influence pro-environmental choices, applying these structural forces to main conservation issues, and further incorporating moral discourse into the environmental research in order to appeal correctly to all aspects and perspectives. Only when human connectivity is understood in relation to the natural sciences will we be able to make positive change in the direction of a healthier Earth.

This qualitative project was done as a way to learn more about the personal experiences of Asian American participants surrounding education and how it has impacted their identities, and questions how and if the model minority stereotype has impacted the Asian American student particiapnts. 14 participants were interviewed one-on-one to see if there were any patterns in values that their parents had pushed, and revealed that cultural expectations influence the participants’s educational choices, leading to self-regulation in regards to education. Because the shared trait of these participants are being current Asian American students in university at the time of their interviews, experiences range with how acculturated their parents are, the ethnic background of their families, and prior expectations with education.

Video games are packed full of endless potential. They are the telling of impossible narratives with something for every type of person. So then why has the industry historically been one of the worst for representations of race and gender? In this thesis, I define "good" media representation and engage in the analysis of both Overwatch (2016) and Detroit Become Human (2018) to observe the ways these two video games, which so outwardly market their diversity, have failed marginalized groups. Accompanying the research paper is a video game poster representing a woman of color designed by the author which is meant to learn from the mistakes of its predecessors.