The Phi Beta Kappa Senior Thesis Award is presented at the Senior Honors Convocation in recognition of outstanding scholarship, intellectual maturity, originality, and competence in academic skills as evidenced in the senior thesis.
2022 Karen Gomez
Development of Non-enzymatic Methodology for Degradation of Biologically Active and Environmentally Persistent Pharmaceuticals Compatible with a Living Bacterial Culture
2021 Sawyer Shepard*
Caring for Those Who Care for Others: An Essential Labor Theory
2020 Brett Palmero*
Genotype to Phenotype: Understanding the Localization of the Telomerase Template RNA in Aspergillus nidulans
2020 Lillie Therieau
Ree Morton: Emotional Space 1971–77
2019 Yoan Petrov Ganev*
Combinatorial Impact of α-Synuclein Post-Translational Modifications in Yeast
2019 Eliska Mrackova*
Effects of Prolonged Social Isolation: Sex Differences in Anxiety, Depression, and Sociability Behavior in Male and Female Rats
2018 Lauren Taylor Bell*
Predicting Teacher Attitudes Toward Education Reform Initiatives
2018 Michael Janeček
Investigating the Effects of Social Isolation on Fear and Anxiety in Male Rats: Potential Involvement of the Oxytocin Receptor
2017 Toni Čerkez
From Ankara to Brussels: (De)Constructing Turkey in the European Union
2017 Emily Ong*
Understanding the Nature of Toxicity of Parkinson’s Disease associated α-Synuclein Familial Mutants (H50Q, G51D, A53E) with Yeast Models
2016 Natalie Bricker*
Life Stories of Therianthropes: An Analysis of Nonhuman Identity in a Narrative Identity Model
2016 Edward Yonkers*
How Surprise Affects Decision-Making Behavior: An Adaptation of Prospect Theory
2015 Alexis Yusim*
An Analysis of Student Achievement and Measures of Growth under No Child Left Behind
2014 Grant C. B. Alexander*
The Ionothermal Syntheses of Metal Thiophosphates
2013 Sylwia Dakowicz*
Eco-certified Real Estate in Chicago: An Investigation into Corporate Social Responsibility
2012 Sydni M. Cole*
The Effects of Part-Set Cuing in Object-Location and Order Memory
2012 Paulius Kuprys
Identification of the First Telomerase RNA from the Filamentous Fungus Aspergillus oryzae and Related Organisms
2011 Michael Grady Dunn
Revitalized
2010 Michael Patrick Fiske*
Molecular Determinants of α-Synuclein Pathotoxicity in Yeast Models
2010 Gabriella Todorova Panayotova*
An Empirical Study of Security-related Transparency in International Relations
2009 Eder Jaramillo
Male Identity in Shakespeare’s Plays
2008 Joseph Figliulo*
What kind of men are these good men?: inquisition, dissent and society in the Languedoc, 1300-1325
2008 Mithaq Vahedi*
Developing a novel PCR assay to assess telomere length changes in Aspergillus nidulans
2007 David Cantor-Echols
Abbot Suger’s “safe middle:” notions of power and compromise in twelfth-century France
2007 Christopher Shirley*
Queering the machine: a theory of camp
2006 George Gerolimatos*
National socialism: a German revolution?
2006 Katrina Brandis
Modeling Parkinson’s disease: using two yeasts to assess contributions of oxidative stress and α-synuclein aggregation towards cellular toxicity
2005 Loveena Dookhony
The impact of orphanhood on health status and educational attainment of children in Uganda
2004 Nijee Sharma*
Baker’s yeast promotes understanding of α-synuclein’s functional and pathogenic roles
2003 Erica Beth Johnson
In search of the good life: language, education, and ethics
2002 Charles R. Evans*
Chemical vapor sensors for air pollutants based on silica nanoparticle thin films
2002 David S. Smith*
Federal power and Black civil rights: the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871
2001 Dimitar S. Antov*
Game theory applied to bargaining in economics: general perspectives and a new mathematical model
2000 Marina Petcherskaia*
Investigation of telomere role by using telomerase template mutants in Tetrahymena themophila
1999 Christine M. Case
Alteration of antibody light chain variable domain (VL) aggregate structure by single amino acid substitutions and the chaperone protein BiP
1999 Yancy R. Dominick*
Learning to fall in love: reading Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow through Chuang Tzu, Plato, and myself
1998 Tiffani Helberg
A million countless women: a documentary video
1997 Alexey Yuryevich Kaplunov*
The idea of social progress: an examination of the thought of Alexander Herzen and Nicholas Chernyshevsky
1996 Windell H. Oskay*
Experimental progress towards measurement of the angular distribution of resonance fluorescence in Lithium
1995 Heather A. Brummel
Semiempirical study of the Bergman reaction: a computationally efficient and accurate method for modeling the enediyne anticancer antibiotics
1994 Noel Andersen Black*
Understanding difference through paradox: exploring the relationship of language to religious truth in the writings of William James, William Blake, Alan Watts, Thomas Merton, and Jacques Derrida
1993 Roger Sommer
Computational and experimental approaches to the synthesis of polycyclic phosphazanes
1991 Will J. Cronenwett*
Der tod in der dichtung Rainer Maria Rilkes und Hugo von Hofmannsthals
1991 Marcus W. Jurema*
An investigation of the applicability of the PM3 semi-empirical quantum mechanical method to hydrogen bonded systems
1991 Edward C. Wingenbach*
Political philosophy in the development of first century Judaism and Christianity: the traditions concerning Yohanan ben Zakkai and the epistles of Paul as sources for political thought
1990 Kelly Harmon
Mother Jones as “hell-raiser”: the Paint and Cabin Creek strike
1989 Robert Lindenbusch*
The linear array theory of laser emission
1988 Kelly Leonard
Writing to God: Jack Kerouac and his beat generation
1987 María Helena Vélez de Berliner*
Antidependent interdependency within global industries: an alternative path towards the amelioration of dependency in Latin America
1986 R. Bradley Wilson
“We fight, get beat, get up, and fight again.”: Nathanael Greene, strategy, and logistics in the Revolutionary South, 1780-1781
1985 Philip A. Klinkner*
Illusions of inferiority, chimeras of strength: Reagan administration military policy 1981-1984
1984 Wayne Robert Rohde*
El conflicto de dualidad: la unificatión de la trilogía novelistíca de Ernesto Sábato
1983 Carol Heer
The distressed woman: literary perspectives of femininity in the age of modernism 1890-1930
1982 Judith Owens*
A study of the effects of sodium orthovanadate on Schizophyllum commune
1981 Toni Gilpin*
Left by themselves: a history of the United Farm Equipment and Metal Workers of America, 1938-1955
1980 Michelle Matlak Burke*
Thomas Hocclevé, medieval poet and renaissance man: a study of the early fifteenth century in England
1980 Diane Gartner
Translation of Poeta en Nueva York by Federico García Lorca
1979 H. Scott Burgess*
Migration and income disparity: a demographic analysis of internal migration in Canada
1978 Jerah Chadwick
The book of the dead: revised edition
1977 Michael M. Kash*
Helium 23S1 beam production
1976 Barbara Stone*
Six European intellectuals in the trenches of the Great War
1975 John S. Blanchard‡
An investigation into the mechanism of the enzyme monoamine oxidase
1974 Frederic A. Reese*
The apple in the vortex: the natural philosophy of Newton and Descartes
*Phi Beta Kappa, Theta Chapter of Illinois – elected to membership
‡Phi Beta Kappa, Theta Chapter of Illinois – elected to Alumni membership