Honors Thesis
Students can substitute one of the course requirements for an honors thesis focused on disability. The thesis can be completed as an individually contracted thesis with a faculty member or through a thesis seminar. For the purposes of DDHS, the thesis can be a portfolio or research manuscript. You are encouraged to speak with your academic advisor to ensure that your thesis will also meet expectations for departmental honors, if applicable. Students should consult the DDHS program director to ensure their thesis topic is sufficiently focused on disability to substitute a course requirement.
THESIS SEMINARS
Below, you will find information on thesis seminars that are most relevant to DDHS students. The thesis seminar is an alternative to an individually contracted thesis. The end product can be the same, but the thesis seminar guides you through the process within a cohort. Unlike the individually contracted thesis option, you do not have to submit a proposal through PATHS for approval ahead of time. Instructor permission is typically required for registration in a thesis seminar. Almost all thesis seminars are full-year courses (4 credits per semester).
Readings and Research in Disability (HONORS 499CJ/DJ)
Instructor: Ashley Woodman, Senior Lecturer, Psychological and Brain Sciences
Credits: 4 credits Fall, 4 credits Spring
To Enroll: Instructor Consent required. Please e-mail awoodman@umass.edu to schedule a meeting.
Description: In this course, students will explore disability through theory and research. Students will be introduced to conceptualizations of disability, models of disability, and historical perspectives as well as the intersection of disability with other social identities such as gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity. First, students will be introduced to the definition and meaning of disability. Disability is a complex identity that can be viewed from a variety of social, cultural, historical, legal and political perspectives. Students will be introduced to conceptualizations of disability, models of disability, and historical perspectives as well as the intersection of disability with other social identities such as gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity. Students will review and discuss the challenges of conducting research with people with disabilities. Students will read and critique contemporary research involving people with disabilities as well as research on perceptions of disability among people with and without disabilities. Throughout the course, students will be scaffolded to design and implement an independent research project related to disability. Students are encouraged to use existing, publicly available data, but may also collect their own data within the UMass or broader community. Students will be advised on an individual basis to design a research project that is ethical, realistic given time and resource constraints, and a novel contribution to the field.
Community Action for Social Change (SRVCLRNG 499C/D)
Instructor: Ellen Correa, Senior Lecturer, Civic Engagement & Services Learning (CESL)
Credits: 4 credits Fall, 4 credits Spring
To Enroll: Instructor Consent required. Please e-mail ecorrea@umass.edu to schedule a meeting to discuss your experience and background in civic/community engagement.
Description: This two-semester Honors Thesis Seminar is designed for seniors in the Commonwealth Honors College with recent experience in service-learning and/or community engagement who wish to deepen their praxis – the combination of theory and practice – within their chosen area of community work. Throughout the Fall and Spring semesters, students work both in the classroom and with a self-selected community partner and develop a collaborative civic/community engagement project. The civic/community engagement project will address a real-world issue or problem associated with the work of the community organization, group, or constituency. Guided by their community partner, students will complete a project that addresses an issue of justice, equity, or social support for a particular constituency. Through the auspices of the class and under the direction of the community partner advisor, students will define and address the issue or problem, as well as communicate its significance to a public audience.
Student Health, Wellbeing & Campus Spaces (HONORS 499CP/DP)
Instructor: Caryn Brause, Associate Professor of Architecture
Credits: 4 credits Fall, 4 credits Spring
To Enroll: Instructor Consent required. Please contact cjbrause@umass.edu stating the reason for your interest in the course and provide a one-page writing sample.
Description: This two-semester, 8-credit Interdisciplinary Honors Thesis Seminar, we will explore current thinking on health and wellbeing in the built environment, with a focus on campus environments. Consideration of the impact of the built environment on health and well-being is an increasingly important priority in the design fields as well as in conversations concerning equity, public policy, public health, and education. These concerns are interrelated with issues of sustainability, resilience, and planetary wellbeing. We will read scholarly and practice literature, and examine case studies that center these topics, examine how different entities define, assess, and evaluate wellbeing in the built environment, and critically consider the challenges and opportunities for inclusively shaping campus environments. We will apply environmental theories, inquiry methods, and assessment strategies to understand the ways in which campus community members use and inhabit higher educational spaces and to propose improvements that support diverse student learning, development, and wellbeing.
Students from various majors are welcome – there are many topics ripe for student exploration, through writing, archival research, design and creative projects, and qualitative and quantitative studies. Workshops associated with research methods, writing, graphics, presentation skills, and other topics will be organized to align with Honors Thesis and Undergraduate Research Conference deadlines. Students will develop individual research proposals in the Fall and complete their Honors Theses in the Spring.
Health and Health Care Inequality in the United States (POLISCI 499CD/DD)
Instructor: Dean Robinson, Associate Professor, Political Science
Credits: POLISCI 499C for 4 credits in fall and POLISCI 499D for 4 credits in spring.
To Enroll: Instructor Consent Required. Contact deanr@polsci.umass.edu.
Description: This course will help students develop capstone research topics concerning health inequality in the United States. Disadvantaged populations—racial minorities and people of lower socioeconomic status— face a higher burden of disease and death than their white, and more affluent, counterparts do. After an overview of the health care system in the United States compared to those of four other advanced, industrial democracies, this course will then consider insights from social epidemiology about the factors that drive disparities in health outcomes. Social epidemiologists show that lower social status consistently predicts health status today and in the past. The mechanism is thought to be the deleterious consequences of chronic stress, which impairs immune function over time. Numerous studies also show that the subjective experience of racial discrimination is bad for health. Students will have an opportunity to develop research topics that consider the relative health disadvantage of blacks and other minority populations, as well as why white Americans tend to do worse than their European counterparts. The answers reflect problems of the US health care system, and relate to the broader “social determinants” of illness and disease. These, in turn, ultimately reflect political inequalities that affect the pattern of health for Americans in general. The focus material for this part of the class will emphasis political and policy determinants of health and other indicators. We will facilitate this discussion by first revisiting the health disadvantage Americans experience relative to their wealthy nation counterparts.
PAST HONORS THESES
Check out the list of previously completed honors theses.