Zoe Bear (Anthropology ’25) performed an analysis of ceramics found during an archaeological dig at a seventeenth-century plantation site in northern Virginia.
Under the mentorship of Dr. Barbara Heath, she catalogued artifacts found in a specific part of the site and noticed a mix of objects from indigenous, African slave, and imported European origin.
Zoe concluded that the mix of ceramic quality and type reflected both the functional needs and personal tastes of the inhabitants of Coan Hall and should spur further analysis of other period-specific ceramic artifacts.
Eliana Safer (English ‘25) wanted to develop a project combining her interests in Literature and Public Health.
Working with Dr. McCormack in UNHO 497, Eliana built upon a paper from her ENGL 454 class in which she outlined the descent of Gustav von Aschenbach from reason to emotional chaos during a cholera epidemic in the Thomas Mann novella Death in Venice.
For her capstone project, Eliana expanded this original material to argue that Aschenbach’s character arc finds a thematic inversion in the medical understanding of cholera, moving from superstition to reason as 19th-century microbiology better understood the disease’s source and transmission.
Shelby Hansen (English ’25) worked under the guidance of Michael Knight to write a fantasy novel titled Beneath The Shadowed Sky in her ENGL 498 thesis class.
Since her project remains a long-term work in progress intended for future publication, Shelby didn’t want to submit portions of the novel for her CHP Capstone. Instead, she wrote a critical introduction exploring some of the history and issues inherent with world building in fantasy novels.
Shelby’s piece details other works that influenced her and some conceptual issues in building out believable physical and natural laws governing a world that differs from ours.
Layney Clarke (Animal Science ’25) submitted a chapter in an intermediate Tennessee 4-H curriculum guide designed to educate those three to five years into a Tennessee 4-H program about the gastrointestinal tract of sheep and the common feedstuffs used in sheep nutrition.
There are informational portions about different types of nutrients, the parts of the sheep digestive tract, common feedstuffs, and reading a feed tag.
Located at the end of the chapter are five activities created to test some of the key ideas within the chapter.
Ryan Herzog (Neuroscience and Cellular and Molecular Biology ’25) completed an honors thesis in which he developed a model for quantifying the effect of opioids in the depression of respiration controlled by the prefrontal cortex of the brain.
Ryan conducted this research under the guidance of Dr. Ralph Lydic, the Robert H. Cole Endowed Professor of Neuroscience, who lauded the quality of Ryan’s “superior” research and called him “an outstanding representative of the Chancellor’s Honors Program.”
Having graduated from Rocky Top, Ryan is now enrolled in medical school at Vanderbilt University.
Lindsay Ott (Acounting ’25) worked with Dr. Robert Fuller on a thesis for the Smith Global Leadership Scholars examining burnout among accountants in virtual work settings.
Noting that the profession of accounting has a significant turnover and burnout rate, Lindsay consulted over 130 licensed CPAs to ascertain if those working virtually suffer burnout at lower rates than their in-office counterparts.
She concluded that physical and mental exhaustion was not significantly reduced in virtual settings, while social disengagement was higher among virtual CPAs than those working in office full-time.
Stella Clymer (Psychology and Linguistics ’24) completed a thesis under the tutelage of Dr. Aris Clemons analyzing linguistic and discursive strategies employed by the hosts of various postfeminist podcasts that have gained popular following since 2021.
She argued that these podcasts champion an individualistic experience for women drawing from the language of masculinity and neoliberalism as opposed to second and third-wave feminism.
Stella is currently pursuing an MA in Linguistics at Syracuse University.
Jakob Scroggins (Materials Science and Engineering ’25) worked with fellow MSE undergraduates and Dustin Gilmer, a post-doctoral fellow at the UT-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute to craft replica of one of George Washington’s swords for the 2025 Cast in Steel competition.
The competition encourages entries to utilize modern metallurgical techniques to fabricate objects of historical or cultural relevance. Jakob and his team chose Washington’s Bailey silver and ivory cuttoe for its elegant aesthetic design, and place in the top six out of over 50 schools in the competition.
Sarah Miller (Biomedical Engineering ’24) collaborated with several BME students under the guidance of Dr. David Anderson to create a prototype for a device called a UTendo Sleeve.
The device is designed to reinforce the structural integrity of lock-in-loop stitch sutures holding tendons to muscles. The prototype was 3-D printed and was found in testing to accommodate up to twenty sutures and withstand 5,330 Newtons of applied force.
Sarah hoped in future research to test the device with other types of sutures and materials.