Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Journal

In the last thirty years, mathematics standards have undergone frequent changes due to two conflicting perspectives: reformists and traditionalists. The purpose of this study is to assess any lasting impacts of the 1997 California Math Standards. I interviewed three faculty in three categories about diversity, curriculum, and stakeholder perspective. Presented here are findings and common themes that emerged from the analysis of interviews. Results showed that a lasting impact of the Math Wars was the 2010 Common Core Standards, written in a way to favor the reform movement of the 1990s. A professional development perspective as an approach is utilized.

The objective of this study is to explore the relationship between implicit gender bias in medical professionals and misdiagnosis in young female-identified patients. The study examines the ways in which the age and gender of the patient can impact the accuracy and timeliness of the diagnoses young women receive. Furthermore, it analyzes how experiences with misdiagnosis alter patients’ perceptions of doctors. The findings of this study are based upon the survey responses of 21 young women, ages 19-25 years old.

This research examined the effects of induced emotional states on individuals’ moral values endorsements. Participants were induced to feel joy, hope, fear, or anger at either the individual or group level through an event recall task. Subsequently, their endorsements of six moral foundations were measured. Results did not support the hypothesis that joy, hope, fear, or anger, experienced at the individual or group level, would significantly affect moral foundations endorsements. Endorsements of fairness/cheating did not significantly differ from care/harm, which in turn did not differ from liberty/oppression. These three foundations were rated as significantly more relevant than all others.

Burmese is a language of South-East Asia featuring a contrast between voiced and voiceless nasals. Voicing is an articulatory phenomenon involving the vibration of vocal folds and is the mechanism behind contrastive sounds in English such as /p/-/b/ and /t/-/d/. This contrast pertains to nasals—a typically voiced category including English consonants such as /m/ and /n/—in Burmese. I conducted a production study examining acoustic properties associated with the voicing contrast in Burmese nasals. The results confirmed well attestedpatterns found in the literature and includes a novel finding regarding an interaction between three factors and its correlation with voicing.

The purpose of this research project is to assess the reliability of UN Peacekeeping as a strategic conflict resolution tool in the context of modern global conflicts. This paper evaluates the efficacy of UN Peacekeeping on the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of operation, and analyzes its performance through the lens of Clausewitz’s concepts of fog and friction. This paper concludes that the systematic challenges peacekeeping operations consistently face at each level of operation, coupled with the increasing complexity of contemporary global conflicts, calls into question the ability of UN Peacekeeping to reliably navigate and resolve modern-day global conflicts.

The 1910 Los Angeles International Aviation Meet, inaugurated Los Angeles’s inextricable link with the aviation industry. Focusing on key historical actors and art of advertising used to sell the idea of flight to the public, this project posits that the 1910 Air Meet, not only helped to shape aviation, but also inspired the future of flight. This thesis tells the history of the airplane detailing the story of Los Angeles’ boosterism and the role said boosters played in the ultimate stabilization of airplane into a functional, reliable, and lucrative technology and industry.

Engaging youth in Science, Technology, Engineering,and Mathematics (STEM) fields earlier rather than later is important for developing a stronger foundation in these disciplines. The STEMinist project aims to engage young girls (fourth through sixth grade) in science and engineering through interactions with female scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This study aims to identify what the girls take away from their interactions with the scientists and their visits to the labto inform after school STEM programming development. This paper presents themes that emerged from the analysis of participant interviews after completing the program.

This paper focuses on the lives of two of the most well-known female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Within this paper I analyze different documents that relate plausible histories of these two women’s’ lives and differentiate between the accuracy of sources. I question modes of discussing these women and utilize a variety of secondary sources to examine primary sources and their impacts. This paper critiques standard discussions and histories of these two women, instead offering a more humanizing and historically accurate way of seeing them that exists outside of popular culture’s romanticism and mythologization of them.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of the global Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in tackling educational inequity, with an emphasis on the academic experiences of UCSB students. This research was done amidst the various controversies among local academic institutions, which included the 2019 California college admissions scandals and 2020 cost of living adjustment (COLA) protests. PISA is primarily a topdown initiative as it mainly champions educational equity through collaborations with government officials. This neglects the key role of community actors, such as governors and principals, and does not account for localized complexities, such as federalism in the United States. To identify bottom-up approaches that would complement PISA, a pilot study on the academic experiences of UCSB students was done. Key findings included 88% of the respondents coming from counties with higher standards of living, and only 3% having considered an overseas university education. The paper thus suggests that the global PISA initiative is inadequate in resolving localized educational inequities and raises two bottom-up programs – college open-day sessions in disadvantaged counties and local forums on state education policies – to improve socio-spatial disparities in educational equity.

Access to electricity is essential for development and economic growth. This study explores the potential for renewable energy to provide affordable energy and to alleviate energy poverty in the southern African region. Data analysis and visualization can help us understand the trends in, and characteristics of, energy demand and generation and draw insights into energy inequity across southern Africa. Patterns of electricity demand dictate the scale of energy infrastructure investments required to meet that demand reliably. However, electricity demand forecasts, dictated by the country’s paying capacity and international financial support, highlight the continuation of energy inequities across the southern African region well into the future. This electricity demand analysis project is part of a larger project examining cost-effective planning and implementation of renewable energy generation to provide reliable electricity to countries in southern Africa.