SPS Distinguished Thesis and Capstone Awards

The SPS Graduate Programs Distinguished Thesis Award recognizes excellence in research and writing and honors students whose papers demonstrate the highest caliber of master’s level work our students produce. Winners are nominated by their thesis committee in each of the SPS graduate programs and awarded by their program's Faculty Director.

Beginning in the 2023-2024 academic year, SPS began recognizing the most original, ambitous, insightful, or innovative capstones with a Distinguished Capstone Award. Recipients are nominated by their capstone course instructors and awarded by their program's Faculty Director.

Distinguished Thesis Awards and Distinguished Capstone Awards are announced annually at Convocation. SPS commends the winners, listed below.

2023/24

2022/23

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Rachel Cole, MALit, March ‘23
Sinking Boats Against the Current: A Deleuzian Reading of Temporality in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Zach Kagley, MPPA, March ‘23
Collective Bargaining in Public Policy: Unions, Management, and Regulation

MASTER OF ARTS IN SPORTS ADMINISTRATION

Daniel L. Kim, MSA, June ‘22
Discrimination in Modern South Korea: Gauging the Influence of Confucianism in Women’s Sports

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN PROSE AND POETRY

Holly A. Stovall, MFA, June ‘23
Evaluations

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Devanshi Wadhwa, MSIS, June ‘23
Generative Artificial Intelligence Framework for Assessment of Corporate Sustainability Risks and Contributions

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS

Charles Robb MacDonald, MSPA, December ‘22
Evaluating Methods for Class Imbalanced Learning on High-dimensional Low Variance Data to Predict 1-Year Mortality in Cardiac Surgery

 

2021/22

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

Heidi Gross, MALS, June '22
Regional Cultures and Covid-19: A Case Study of Three Midwestern States

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Paul Finnegan, MaLit, August '21
Proust's Machine: A Deleuzian Reading of the Vinteuil Sonata

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Lisa Twarog, MPPA, June '22
The Relationship Between Universal Basic Income Programs and Environmental Sustainability

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN PROSE AND POETRY

Jonathan Jones, MFA, June '22
Penned

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN DATA SCIENCE

David Lobue, MSDS, March '22
Network Centralities and Subgraph Communities Among Political Financial Exchanges

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN INFORMATION DESIGN AND STRATEGY

Kelly Cutler, IDS, June '22
The Art and Science of Digital Marketing

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS

David Schatz, MSIS, June '22
Considerations for the Development of Business Intelligence Tools: Analysis into the Efforts of Established Software Companies

2020/21

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Jennifer Coakley, MALit, June '21
"A Complicated Position for a Woman": Marriage and the Dissenting Voice in the Minor Novels of Thomas Hardy

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Julia Epplin-Zapf, MPPA, March '21
Assessing Tax Increment Financing Efficacy as a Public Financing Tool for Public Parks in Chicago, Illinois

Katheryn Meagher, MPPA, June '21
U.S. Public Pension Reform: Overcoming Underfunding Through Increased Accountability

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN PROSE AND POETRY

Jameka Williams, MFA, June '21
American Sex Tape ™

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN DATA SCIENCE

John Hawthorne Smith, MSDS, June '21
Who You Gonna Believe, Me or Your Lying Eyes? An Epidemiological Examination of Fake News and a Ranked Solution 

2019/20

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

Oliva Sulita, MALS, March '20
Taking Back Boystown: Homonormativity, Commercialization, and Racial Surveillance in Chicago’s Gayborhood

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Caroline Poole, MPPA, June '20
Drug-free Degrees: Determining the Impact of the Aid Elimination Penalty on Urban Community College Students through a Comparative Time-Series Analysis

Hani Shamat, MPPA, June '20
Equitable Bikeshare for Equitable Cities: Recognizing and Removing Barriers to Bikeshare in Pursuit of Transit Equity

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN PROSE AND POETRY

Allison Epstein, MFA, March '20
Feather and Frost

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN DATA SCIENCE

Jeremy Walker, MSDS, August '20
Measuring the impact that domain knowledge in the form of simple ontology structures has on predictive modelling processes in the context of academic library virtual reference services

2018/19

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

Steve Birkhauser, MALS, March '19
Born to Choose Their Own Paths Over the Middle Ground of Colonial North America: Mobility Among the Women of the Native and European Montour Family 1682–1780

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Brooke Kennedy, MALit, June '19
Female Limitations Living among Urban Borders: An Explication of Femininity in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street and Gwendolyn Brooks’s Maud Martha

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Matthew Frappier, MPPA, March '19
The Effects of Federalism and Intergovernmental Relationships on the Management of Public Lands in the United States: A Case Study of Public Lands Management in Utah

MASTER OF ARTS IN SPORTS ADMINISTRATION

Danielle M. Wysocki, MSA, March '19
Predicting Bulls and Blackhawks Pre and Postgame Ratings to Maximize NBC Sports Chicago Profitability

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN PROSE AND POETRY

Joshua Bohnsack, MFA, March '19
Country I Come From

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN  DATA SCIENCE

Tim Kiely, MSDS, December '18
The Spatially-Conscious Machine Learning Model:  Leveraging Spatial Analysis to Boost the Accuracy of Real Estate Sales Predictions

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN HEALTH INFORMATICS

Richard White, MHI, August '18
Artificial Intelligence-Augmented Exclusion of Coronary Atherosclerosis on CCTA for Chest Pain: Initial Performance and Technical Issues

2017/18

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING

Caitlin Garvey, MCW, August '17
The Mourning Report

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

Judy Ann Kulchawik, MALS, August '17
Restraining the Mustang and Strangling the Dove: Portraits of the Wages of Patriarchy

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Amy Lindstrom Bowden, MALit, June '18
"From one workman to another": The Mutual Portraiture of Dorothy Brett and Katherine Mansfield

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Desiree Carr, MPPA, June '18
White Trash American Hillbillies: White Rural Poverty in America

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN REGULATORY COMPLIANCE

Elona Liko Hazizi, MSRC, June '18
Significance and Prevalence of Incidentally Detected Breast Lesions on Chest, Cardiac and Abdominal MRI

2016/17

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

Mary O'Malley, MALS, August '16
The Queer Affects of Jane Bowles

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Bradley Grams, MPPA, June '17
Pollution Prevention in Environmental Management Systems: The Extent and Pollution Reduction Value of Voluntary Reporting by Manufacturing Firms to the U.S. Government

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN PROSE AND POETRY

Patricia Crisafulli, MFA in Creative Writing, June '17
The Cross of Siena

2015/16

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Christine Hoffman, MALit, March '16
Violations of Empire: Rape and the Struggle for Power in E.M. Forster's A Passage to India and Paul Scott's The Jewel in the Crown

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Michael Baron, MPPA, March '16
The United States and European Union: How to Achieve a Collaborative Competitive Advantage in Energy Security without Undermining Environmental and Public Health Sustainability

MASTER OF ARTS IN SPORTS ADMINISTRATION

Sara Crandall, MSA, December '15
Analysis of the Current Sponsorship Landscape in the Endurance Industry & an Endurance Property Sponsorship Model & Activation Timeline

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN POETRY AND PROSE

Daniel Fliegel, MFA in Creative Writing, June '16
Road, River, Forest

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN REGULATORY COMPLIANCE

Christopher Blair, MSRC, April '16
The Peer Review Process: Trends and Proposed Changes to the Process

2014/15

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN PROSE AND POETRY

Ignatius Aloysius, MFA in Creative Writing, June '15
Fishhead Soup

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

David C. Heyman, MALS, March '15
A Brief History of Southwestern Wisconsin 1800-1900: Challenges to American Frontier Historiography

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Barbara Egel, MALit, June '15
While soule and body are together found: Strategies for Protecting Female Subjectivity in Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Shannon Ferguson, MPPA, June '15
Regulation of Foreign Funding to NGOs: Evaluating the Effects on Comparative Human Rights Policies

MASTER OF ARTS IN SPORTS ADMINISTRATION

Jabarri Reynolds, MSA, December '14
Study Abroad and the Student Athlete

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN CLINICAL RESEARCH AND REGULATORY ADMINISTRATION

Byron K. Yip, MS in Clinical Research and Regulatory Administration, June '15
Bicuspid Aortic Valve in the Adult: Risk Factors for Ascending Aortic Dilatation and Potentials for Novel Predictive Tools

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN REGULATORY COMPLIANCE

Natalia Brooks, MSRC, March '15
Comparing and Contrasting Belarusian and Ukrainian Drug Development Policies with U.S. and Swedish Regulations, with a Specific Focus on Clinical Trial Regulation

2013/14

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN PROSE AND POETRY

Anthony Opal, MFA in Creative Writing, June '14
Others

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

Joshua Sledge, MALS, August '13
How Much Is Too Much? : An Examination of the Moral and Economic Influences that Shape Usury Regulation

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

John C. Kerpan, MALit, March '14
Of No Fixed Abode: Mr. Leopold Bloom, Elusive Hero of James Joyce's Ulysses

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Jesse C. Kibbey, MPPA, June '14
Externalities, Bias and Mobilization: Challenges in Climate Policy and Politics

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN CLINICAL RESEARCH AND REGULATORY ADMINISTRATION

Zhidong Ma, MS in Clinical Research and Regulatory Administration, March '14
Medical Device Regulations in China: Knowing the Difference, Needs, Challenges, and Risks Before Entering the Chinese Medical Device Market

2012/13

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN PROSE AND POETRY

Julianne Hill, MFA in Creative Writing, June '13
A Story in which No One Drowns: Thoughts on the Persistence of Life

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

John Lindsay Fraser, MALS, June '13
Using Film to Foster Faith

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Mary Carol Ghislin, MALit, June '13
Wordsworth's Pelagian Inheritance

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Wendy Dittmer, MPPA, June '13
Dodd-Frank Section 1502: The Case of the Legislative Maneuvering, Policy Entrepreneurship, and Stakeholder Influence Used to Marry Financial Reform and Conflict Minerals

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN CLINICAL RESEARCH AND REGULATORY ADMINISTRATION

Laura Baker, MS in Clinical Research and Regulatory Administration, June '13
Integration and Implementation of Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER): Next steps needed to support infrastructure development of CER in Academic Medical Centers

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN QUALITY ASSURANCE AND REGULATORY SYSTEMS

Jason Studer, MS in Quality Assurance and Regulatory Systems, June '13
Expediting the Time between Preclinical Studies and Phase 1 - A Model for Overcoming Development, Regulatory, and Quality Challenges

2011/12

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN PROSE AND POETRY

Andrew Schuyler Dikson, MFA in Creative Writing, June '12
Shaw Blue

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

Ann Kogen, MALS, December '11
Through a Narrative Lens: Mental Health Across Cultures

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Elaine Joy Basa, MALit, June '12
Encounters with Memory and Effect: A Reading of Patricio Guzman's Chile, Obstinate, Memory

MASTER OF ARTS IN MEDICAL INFORMATICS

 
David Mishler, MA Medical Informatics, June '12
HIPYBOT: A Weak Artificial Intelligence HIPAA Chatterbot
­
MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Megan A. Boyle, MPPA, June '12
Coping with the Effects of Climate Change: Illinois Organizations' Challenges and Strategies

MASTER OF ARTS IN SPORTS ADMINISTRATION

Margaret Louise Stigler, MSA, June '12
Statistics at the Gate: Assessing Major League Baseball Attendance 2007-2011

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN CLINICAL RESEARCH AND REGULATORY ADMINISTRATION

Debra G. Dice, MS in Clinical Research and Regulatory Administration, June '12
How Non-Accrual in Clinical Research (NACR) Impacts Optimal Utilization of IRB Resources at Northwestern University

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN QUALITY ASSURANCE AND REGULATORY SYSTEMS

Michelle Matijevic, MS in Quality Assurance and Regulatory Systems, June '12
Contamination Control Plan: A Proactive Approach to Maintaining Control in a Non-Sterile Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Facility

2010/11

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN POETRY AND PROSE

Dolores de Souza Guedes, MA in Creative Writing, June '11
Come and Go

Sarah Jenkins, MFA in Creative Writing, June '11
Break, Carry

Virginia Smith, MFA in Creative Writing, June '11
One Voice May Survive the Other

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

James Paetsch, MALS, December '10
Place Race: The Sifting and Sorting of American Cities

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Christina Bello, MALit, June '11
Whoever Dies with the Most Toys Wins: Consumerism and the American Dream in Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm

Katherine Brannon, MALit, June '11
Unknowable Code: The Detective and Dystopia in the Works of Raymond Chandler, Thomas Pynchon and Jean-Luc Godard

Sarah Buchmeier, MALit, June '11
So Strangely Unlike Us: Nineteenth-Century British Travel Narratives and the Orientalization of America

Anthony Gudwien, MALit, December '10
Hamlet's Perpetual Present

Carolyne Hurlburt, MALit, June '11
Avant La Lettre, Apres La Mort: The Post-Structural Sensibility of Oscar Wilde

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Renee Burton, MPPA, June '11
For Sale or Lease: An Examination of Commercial Airport Privatization in the United States

Mari Franks, MPPA, June '11
The Changing Role of the Nurse: The Impact of the HITECH Act on Nurses & Nurse Leaders

Michael Gwinn, MPPA, June '11
A diamond in the Rust: Pittsburgh's Example for the Post Industrial Economy

MASTER OF ARTS IN SPORTS ADMINISTRATION

Camilio Suarez-Batar, MSA, June '11
A Culture of Electric Speed and the Coming of a Second Hot Rod Age: How Auto Racing Elevated the Internal Combustion Engine and Will Champion the Electric Car

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN CLINICAL RESEARCH AND REGULATORY ADMINISTRATION

Kathleen Prendergast, MS in Clinical Research and Regulatory Administration, June '11
Development of Metabolic Syndrome during the First Year Following Heart Transplantation and the Association of Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN MEDICAL INFORMATICS

Katrina Worrell, MSI, December '10
Nurse informaticist: A bridge in the cultural divide between information technology and healthcare

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN QUALITY ASSURANCE AND REGULATORY SCIENCE

Priyanka Bhutani, MS in Quality Assurance and Regulatory Science, December '10
Critical Analysis of the European Union's Abbreviated Regulatory Pathway for Biosimilars

2009/10

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN PROSE AND POETRY

Roya Khatiblou, MA in Creative Writing, June '10
We Ride Together: Stories

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

Gregory Cena, MALS, June '10
A Hot Time in Old Town: The Emergence and Decline of the Hippie Counterculture in Chicago's Old Town Neighborhood during the 1960s

Maxine Flack, MALS, December '09
Self-Imposed Sumptuary Law for the Nineteenth-Century Urban Environment: Social Stratification through Material Consumption in France and the United States

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Amber Allen, MALit, June '10
Hidden in Plain View: The Experience of Celebrity in the Works of Nathaniel Parker Willis and Sara Payson Willis (Fanny Fern)

Eliot Jarbe, MALit, December '09
Merleau-Ponty in the Shadow of our Ontological Demise: A Phenomenology of Apocalypse

Harold Shipman, MALit, June '10
Why  Should I Believe a Word You Say?: the Aesthetics of Truth in the Graphic Memoir

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Christina-Mai Just, MPPA, June '10
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission: Protecting the Public or Practically Powerless

Christopher Scanlon, MPPA, June '10
Electricity Restructuring: Muddling Through the Variable Utility of Disjointed Incrementalism

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN COMPUTER INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Curticine Doyle, MSCIS, December '09
Anticipating User Needs in Emerging Technology: Creating the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Administration Laboratory Manual

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN QUALITY ASSURANCE AND REGULATORY SCIENCE

 Christopher Czyzewski, MS in Quality Assurance and Regulatory Science, June '10
Medical Device Supplier Quality: Improvements for a Global Economy

Jessica Sheriff, MS in Quality Assurance and Regulatory Science, June '10
Value Stream Mapping as Applied to a Quality System Process

2008/09

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN POETRY AND PROSE

Nathanael Zoba, MA in Creative Writing, December '08
Breathword's Birth Weight

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

Dean Savage, MALS, June '09
Fiumanism: The Relationship of D'Annuzian Fiume and Fascism Reconsidered

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Lisa Stojak, MALit, June '09
Mrs. Dalloway and the Absurdity of Sanity

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Daniel Brown, MPPA, June '09
Feeding America's Children in the National School Lunch Program

MASTER OF ARTS IN SPORTS ADMINISTRATION

Andrew Van Cleve, MSA, June '09
Have Game? Will Travel!

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN MEDICAL INFORMATICS

Thomas Kmiecik, MS in Medical Informatics, June '09
Integration of Genetic and Familial Data into Electronic Medical Records and Healthcare Processes

2006/07

Distinguished Thesis Awards

 

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING/MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN POETRY AND PROSE

Matt Wood, MA in Creative Writing, '07
Through an Unlocked Door

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

Natalie Banovitz, MALS, '07
Advertisers as Ideologues: Redefining the Women's Sphere in the Wake of the Industrial Revolution

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Jennifer Higgs, MALit, '07
Bloom's Colonial Harem: Constructing the Fantastical Other in James Joyce's Ulysses

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Anna Onley, MPPA, '07
Management and Optimization of Technological Change Processes in Public Service Organizations

MASTER OF ARTS IN SPORTS ADMINISTRATION

Robert Lazaro, MSA, '07
Selling Ice to Eskimos: Major League Soccer's Struggle to Attract Hispanic Fans

2005/06

Distinguished Thesis Awards

MASTER OF ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING

Charles Fiore, MCW, '06

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

Mary Smessaert, MALS, '06

MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE

Stephanie Heerdt, MALit, '05

MASTER OF ARTS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Chrissy Mancini, MPPA, '06

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