Jumbo Magazine - Fall 2023

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Your time at Tufts will see you diving deep into your academic interests, exploring niche topics and finding unique connections across disciplines. After your years of exploration, classwork, and community engagement, you will have the opportunity to showcase your work through a capstone project or senior thesis. Every undergraduate school at Tufts has some form of final project in which students share the culmination of their work with the broader community. From the interdisciplinary engineering capstone projects that bring together a team across disciplines to tackle a self-guided project, to the senior thesis program and exhibition hosted at SMFA, to the myriad capstones and theses offered by nearly every department in the School of Arts and Sciences, Jumbos are encouraged to celebrate their intellectual curiosity. Read on to see just a few examples of recent projects and get an idea of the interdisciplinary, intellectually curious work that Tufts undergraduates do.

BY VALERIA VELASQUEZ ’23

Alex Bobroff ’23, George Eng ’23, Matthew Dilsizian ’23, Zack Rummler ’23, Max Menestrier ’23, Ibrahima Barry ’23: Celestial Blue Team - Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

For their engineering senior capstone project, members of the Celestial Blue Team designed a high fidelity flight computer for amateur rocketry. Citing the difficulties in computerized parachute deployment in amateur rocketry which can hinder successful recovery of the rocket, the team built their “own flight computer intended to deploy the parachutes as a function of rocket height, speed, and orientation.”

Megan Farr ’23 - School of the Museum of the Fine Arts

The SMFA’s 2023 Senior Thesis exhibition was titled “for the record…” The idea behind this collective title for 24 senior theses was to examine the myriad important aspects of their being and identity and how they reflect their unique positionality in the world. Megan is a print maker, book maker, and illustrator based in Boston. Her thesis, which she describes as “an abstract psychological journey of the process of individuation,” is told through the format of a Choose Your Own Adventure book filled with her creations. Her magical realist landscapes are full of vibrant colors designed to explore “universal and individual psychological experiences.”

Akbota Saudabayeva ’22 - Department of Anthropology

Akbota’s thesis intervenes into decolonial discourses in the anthropology of colonialism that have long neglected the Soviet Union’s employment of colonial power over Central Asia. Focusing on the period from the Bolshevik Revolution to Stalin’s Five-Year Plans as it affected Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, this thesis examines the Soviet modernization project’s simultaneous maintenance and destruction of Central Asian indigeneity through ironic nationalist policies, labor programs, and famine, while also comparing the project’s similarities with Western capitalist development models. In doing so, the thesis ultimately unravels the Soviet Union’s ambiguous effect and status as “a colonial power with a distinct ideological foundation.”

Siwaar Abouhala ’23 - Department of Community Health

Siwaar completed her senior honors thesis in community health based on her research at the Division of Newborn Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, where she investigated the role of neonatal genetic testing and rare disease prognosis on parental psychosocial outcomes postNeonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) discharge. Through conducting a followup qualitative interview study following a NICU survey to parents, this project aims to capture the experiences and outcomes of parents, as well as contribute to the literature on parent mental health and well-being within the sphere of rare disease and genomic medicine. Her thesis is entitled: “Rare Yet Resilient: The Role of Neonatal Genetic Testing & Rare Disease Prognosis on Parental Psychosocial Outcomes, Coping Mechanisms, & Hospital System Recommendations.”