My thesis delves deep into Bad Bunny's music video "El Apagon- Aqui Vive Gente" and how Puerto Rico became an island constantly faced with adversity. I discuss the history of colonialism in Puerto Rico and how it became a colony of the United States and continues to be. I explore the debate of statehood vs. independence in Puerto Rico, gentrification, tourism, and the U.S. media portrayal of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

This creative project examines a near-future dystopian Arizona in the form of a novella. The story follows Junia, a young woman who is convinced to join the Neighborhood Watch, an organization dedicated to preserving the Union from political violence by protecting Arizona citizens from hearing opposing political points of view. These "Privacy" codes become stricter and stricter as the Watch's relationship with the State deepens. Junia's personal and ideological loyalties are tested to their limits, and her choices will help to construct either, in the words of Alexis Tocqueville, "a formidable circle around thought," or a path to connection in the aftermath of violent polarization.

This paper examines the effect of a weekly student self-assessment assignment on student performance in an undergraduate math course. Self-assessment is an increasingly popular type of formative assessment with close ties to self-regulated learning theory. In this randomized controlled trial, 88 students enrolled in MAT 142 were divided into four treatment groups, receiving the self-assessment assignment for either half the semester, the full semester, or not at all. There was no main effect of the treatment on students’ course performance (F(3,80) = 0.154, p = 0.999). However, students’ level of compliance with the assignments (F(1, 63) = 6.87, p = 0.011) and class attendance (F(1, 83) = 12.34, p < 0.001) both significantly predicted exam scores, suggesting that conscientiousness predicts performance. I conducted focus groups to understand how students felt toward the self-assessments. Participants expressed distaste toward the assignments and provided suggestions for improvements. I describe these improvements, among others, in an effort to outline future directions for this research. I also describe a new model of student self-assessment based on theories of adaptive testing and self-regulated learning.