Art, Architecture, and Design

Explore the various projects below categorized under the general theme of Art, Architecture, and Design. Be sure to return to the Barrett College Fellows Program main page and explore projects under the other 11 themes as well. You might be surprised at what you find and maybe you will discover the perfect research project for what you hope to study!

Please do not contact the research centers or faculty listed below directly (a formal application process is a required step to joining these research opportunities).

For questions about the Barrett College Fellows Program or specific research projects, please contact Dr. Sarah Graff at: BarrettCollegeFellows@exchange.asu.edu.

Projects with an asterisk (*) indicate projects still taking students. If you would like to apply for any of these projects, please contact barrettcollegefellows@asu.edu and fill out the student application.

Back to Barrett College Fellows main page

Research projects

Latinx Leadership Academy in the Performing Arts (LLAPA) *

Project # 27

Center name: Latinx Leadership Academy in the Performing Arts
Campus/Location: Tempe
Faculty lead: Micha Espinosa

Project description

The Latinx Leadership Academy in the Performing Arts (LLAPA) is an initiative to empower, inspire, and motivate Latinx high school students in Arizona. Latinx students and professionals are under-represented in the field and face multiple barriers. To that end, LLAPA uses culturally sustaining training and leadership development techniques to foster positive narratives that prepare Latinx students for successful careers in the performing arts. LLAPA is committed to systemic change and will work with administrators, teachers, students, and their families to transform beliefs, attitudes, and policies and will celebrate and invest in Latinx culture, heritage and identity practices, and creative leadership. Latinx students who study the performing arts are confronted with many factors that limit their success including, diminishing resources, lack of formal mentorship, systemic bias, structural inequality, and organizational barriers. This interdisciplinary academy will improve access to these resources and help these students realize the artists’ role in the relationship between cultural investment, economic development, and social impact.

Special skills needed

Required skills include: 1) communication skills - effective written and verbal communication skills are essential for conveying the organization's message clearly and building relationships with various stakeholders; 2) research skills - ability to conduct research to identify potential partners, opportunities, and community needs to tailor outreach efforts effectively; 3) cultural competency - sensitivity to cultural differences and the ability to adapt outreach strategies to diverse communities; 4) management - oganizational skills to plan, execute, and track multiple outreach projects simultaneously; and 5) reporting and documentation - keeping records, documenting outreach activities, and preparing reports to measure progress and outcomes.

Majors

Open to all students interested in the project's mission

Years

1st-year students (new to ASU Fall 2024), 2nd-year students, 3rd-year students, 4th-year students

Themes

Cross-listed with the following themes:

Art, Architecture, and Design, Business and Entrepreneurship, Education, Humanities, Journalism, Communication, and Mass Media, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Safe Routes to School *

Project # 61

Center name: Active Schools and Communities Lab
Campus/Location: Downtown
Faculty lead: Allison Poulos

Project description

Join Dr. Poulos in the College of Health Solutions and an interdisciplinary research team to support a local Phoenix community to make the streets around schools safer for walking, riding, and rolling. On this project, you would assist with data collection including conducting surveys around school sites and environmental assessments of street and neighborhood conditions, tallying pedestrian and vehicular traffic counts, data management, and dissemination of results. Our project will measure changes in behavior and attitudes after the installation of protected bike lanes around three schools, and provide a great opportunity for hands-on, community-based research.

Special skills needed

Availability for at least one morning and one afternoon in the Fall Semester to collect data in a Phoenix neighborhood; interest in health, sustainability, safety; and interest in community-based work.

Majors

Health Education, Health Promotion, Public Health, Population Health, Kinesiology, Health Sciences, Engineering, Architecture, Design, Sustainability, Psychology, Education

Years

1st-year students (new to ASU Fall 2024), 2nd-year students, 3rd-year students, 4th-year students

Themes

Cross-listed with the following themes:

Art, Architecture, and Design, Education, Engineering, Health and Wellness, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability

The Positive Play Initiative: A Participatory Student-Centered Study to Create Inclusive and Meaningful Opportunities in Games-Based Education and Educational Communities *

Project # 76

Center name: TechnoMaterials Lab (Play MAS Lounge)
Campus/Location: Tempe
Faculty lead: DB Bauer

Project description

The Positive Play Initiative (PPI) is a student-centered, participatory research study that cultivates positive, inclusive experiences for university students interested in Games Studies. It creates diverse opportunities for all interested students to experience the creative, social, and professional benefits of games-based education through inclusive programming and thriving communities. This study is designed to: 1) provide diverse experiences for students to survey the many creative, social, and professional aspects of game play, design, and education available to them in higher education and beyond through casual learning experiences and structured workshops; 2) create inclusive community and social infrastructure essential to social, curricular, and professional enrichment and development in Games Studies; and 3) survey students to better understand and serve their needs and share findings via published research. The Positive Play Initiative is committed to cultivating a better understanding of diverse student needs in order to create thriving Games Studies educational communities for game-makers and game-players during their time as students and cultivate values and skills that will serve them post-graduation.

Special skills needed

Creativity; collaboration; interest in games; background in games (video games, board games, role-playing games); leadership skills; and organizational skills.

Majors

Open to all majors though students in the Arts and Design, Humanities, Psychology, Sociology may find this project particularly relevant

Years

1st-year students (new to ASU Fall 2024), 2nd-year students, 3rd-year students, 4th-year students

Themes

Cross-listed with the following themes:

Art, Architecture, and Design, Education, Humanities

24h Behaviors Laboratory

Project # 80

Center name: 24h Behaviors Laboratory
Campus/Location: Downtown, Fully remote
Faculty lead: Matthew Buman

Project description

The 24h Behaviors Laboratory utilizes emerging technologies (including wearables, smartphone applications, and other novel devices) and health behavior change interventions to understand the dynamic interplay of sleep, sedentary, and more active behaviors, and how collectively these behaviors may be harnessed for health promotion and disease prevention.

Special skills needed

Attention to detail, excellent organizational and communication skills, a self-started, and a genuine interest in clinical research.

Majors

Population, Public Health, and Health Care Policy; Neuroscience; Movement Science; Medical Studies and Health Sciences; Nutrition; Healthy Lifestyles and Health Education; Neuroscience; Nutrition; Biomedical Informatics; Data Analytics

Years

1st-year students (new to ASU Fall 2024), 2nd-year students, 3rd-year students, 4th-year students

Themes

Cross-listed with the following themes:

Art, Architecture, and Design, Biological, Chemical, and Physical Sciences, Business and Entrepreneurship, Data Analytics and Mathematics, Engineering, Health and Wellness, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Extended Reality for Industrial and Occupational Supports (XRIOS)

Project # 85

Center name: Human-in-Mind Engineering Research (HiMER) Lab
Campus/Location: Polytechnic
Faculty lead: Heejin Jeong

Project description

Over the past decades, XR technologies have been applied in various industries and occupational areas for tasks such as maintenance, quality control, training, education, and remote collaboration. However, with diverse workplace conditions emerging, XR technologies need to be adaptive and innovative to meet new industrial needs and users' capabilities. Led by Dr. Heejin Jeong, this project aims to support industrial and occupational tasks using XR technologies and conduct assessments from ergonomics and physiological perspectives. Primary duties include experimental prototype development (for example, virtual objects in Unity via Oculus Quest/Pro or HoloLens), experimental design and data collection (for example, online survey, video data, motion, and eye-tracking data), and data analysis (for example, statistical analysis, machine/deep learning, and NLP). Barrett Fellows will also assist in writing Institutional Review Board (IRB) documents, grant proposals, technical reports, and/or academic publications. Work assignments will be flexible depending on their interests and capabilities. We aim for the project outcomes to be presented at an international conference (IEEE VR) and published in top-tier journals.

Special skills needed

Experience in human subject studies (using experimental and physiological measurements) and AR/VR development platforms (for example, Unity, Unreal Engine) is preferred.

Majors

Computer Science, Software Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, Biomechanics, Ergonomics, Data Science, Multimedia and Virtual Reality Design

Years

1st-year students (new to ASU Fall 2024), 2nd-year students, 3rd-year students, 4th-year students

Themes

Cross-listed with the following themes:

Art, Architecture, and Design, Engineering

Education for Planetary Futures

Project # 90

Center name: Learning Futures Collaborative on Education, Sustainability, and Global Futures
Campus/Location: Tempe
Faculty lead: Iveta Silova

Project description

Despite efforts stemming from the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, schools and higher education institutions continue to perpetuate the status quo by reproducing the logic of human exceptionalism, liberal individualism, and the hierarchical “man over nature” relationship, fueling infinite economic growth on a finite planet. This Learning Futures Collaborative aims to reimagine and reconfigure education toward the future survival of the planet and people. Join Professors Iveta Silova and Andrea Weinberg to explore the latest literature on education, sustainability/climate, and global futures, as well as engage in hands-on research projects and participate in ongoing events that explore these questions from various perspectives.

Special skills needed

Literature review, qualitative data analysis, social media, and data visualization.

Majors

Open to any Social Science and Humanities major (and others if there is a compelling reason)

Years

2nd-year students, 3rd-year students, 4th-year students

Themes

Cross-listed with the following themes:

Art, Architecture, and Design, Education, Health and Wellness, Humanities, Journalism, Communication, and Mass Media, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability

Understanding the Impacts of the ECOtarot

Project # 112

Center name: Global Futures Laboratory
Campus/Location: Tempe, Downtown
Faculty lead: Adriene Jenik

Project description

The ECOtarot is a performance system where a custom tarot deck is used to offer “climate future readings” in public spaces and online. The ECOtarot deck itself is an art object – made of handmade paper derived from the agave plants and recycled cotton and linen, and hand-painted with natural pigments. ECOtarot readings engage the complex emotions surrounding climate disruption and focus participants on actions they can take and values they can foster, drawing from their specific talents and capacities. Since performances started in 2017, more than 1400 readings have been given by this study’s author in the US and internationally (in English and Spanish). Drawing from these hundreds of readings, anecdotal evidence exists of the impact of the ECOtarot experience on participants, but to date only a small pilot in-person survey study (N=20) has been conducted, with promising results (Jenik, 2022). This pilot study suggested that surveying participants before and after readings is necessary to establish the impacts of the ECOtarot reading as distinct from overall feelings participants may bring to the readings. For this Phase 2 survey, we retain from the pilot the variables for the emotions construct developed therein (anger, anxiety, confidence, disappointment, guilt, happiness, inspiration, regret, relief, sadness, satisfaction, shame, uncertainty and other) adding three additional categories “connectedness/belonging,” “overwhelmed” and “grief.

Special skills needed

Excellent organization and communication skills; attention to detail; statistics and data coding experience could be useful; and appreciation of the arts.

Majors

Art, Design, Sustainability, Sociology, Humanities, Social Change

Years

3rd-year students, 4th-year students

Themes

Cross-listed with the following themes:

Art, Architecture, and Design, Sustainability

Characterization of Meteorites and Planetary Materials

Project # 138

Center name: Buseck Center for Meteorites Studies
Campus/Location: Tempe
Faculty lead: Rhonda Stroud

Project description

Meteorites are samples of the building blocks of our solar system. Analysis of meteorites with optical, electron and x-ray microscopy can help researchers better understand the formation and evolution of materials in the Universe. Our center has a need for Barrett Fellows to collect and analyze data from meteorite and asteroid samples.

Special skills needed

Introduction to Physics, Chemistry, or Geosciences; Python coding skills.

Majors

Planetary Science, Geology, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science

Years

2nd-year students, 3rd-year students

Themes

Cross-listed with the following themes:

Art, Architecture, and Design, Biological, Chemical, and Physical Sciences, Data Analytics and Mathematics