Commonwealth Honors Students Display 2025 Research Projects

On Friday, April 25, students in the Commonwealth Honors Program presented a visual display of their semester long research to the College and the public at the Spring 2025 Honors Conference in the Grove at the Massasoit Brockton Campus Library.

Massasoit’s Commonwealth Honors Program aims to create enriched educational experiences for academically motivated students, and provide diverse opportunities for individual study, research, and scholarship. Each spring students have the opportunity to present their semester long research to the Massasoit community as well as at the UMass Undergraduate Research Conference.

“This diverse, driven, and discerning group of students was genuinely motivated about societal issues with moral dilemmas and brought to light interesting topics that were truly worthy of being showcased as Honors projects,” said Panteha Sanati, Commonwealth Honors Program Coordinator and professor. “Although each student delved into a different ethical issue and offered perspectives, case studies, and solutions, the subsequent pattern was an emerging theme of fairness, awareness, and equality, which proves that the students engaged in meaningful dialogue and research.”

Students in this semester’s Honors Seminar chose to research topics ranging from healthcare to social justice. Mia Berger, a business administration transfer student part of the class of 2025, chose to focus her project on the ethical dilemma of DNA testing. “What intrigued me was the ethical dilemma that comes with results from DNA testing and how that information is used. These include the ramifications that family have faced with realizing they aren’t blood relatives and the anxiety or depression that has caused and how law enforcement can access people’s DNA. This leads to people feeling their choice is taken away on how their personal information is shared. This dilemma affects everyone and at the end of the day we are all related, all connected.”

Participating in the Commonwealth Honors Program offers students the chance to work with professors about subjects they are passionate about, learn how to conduct and write research papers, and look forward to presenting. Even though students may be working independently, participating in the seminar offers them collaboration with each other to strengthen their projects. “Having that collaboration with other students – getting to provide feedback on each other’s presentations and having their support was the most enjoyable part for me,” said Berger.

Read more about Mia’s project and other Honors students below:

Mia Berger

Faculty: Panteha Sanati, Liberal Studies and the Arts

The Unforeseen Ethical Considerations of Direct-to-Consumer DNA Tests: Opening Pandora’s Box

In recent years, direct-to consumer (DTC) genetic testing has grown in popularity in the United States, as millions of individuals seek deeper understanding of their ancestral histories. At an affordable price, companies like AncestryDNA and 23andMe will genotype consumers’ DNA and provide detailed ethnicity reports from a mere saliva sample. While some users of these services are motivated by health concerns and the desire to gain insight of genetic predispositions toward certain diseases and conditions, others mail their samples impetuously to satisfy a nonspecific inquisitiveness. However, many ethical issues are not readily apparent to consumers before sending their collection kit. Privacy concerns surrounding genetic information include unauthorized third-party access, data breaches, and the potential of future discrimination. Non-parent expected (NPE) discoveries can shatter recipients’ senses of self and reveal hidden family secrets, often causing conflict among relationships and other negative psychosocial ramifications. Additionally, law enforcement agencies are increasingly using open-source genetic databases as crime-solving tools to identify suspects and implicate perpetrators. The technique of forensic genetic genealogy underscores the need to balance public interest with individuals’ rights to privacy. Using current scholarly journals, this essay will explore the ethicality of DTC genetic testing and recommend regulatory agencies mandate that corporations readily disclose all forms of genetic data usage and warn consumers about potential unanticipated consequences of engaging in these services.

Alyce Fenelus

Faculty: Panteha Sanati, Liberal Studies and the Arts

The Marijuana Industry: It’s High Time to Roll Out New Laws

Cannabis is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance meaning its possession, consumption, purchase, and distribution are federal offenses. In comparison, while research strongly points to the dangers associated with alcohol and tobacco consumption, they are not only legal to possess and consume, but are regulated, respectively, under the Federal Alcohol Administration Act and Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP),leaving marijuana–an illicit substance–a fraction of the comparable market. Using qualitative research methods, analyzing federal and state laws and statistics, scholarly research papers, and relevant articles, this paper concludes that the problem reached is the conflict between two ideological systems, capitalism and federal regulations. US Congress needs to realign with more than half of its states, territories, and the capitol that have made changes to the antiquated regulations by passing laws to either completely legalize marijuana federally, reclassify cannabis to a lesser schedule category, or at least offer safe harbor protections in the marijuana banking industry. Modernization will allow cannabis businesses to develop lawfully and without the fear of legal persecution or financial jeopardy.

Jonathan Fongeallaz

Faculty: Panteha Sanati, Liberal Studies and the Arts

The Dilemma of Healthcare in the United States

When is it ethical for the United States to allow insurance companies to profit from patients becoming sick? In the last two decades, the United States healthcare system has become increasingly ineffective due to lack of government oversight, healthcare being a profit driven industry, and misuse of taxes. This paper will focus on the ethicality of the high monthly membership of health insurance, the expensive cost of prescription medications, and health insurance companies dropping members from their coverage. Using various research from interviews, library databases, and websites, this paper will demonstrate the exorbitant cost of healthcare in the United States and the need for affordable and appropriate healthcare.

Veronika Papii

Faculty: Panteha Sanati, Liberal Studies and the Arts

Fight or Flee: The Ukrainian Dilemma

The invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2022, has led to significant migration, with over 271,000 Ukrainians seeking refuge in the United States through the “United for Ukraine” program. As they attempt to rebuild their lives in a new country, these refugees face numerous challenges including language barriers that complicate access to healthcare, education, and employment. Additionally, many refugees experience psychological trauma from the war, financial instability, housing difficulties, legal challenges, and issues with cultural adaptation. This paper explores the reasons why people are leaving their homeland, focusing on the demographics of refugees particularly the fact that approximately 90% are women and children, as men aged 18 to 60 are generally required to stay and fight. This study further examines the Americans’ perceptions of Ukrainian refugees and those who remain in Ukraine. Incorporating surveys conducted by organizations such as the Pew Research Center and Gallup, along with data from operational reports from Statista, UNICEF, and the Centre for Economic Strategy, this paper highlights the challenges Ukrainians face. Additionally, news articles and research from relevant sources are analyzed to provide broader insights into the refugee experience and public attitudes.

Mason Rose

Faculty: George Scala, Liberal Studies and The Arts

Literature of Resistance: Self-Determination During the Harlem Renaissance

Following the Great Migration to the Northeast from the Jim Crow era Southern United States, Black Americans were faced with the challenge of how best to articulate their unique experiences through their artistic works. Writers in close-knit neighborhoods like that of Harlem strived for the right to make their own choices, control their own destinies, and challenge institutionalized racism. Through close examination of works from Black authors such as Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston, it is clear how much variance of opinion there was in what the true “goal” of Black expression should be. Black works of fiction, poetry, music, and sociological critiques approached Black life from endless angles. Despite the efforts of the many-faceted movement, Eurocentric sensibilities still largely defined American culture, as well as the publishing houses. Because of the power white-owned enterprises had, the importance of white approval in Black art became a highly contested subject. Sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois favored conformity, proposing that classically educated Black men should give up their aspirations to project a favorable image of “the New Negro” [sic] in order to gain broader societal acceptance. Conversely, poet Langston Hughes supported the free and authentic expression of Blackness through the arts, regardless of what any person thought. Drawing on concepts from works created during the Harlem Renaissance, this paper will analyze Black literature from the perspective of self-determination—highlighting that the autonomous expression of the Black identity is inherently an act of resistance.

Charlie St. Germain

Faculty: Panteha Sanati, Liberal Studies and the Arts

Queer Representation in Media: Battling the Social and Political Stigmatizations

From as far back as the late 1800’s, media inclusion and representation of LGBT+ characters has grown and changed in many ways. With the use of media research, academic papers, and interviews with people who are knowledgeable in the field, this paper aims to break down the way that stereotypes, media tropes and legislation have impacted these characters’ positive and negative reception among both queer and non-queer consumers. One of these prominent tropes is known as Bury Your Gays, which treats queer characters as an object for shock value in storytelling, or to push the plot further for their non-queer counterparts. Exploring and comparing queer and non-queer examples in media around the late 1800’s to 2025, it stands to make a compelling argument for how the evolution of this perception has negatively impacted its current representation.

About Commonwealth Honors Program

In June 1997, the Board of Higher Education established a free-standing honors college of distinction at the University of Massachusetts Amherst called Commonwealth College. This organization has since approved Commonwealth Honors Programs at 24 public higher education institutions including community colleges, state colleges and all UMass institutions. As an accredited Commonwealth Honors Program institution, each semester Massasoit Community College’s honors students produce semester-long honors papers and projects. This booklet represents a portion of honors students’ research in abstract format and produced in various academic disciplines. Each of the abstracts in this collection describes an individual research project of students enrolled in Honors courses. The courses include Honors Seminar: Ethics and individual Honors Directed Studies.