Honors

Environmental Health and the Community

This Praxis Lab explored how modern industrial life exposes individuals to toxic compounds from inception, with repercussions across all organ systems, including chromosomes, the very building blocks of life.

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The Valley as Laboratory: Steps Toward a Restorative Urbanism

In this Praxis Lab, students explored the ways cities, like our own, can thrive by focusing on their strengths and addressing underlying challenges. Using the city’s physiology as a metaphor, students diagnosed issues and developed solutions to restore vitality to local spaces, applying principles such as urban acupuncture and urban metabolism.

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Fueling Up

This Praxis Lab examined the science, engineering, policy, and societal impacts of energy systems, with a focus on balancing economic growth, environmental sustainability, and social equity.

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Globalization and inequality: Precarious lives in Utah

In a world shaped by deepening globalization and rising inequality, the divides between the super-rich and the rest of society have only widened. This Praxis Lab explored the intersection of these global trends with two local constituencies in the Salt Lake Valley: immigrants and poor white Utahans.

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Responsible AI

This Praxis Lab explored the ethical dilemmas and unintended consequences of AI across key domains, including bias and discrimination, radicalization and polarization, privacy and surveillance, environmental sustainability, and labor.

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Behaving Like Animals

This Praxis Lab explored the deep connections between humans and animals, challenging the traditional distinctions that set us apart. By tracing the historical roots of evolutionary theory and experimental physiology, students examined how our similarities and differences with other species shape our understanding of behavior, ethics, and identity.

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Bioethics

In 2005, ten Honors students convened in a Think Tank to consider the ethical implications of new genetic technologies. With the guidance of Dr. Ray Gesteland, Dr. Peggy Battin, and Utah’s leading geneticists, they explored dilemmas in genetic research and discussed how available science and technology might be ethically applied to benefit everyone.

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Quality of Life

This Think Tank Team spent a great deal of time outside of the classroom, visiting Wasatch Commons co-housing and the new Daybreak project, and documenting interviews with refugees through the International Rescue Committee.

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Crossing the Religious Divide

With a charge to understand and research the religious divide in Salt Lake City, a group of diverse Honors students developed a pilot program to give youth an interfaith experience during their formative years. Its purpose was to demonstrate the value of interfaith cooperation and communication when confronting differences with peers.

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