The senior honors thesis is an experience many Tufts students look forward to, as it offers an opportunity for in-depth research that can either be interdisciplinary or focused within one field. The thesis serves as a demonstration of students’ commitment to education and — for many — marks the final two semesters of being a Jumbo. From making documentaries about life experiences to producing a paper in a completely different language, senior theses vary tremendously and offer perspectives from many different fields and walks of life.
Ethan Sims
For graduating senior Ethan Sims, putting together a senior thesis became a tribute to his grandmother. Drawing upon his major in film and media studies and minor in Spanish, Sims constructed a documentary about his grandmother who lives with macular degeneration — a disease characterized by the progressive loss of vision and eventual blindness — to shed light on the challenges present in her life. Through outlining the highlights of her day-to-day life, Sims intends to transform a medical condition into a narrative of resilience.
“I hope it sheds some light on what it’s like to be old and lose a sense like that,” Sims said. “[You] get a lot of autonomy taken from you at a time when you’re already losing autonomy just because of old age. … So I just [want to] portray that in an honest way … without … washing over any things that should be brought to light.”
With his newfound knowledge about filmmaking, Sims envisions a path where filmmaking serves as a form of health advocacy. Through this medium, he hopes to create a sense of community for those suffering in silence, as well as use documentaries as a platform for education and personal motivation.
“I just love telling people’s stories or helping them tell their own story,” Sims said. “[My future goals are] sharing information and making others that deal with [illness] feel less alone, but also for people that don’t have it, so they can better understand what it’s like.”
Kaatje Welsh
Child study and human development major and graduating senior Kaatje Welsh’s thesis draws on how creators of children’s media use various textual, auditory and visual elements to influence children’s imagination and creativity. Using works from authors like Ebony Thomas, she addresses the issue of representation of African Americans in children’s television.
“[Part of the thesis] is focused on how creators of children’s television could use the framework of Afrofuturism to help positively influence Black and Brown children’s imagination [and] creativity,” Welsh said, noting that the lack of Black characters in media could lead to potential self-esteem issues.
Welsh uses her artistic portion to envision a future where children of color don’t perceive themselves as “mythical creatures,” but rather as meaningful members of society. By pitching a children’s television show of her own, Welsh uses personal experience to appeal to multiple different audiences and normalize imaginative media for all children.
“As a little brown girl myself, thinking about the kind of media that I would have wanted to see when I was growing up that I wasn’t able to see, is what I was thinking about with the artistic component,” Welsh said. “It would follow the storytelling of Afro-Caribbean mythology, [which is] really interesting to me because my mom is Trinidadian.”
Mason Rauch
Another thesis tackling representation is that of graduating senior Mason Rauch, who drew on his biopsychology and French majors to raise awareness about mental health perceptions in France — entirely in French.
As a Massachusetts native and part-time resident of Paris during his junior year, Rauch draws upon the idea of “le bovarysme” — or the idealization of life — that overlaps with contemporary understandings of bipolar disorder to discuss the increasing relevance of mental health from a psychological and psychiatric standpoint. To Rauch, his thesis is not just a paper, but also a narrative of the evolving role of mental health in France.
“Mental health is a really important topic and I think it’s something that we’re increasingly talking more about in society,” Rauch said. “It’s just important to have more resources and literature out there about mental health because … there’s always going to be more to explore … and [it’s] something that’s continually growing and … being talked about more.”
As Rauch noted in his research, the modern world has taken on a “broader sense of what mental health means,” and Rauch leaves his audience with a question to consider in future research related to the field.
Rauch intends to spend his career influencing perceptions of mental health in the medical field. While he isn’t certain he will live full-time in France, he hopes to practice there for at least some period of time.
“My goal is to at least spend some more time in France — I don’t know if that would be as a practicing counselor or psychiatrist,” Rauch said. “But I definitely hope that I can take what I’ve learned from this project and use it theoretically [as] a future psychiatrist or physician.”
Samantha Hirianto
Graduating senior Samantha Hirianto, completing majors in psychology and child study and human development and minors in dance and food systems and nutrition, uses her thesis to explore how usage of AI chatbots influences human loneliness. Hirianto brings diverse perspectives to the issue to shed light on patterns of isolation frequently overlooked by society.
Hirianto found that human vulnerability is often reinforced by AI chatbots, which are designed not to challenge human assumptions or disagree with user prompts. As chatbot use expands, this vulnerability extends beyond adolescents to a wider population.
“These social chatbots kind of feed into your rumination and these negative thoughts,” Hirianto said. “It’s definitely permeated throughout teenagers, but now more so towards adults and these parasocial relationships. And it’s found [that] this whole thing created so much fear.”
Hirianto’s interest in this subject was sparked by a devastating story of a young boy who ended his life after being influenced by a social chatbot. This case evolved into the first lawsuit in a U.S. federal court accusing an AI chatbot of contributing to a user’s death of and raised questions that guided Hirianto’s research on the relationship between mental health and AI use.
“What I want to know [is] whether empirical articles can hold up — do they actually have a correlation?,” Hirianto said. “Where does this all come from? There’s definitely a gap, [and] it’s so frustrating because there’s so little research … happening.”
Hirianto plans to remain in the field of psychology and expand her knowledge of adolescents in relation to digital wellness. She plans to pursue a fifth-year master’s degree in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study & Human Development and is applying for an internship at the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital. She plans to remain at Tufts and in the Boston area to gain further experience.
After a year of research, conversations and intellectual immersion, the seniors concluded their theses with defense presentations. With much deliberation underlying these projects, extensive guidance and advice was provided to formulate their projects into ones that would serve them for life. Despite the range of topics and disciplines represented, the four seniors agreed on one key piece of advice for future thesis writers.
“You have to find a topic that pulls you in,” Hirianto said. “It has to be either something urgent, something personal or something that’s just meaningful for you. Because at the end, no matter how much you like that topic, you will get sick of it by the end of the thesis.”
This advice serves as the final takeaway from the Class of 2026 as they prepare for graduation. By grounding their work in urgency and passion, they demonstrate that the senior thesis is ultimately a trial run for navigating the complexities of the real world.
