One thing you should never ask a senior is how their thesis or capstone project is going. While they are incredibly passionate about their work, they’re also undoubtedly stressed and juggling a large workload. This week, however, The Argus did just that. We sat down with two seniors: Emily Hauser ’25, who is working on a thesis for the University major, and Sarah Schlosberg ’25 who is working on a capstone project for the University major. 

The University major program is quite unique as it allows students to create their own program of study. This means that students in the major can explore many of their academic interests in an interdisciplinary way. While the major doesn’t require students to complete a capstone project, many students choose to complete one. 

For Schlosberg, the capstone project was a way to synthesize her studies in applied design and society, where she has learned about how humans interact with their physically designed environment. This led to her capstone, an urban design project, and an amalgamation of the many concepts she’s been learning about for the major. She’s now designing a bus shelter in the Seaport district of Boston.

Schlosberg explained what the capstone process looks like for the major. 

“It’s really an open-ended project,” Schlosberg said. “So a lot of it was up to me, what I wanted to do, and what I wanted the final project to look like was totally up to me, as long as my advisor approves it, and we’re in agreement.”

Schlosberg stressed how this project allowed her to weave physical design into her curiosity about human interaction.

“I wanted to think about how to design a third place where someone didn’t have to pay to be there, but it was still an informal gathering spot that was built into the greater scheme of the city,” Schlosberg said. 

This question ultimately led her to researching transportation.

“I chose the bus stop because my research led me to the question of how certain areas of Boston, such as the Seaport District—which is a very wealthy, very white district—are very difficult to access by public transportation,” Schlosberg said. “I ultimately landed on the transportation lens because I wanted to think about mobility across Boston, so I’m thinking of a bus shelter and how it can be built into the design of the Seaport as it is now, to think about how the Seaport can be more inclusively designed moving forward. So that is kind of…the interdisciplinary nature of my approach to doing this.”

While Schlosberg’s topic of choice has long been important to her, her interest in urban design is relatively new.

“I think my freshman self would be surprised by my fascination with urban design, because urban design was kind of a foreign topic to me,” Schlosberg said. “Freshman year, I didn’t really know what it was or how interested in it I would become. I just knew that I was interested in making things. But I didn’t want to just be making things. I also wanted to be really conscious about the human interaction component of it, and think about how humans are perceiving it. So I guess that my freshman-year self would be surprised that it’s an urban design project.”

Hauser, on the other hand, is a math major and a pre-medicine student. The University major program allowed her to pursue honors in general scholarship.

“So if you are a University major, and you want to write a thesis, you would apply to do honors in general scholarship,” Hauser said. “That is not what I’m doing, because I actually do have a major. I’m a math major. But the other candidate for…honors in general scholarship project is someone who wants to pursue a thesis that is not related to the department of their major—that’s me—and you propose your thesis, and you get your department head to explain that their department cannot support the work that you’re doing because it’s not related, and you get a letter of support from a mentor, and then you write out a proposal of what you’re going to do, because it’s got your guidelines on it.”

This project was a continuation of a research project that Hauser had been working on this summer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Hauser was working in the pediatrics department, assisting physicians in creating a cardiac data registry to track and understand medical trends in babies with congenital heart disease.

“I was paired with two physicians at the hospital who are really interested in infants with congenital heart disease,” Hauser said. “[We were] mostly looking at delivery room care, which is about the first 20 minutes of a baby’s life, and what kind of care they’re getting, what kind of interventions they need, based on what they know the diagnosis is. And then we’re also looking at prenatal info, what’s Mom’s history and stuff like that.”

For her thesis, Hauser will take her work from this summer and bring it together in a more accessible way.

“The primary part of the project is consolidation of data and making this database, which it’s interesting that it doesn’t exist already, because it’s an important thing to track, and then to do a little bit of analysis on the patterns in the delivery room,” Hauser said. “The hope is that it will help with preparation for care, so that the team that’s going to be there during delivery knows what to expect.”

Hauser reflected that her freshman self would be quite shocked by her thesis topic. Prior to this summer, she was planning on doing a math capstone project, and it was only when she started her summer research project that she started to shift ideas. 

“I really love my math major,” Hauser said. “I always knew I wanted honors in some form, and the only way that I could do that was going to be through math. And then when I was like, ‘Oh, there’s this whole other road that you can take,’ which is really cool, especially if your major doesn’t necessarily match the thing that you want to do career-wise, which is a little bit of an odd position to be in. So I did not think there would be an opportunity for me to do this, and there is.”

Overall, the University major continues to be a great way for students, both within the major and outside of the major, to design and pursue their own unique course of study that intersects and aligns with their passions and interests.

Arya Dansinghani can be reached at adansinghani@wesleyan.edu.