Savit Scholars

UROP Celebrates the 2026 Savit Scholars

Timothy O'Neil — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:34:48 +0000

UROP Celebrates the 2026 Savit Scholars Timothy O'Neil Fri, 04/24/2026 - 11:34

UROP's Savit Scholars are recognized for projects that promise to push disciplinary boundaries and create space for creativity, expression and connection. We invite you to celebrate these inspiring students with us and read excerpts from their project proposals.

2026 Savit Scholars

Tia Egan

Stasis and Political Degeneration in Aristotle’s Politics V

Mentor: Mitzi Lee, Philosophy

Anna Mahlin

Fieldwork in Painting: Art and the Transformation of the Colorado Mountain Town

Mentor: Alvin Gregorio, Art & Art History

Katherine Murphy

Selective Fetishization: Japan, South Korea, and China in the American Imagination of East Asia

Mentor: Alison Hatch, A&S Honors Prog.

Ingrid Pehrson

Inland Mountain Communities Post-Hurricane: Material and Emotional Exploration

Mentor: Zannah Matson, Environ. Design

Stasis and Political Degeneration in Aristotle’s Politics V

The purpose of this project is to analyze Aristotle’s account of political degeneration in Politics, with a focus on his explanation of civil conflict, particularly the concept of stasis. It examines why even well-ordered states decline, what causes political degeneration, and whether such decline is inevitable or the result of specific institutional or moral failures. This project offers a philosophical treatment of Aristotle’s views on conflict, dissension, and civil war in Greek societies. While primarily interpretive, the project will evaluate whether what he says has contemporary relevance in relation to the problem of political stability and conflict prevention.

While Aristotle’s account of stasis in Book V of the Politics has been widely analyzed by scholars of Greek history and political thought, it has not been similarly explored within the field of ancient philosophy. I will review the current limited literature on stasis, and works such as Ernest Barker’s The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle which comment on ancient political thought more broadly. I will use this information to understand predominant discussions about Aristotle and stasis, and then provide a detailed analysis to give people a better understanding of Aristotle’s Book V of the Politics.

Fieldwork in Painting: Art & the Transformation of the Colorado Mountain Town

This project explores the transformation of Colorado mountain towns as amenity migration erodes local ethos, architecture, and character. By contrasting mining-era vernacular design with luxury developments through plein-air painting work, I will highlight the aesthetic shift from resident-centric to tourist-focused environments. Through interviews and journalistic entries, the project critiques the short-term rental crisis and the disparity between the cost of living and the Area Median Income (AMI). Synthesized into an exhibition, book, or digital platform, this body of work documents the unique identity of these rural communities while exposing the modern developmental struggles reshaping life in small-town Colorado.

Drawing on Justin Farrell’s "Billionaire Wilderness", this project analyzes the shifting culture of Colorado mountain communities, specifically how an influx of ultra-wealthy residents adopts rural aesthetics to perform a specific identity. Lucy Lippard’s "The Lure of the Local" provides a psychogeographical framework of the importance of art in the sense of place. My project will build upon these ideas, drawing upon my experience painting the natural and built environment throughout my Colorado upbringing. By studying these built environments, this creative project will highlight the structural move from a local, production-based economy toward one defined by tourism and consumption.

Selective Fetishization: Japan, South Korea, and China in the American Imagination of East Asia

This project examines why the United States fetishizes Japan and South Korea while demonizing China by analyzing shifts in American political, cultural, and media discourse. It argues that Cold War–era propaganda, U.S. strategic alliances, and cultural commodification has reshaped public memory, obscuring negative aspects of Korea and Japan, while casting China as a persistent communist threat. I'll be using propaganda, media analysis, popular culture trends, and original survey data, to reveal how these perceptions persist today. The benefit of this project is that it prompts a more historically grounded and nuanced understanding of East Asia, while exposing American sinophobia.

Scholarship on U.S. perceptions of East Asia has largely developed along separate national lines. This project's comparative approach analyzes negative perceptions of China in direct conjunction with the positive fetishization of Japan and Korea, rather than treating them in isolation. By tracing how U.S. propaganda, Cold War alliances, and popular culture have jointly shaped a hierarchical East Asian imaginary, the project contributes a more integrated explanation of contemporary American attitudes toward East Asia.

Inland Mountain Communities Post-Hurricane: Material and Emotional Exploration

This project investigates how flooding physically and emotionally reshapes inland mountain communities. After Hurricane Helene flooded my hometown of Asheville, NC, I began questioning the assumption that inland regions are protected from climate disasters and sought to examine how such events leave lasting traces in communities and landscapes. Through fieldwork in Asheville, NC and Johnson, VT, I will document material evidence of flooding—warped floors, sediment lines, damaged objects—while recording oral histories to understand how these remnants shape memory, attachment, and belonging. This research will culminate in a tactile installation exhibited in the ENVD Gallery and later in Asheville, NC.

This project draws from socially-engaged art and memory studies to connect people’s lived experiences of flooding with the spaces and materials that surround them. It draws on work such as Carolina Caycedo’s Water Portraits, which frame water as a living agent rather than a resource. In my past work, I have combined textiles, cyanotype, and architectural elements to create immersive environments. With a background in installations and community-engaged design, I work experimentally and collaboratively. In this project I will specifically contribute to a growing area of climate storytelling by amplifying the voices of inland communities often overlooked in environmental narratives.

Details

Since 2017, Savit Scholars have expanded the possibilities for performance art, opened new ways of thinking about apparel design, produced a stage play from the testimonies of military veterans, created more interactive virtual reality experiences, opened inclusive spaces for LGBTQ+ athletes at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, pushed boundaries in art, film and more! Savit Scholars are selected annually from among the pool of UROP Student Grant applicants.

Issue: 2026 Summer & 2026-27 Academic Year UROP Grants

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2026 Summer & 2026-27 Academic Year UROP Grants

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UROP Celebrates the 2025 Savit Scholars

Timothy O'Neil — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 05:20:00 +0000

UROP Celebrates the 2025 Savit Scholars Timothy O'Neil Thu, 04/24/2025 - 23:20

Savit Scholars are recognized for projects that promise to push disciplinary boundaries and create space for creativity, expression and connection in Boulder and beyond.

2025 Savit Scholars & Mentors

Ben
Forman

Disconnected: Life in a Digital Reality

Max Tkachenko

Political Corruption in the USSR: An Analysis of the Nomenklatura

Grace Thompson

Culturally informed care of indigenous-associated animal remains in museum collections

Mentor:
Erin Espelie,
Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

Mentor:
Anatasiya Osipova, Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures

Mentor:
William Taylor, Anthropology

Savit Scholars

Since 2017, Savit Scholars have expanded the possibilities for performance art, opened new ways of thinking about apparel design, produced a stage play from the testimonies of military veterans, created more interactive virtual reality experiences, opened inclusive spaces for LGBTQ+ athletes at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, pushed boundaries in art, film and more!

Student uses the stage, journalism to shine a light on veterans

"The Show" explores relationships through dance and digital technology

Culturally informed care of indigenous-associated animal remains in museum collections.

I will develop and begin to implement a protocol for the culturally informed care of animal remains within the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History by incorporating Native practices and understandings into how animals are stored across departments. In many Native American cosmologies, animals and humans are viewed as equals or relatives, but this is not reflected in museum collections, which are often under-inventoried and over-filled. With this project I hope to contribute to the crucial, ongoing work of decolonizing museum practices and recentering indigenous perspectives within collections and curatorial spaces.

Although the 1990 Native Graves and Repatriation Act provided legal backing for Native American Nations’ rights to indigenous funerary materials and human remains, animal remains have been largely excluded from the growing efforts within museums to collaborate with indigenous communities in the storage and preservation of their sacred and ceremonial materials. Animal remains from archaeological sites associated with Native Nations’ land or ancestors are often marked as zoological specimens and thus removed from the cultural context from which they originated. I hope to contribute to more recent work on this by developing an achievable protocol within the CU museum.

Disconnected: Life in a Digital Reality

America has a youth mental health crisis. The rates of adolescent-depression have skyrocketed. For teenage girls, self-harm is up 189%. Suicide, 169%. Most striking? These rises began when iPhones/social media became mainstream. Social media has transformed childhood, yet society still can't comprehend why. We might understand conceptually, but not experientially, how addictive algorithms, infinite scrolling, and 8+ hours of scrolling daily (average) have altered adolescence. Over a 45-minute documentary I’m producing, we’re illuminating a first-person narrative of what a technology-based childhood looks like, and how we can change it. We’ll be premiering in schools across the nation in September.

We’re inspired by the book The Anxious Generation, which chronicles how a phone-based childhood disrupted adolescence. This book propelled the digital advocacy movement forward, and the harrowing data of hospital admissions/anxiety disorders sent shivers around America. However, we aim to differentiate our film through the voices of Gen-Z and not the researchers who study them. We want our documentary to share our story, doing justice to a childhood that replaced free play and exploration with isolation and technology. Through vulnerability, we hope to build a narrative that our peers can point to, and say, “Yes, that’s how I grew up.”

Political Corruption in the USSR: An Analysis of the Nomenklatura

The goal of my honors thesis is to answer the question, how did corruption emerge in the so-called egalitarian society of the USSR? I argue the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin from 1928-53 fostered the rise of the Soviet elite, known as the nomenklatura, which systematically shaped a new form of oligarchy and corruption following the Russian Revolution. My purpose is to provide an understanding of systemic, institutionalized political corruption in Russia during the Soviet era. My research is important because I analyze the institutionalization of corruption, which helps scholars, students, and democracies understand how autocracy and oligarchy arise and perpetuate.

I am contributing to the literature on corruption and Stalinist subjectivity. "Intimacy and Terror: Soviet Diaries in the 1930s" contributes by collecting the personal diaries of some nomenklatura elites. My research is unique because I will put the diaries of these elites in dialogue to analyze the institutional mechanisms of the elite class they were a part of. Khlevniuk and Gorlizki's "Substate Dictatorship" contributes to the literature on networks of corruption. My research uses a similar historical, institutional framework, but uniquely analyzes the period from 1930 to WWII, using documents from State Archive Branch of the Security Services of Ukraine.

Issue: 2025 Summer & 2025-26 Academic Year UROP Grants

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Savit Scholars are recognized for projects that promise to push disciplinary boundaries and create space for creativity, expression and connection. We invite you to celebrate with us!

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2025 Summer & 2025-26 Academic Year UROP Grants

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