Undergraduate Research Day Awards

2025 Awards

The Phi Beta Kappa Scholarship Awards for Excellence in the Liberal Arts are made possible by an endowment presented to the University of Wyoming Phi Beta Kappa chapter by Harald V. Johnson of Bensenville, Illinois. This endowment, in honor of Louise A. Lee Johnson is now used to support undergraduate students whose scholarship and research display excellence in the liberal arts. Mrs. Johnson participated in the University of Wyoming Phi Beta Kappa Chartering in its inaugural year of 1940. Today, the University of Wyoming is one of only 293 colleges and universities in America to meet the rigorous qualifications for hosting a chapter. This year, the members of the University of Wyoming Chapter are honored to be able to recognize undergraduate researchers who expertly weave together physical, intellectual, ethical and social issues in their research.

Past Research Day Awards

Gregory Barr, B.A. Music, English “Fantasy, Communal Storytelling, and Regeneration in Dungeons and Dragons”

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is a Tabletop Role Playing Game that has risen to relative fame in recent years. This phenomenon has arrived at a unique time in American History which coincides with the past of this game. As a fictional storytelling game, D&D participates in many of the tropes associated with the Fantasy Genre in the 1960s and 70s. As argued by J.R.R. Tolkien in On Fairy Stories, fantasy and the stories that utilize these tropes fulfill certain roles within society. These stories tell a culture of its origins and its identity while allowing for the reader to escape into an alternate world for a time. However, on returning to the, "real" world, the reader of the story takes the lessons learned with them. This creates an understanding of how the fantasy story informs the real world and is applicable therein. Because of D&D's use of fantasy tropes, it is able to participate in the same cycle of escape and return. The functions of fantasy are multitudinous, and they transfer over to the gameplay within Dungeons and Dragons. This project examines the connections between D&D and the Fantasy of authors such as Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and others in a hope to explain how and why D&D is uniquely suited to respond to times of cultural instability. It is the goal of this research to explain how D&D can pave the way to create new and meaningful fantasy stories while simultaneously acknowledging its origins to offer a place of both escape and regeneration for a modern audience.

Anne Custard, Psychology, Criminal Justice Instructing About Parole: An Analysis of the Effectiveness of Simmons Instruction in Real Word Capital Cases

Despite some indication that Simmons instructions can improve juror understanding of evidence, to our knowledge, no research has examined whether the presence of a Simmons instruction influences jurors' sentencing decisions. However, research on other death penalty jury instructions suggests that instructions can influence how jurors make their decisions. For example, mock jurors are less likely to return a death sentence in cases with prosecutorial misconduct when they receive a specific (versus general) instruction (Platania & Small, 2010). Similarly, mock jurors are less likely to return a death sentence when the defendant is Black and they read simple (versus standard) jury instructions (Mannes et al., 2018). Other research suggests that capital jury instructions that specifically address misconceptions about mitigating factors can significantly improve juror comprehension and correct misunderstandings (Otto et al., 2007). Therefore, a Simmons instruction could serve to reduce misconceptions about a capital defendant's parole eligibility and, in turn, reduce the likelihood of death sentences.
In this research, we will examine the relationship between the presence of a Simmons instruction and sentencing outcomes in real-world death penalty trials. Because most Arizona capital jury trials did not include a Simmons instruction until after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Lynch v. Arizona (2016), Arizona, provides a unique environment to examine the real-world effect of providing a Simmons instruction. At the conference, we will also present data from an experimental replication of the real-world data. We hypothesized that capital trials would be less likely to result in a death sentence if the jury was given a Simmons instruction (versus no Simmons instruction).

Anne Custard