“Capstone” is a word often heard in the halls of SLU — yet most of us never learn about the content of these important student projects. With the help of professors and students, and support of department chairs, we’re changing that today. What follows is simply an overview, but it’s plenty intriguing at that. We look forward to continuing Capstone Coverage in semesters to come. What follows are project titles from two classes (Urban Studies B.A. and M.A.) and abstracts from a third (Labor Studies M.A.). Take a look!
Urban Studies B.A. Capstone Titles
Associate Professor of Urban Studies Kafui Attoh
- PACS on Attack: Political Spending in Local and National Elections, by Rashawn Donovan
- Criminal Justice Reform on Rikers Island, by Dionne Ellis
- New York City Department of Education Policy Response to Student Mental Health During the Covid-19 Pandemic, by Latoya Fisher
- Fact or Figment: The Migrant Crisis in NYC, by Garret Gebhardt
- Unraveling 55 Years of Inequality and Community Resilience in Hunt’s Point, by Dajon Griffin
- What is the Relationship Between College Success and Cultural Capital? by Herby Phanord
- How the NYC DOE Fails Students with Special Needs: Racial Inequalities, Financial Barriers, and the Struggle Families Face to Secure Private School Placement, by Nelly Rodriguez
Urban Studies M.A. Capstone Titles
Adjunct Associate Professor Dianne Ramdeholl
- The Uberization of Gentrification: How For-Hire Vehicle Platforms Extend and Accelerate Gentrification, by Conor Anstett
- Social-Emotional Learning Programs and Pervasive Agency-Wide Racism: An Examination of Persistent Viewpoints Despite Agency Remediation, by Cheryl Apicella
- Hidden Roads: Combating the Underrepresentation of Black Women in Leadership Roles at NYC-DOT, by Natasha Bartley
- From American Dream to Financial Nightmare: Black Women’s Crisis In Higher Education and the Labor Market, by Luciana Bell
- Disinvestment and the Detrimental Effects on the Black Community: Hurdles That Residents of Brownsville and East New York Endure to Attain Nutrient-Rich Food Options, by Dejanira Budansingh
- Social-Emotional Security and Structural Context: How Teachers Respond to Conflict Across NYS Schools, by Dennis Dias
- Equity in Reform: Examining the Impact of Cannabis Legalization, by Alon Fouks
- From Band-Aid Solutions to Mutual-Aid Solutions: Embedding Solidarity and Democracy Within Nonprofits, by Amy French
- Snack, Sandwich or Shelter — Which Can We Skip Today: An In-Depth Look at Single Mothers in Rent-Burdened New York, by Tessa Jones
- Hudson Yards: A Legalized Robbery, by N M Esa A. Khan
- Pathways to Equity: Intersecting Perspectives on Psychedelic Therapy and Health Disparities Among Latinas with Alcohol Use Disorder in Jackson Heights, Queens — An Exploratory Review of Perspectives from Medical and Indigenous Practitioners, by Myra Machado
- Reimagining Reproductive Care: The Role of Radical Birth Workers in Reclaiming Body Autonomy, by Deepti Panuganti
Labor Studies M.A. Capstone Abstracts
Adjunct Assistant Professor Marianne LeNabat
Tight Labor Markets and Exploitation: Is there a correlation between labor market conditions and wage theft?
By Matthew Brunner
Does the occurrence of wage theft during tight labor markets conform to the prevailing expectations that tight labor markets are good for workers? Economists have found that workers have it better when the labor market is tight, when the number of vacant jobs is greater than the number of unemployed workers searching for work. It is expected that workers will tend to experience better wages, more opportunities, and an increase in bargaining power.
In my paper, I review theories of unemployment, tight labor markets, competition, exploitation, and crisis to provide context for regression analyses that assess if the rate of labor market tightness is a predictor to the number and impact of minimum wage and overtime violations. After assessing the correlation across 19 major industrial sectors, I find that more than half of the sectors have a mild to moderate correlation indicating that during periods of market conditions which are generally believed to be positive to workers, the occurrence and impact of wage theft increases.
Work, Train, Transition: Exploring How Participants View the Effectiveness of NYC’s Parks Opportunity Program
By Melissa Charley
My capstone looks at how short-term employment programs work for people trying to find full-time permanent jobs in New York City. I focused on the NYC Parks Opportunity Program (POP), which offers seasonal jobs, job training, and career coaching to New Yorkers who are having a hard time getting into the workforce.
I surveyed current POP workers to hear directly about their experiences. Most shared positive feedback, over 90% rated the program positively, and everyone said they felt more prepared to find a job after going through the program. But even with this support, only half of the people surveyed said they found employment before their exit date from POP.
This research affirms my belief that workforce development programs need to do more than just train people, most importantly they need to connect them to real opportunities. Programs like POP are doing important work, but there’s still room for growth. Since the program is run by a city agency, and the city has so many unfilled vacancies, there is the potential to better connect participants to permanent city jobs through programs like POP.
Austerity Politics and the 1994 Legal Aid Strike
By David Diaz
My paper analyzes a short but significant episode in the history of New York City’s public defenders’ union, the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys (AALA), the 1994 Legal Aid strike, and the history of austerity politics in New York City. Though the strike only lasted two days, this episode was full of historical significance in that it pitted a Republican mayor, Rudy Giuliani, who represented a backlash politics that reshaped New York City, against a relatively small union of public defenders.
I will show how Guiliani’s hardline tactics against the Legal Aid Society and the union was part of a broader context of austerity; that is, a neoliberal urban governance regime that prioritized balancing the city’s budget, servicing the city’s debt, slashing public services and redistributive policies, increasing policing and keeping down labor costs. At the same time, despite the difficult circumstances the union faced, the strike’s outcome had some unexpected consequences for the Legal Aid Society and the union’s labor relations and political advocacy. Using a Players and Arenas framework of analysis, I will describe the day-to-day interactions of the strike’s players within the structural constraints of the Society’s and the union’s locations within the New York City court system.
Below the line: How industry restructuring impacts labor processes and power in film and television work
By Hannah Faris
Since the turn of the millennium, the U.S. film and television industry has undergone several significant shifts, transforming the ways in which movies and television shows get financed, made and distributed. Chief among these shifts are waves of intense corporate restructuring and a production boom in the 2010s brought about by the rise of streaming services — and that boom’s eventual bust. These are changes felt acutely by the industry’s behind-the-scenes workers, some 46,000 people in the New York area alone spanning a wide range of professions, but the on-the-ground experience of these shifts have so far invited little academic research.
This qualitative research seeks to address some of those gaps by exploring how these shifts are illuminated by the changing working and bargaining experiences shared by 15 behind-the-scenes workers, better known in the industry as “below the line” crew. Workers discuss decades of production speed-ups, increased workloads, huge influxes in membership, and an industry teetering on the edge of crisis as producers increasingly move work overseas in search of saving money.
Building to Scale, Scaling to Win: Testing Social Pressure Direct Mail in Mobilizing Low-Propensity Union Voters in NYC
By Lucia Gomez
Labor unions have historically played a powerful role in electoral politics, especially with ensuring their members get out and vote. In New York City, union density requires greater resources to do that. With limited resources, a more strategic and cost-effective approach to electoral engagement is needed. This study explores the potential of social pressure direct mail as a scalable tool to boost voter turnout among low-propensity union members in NYC. Through a randomized controlled experiment of 7,600 union member voters, the New York City Central Labor Council tested whether social pressure messaging in direct mail can outperform traditional mail versus no outreach at all. In analyzing the results after the 2024 General Election, there was no uptick in voting of those who received either the social pressure or a traditional mail piece. On the contrary, the control group that received no mail had a 1.5% greater turnout than the others. Nevertheless, the experiment offered valuable insights into the cost effectiveness and the challenges of using alternative GOTV strategies.
Base Coat, Top Coat: Lessons from Two Generations of Nail Salon Organizing in New York, 2005-2024
By Prarthana Gurung
This paper analyzes two major nail salon worker organizing campaigns in New York from 2005-2024. It compares the successful 2015 “Nail Salon Bill of Rights” campaign, which was catalyzed by a New York Times exposé, with the legislatively unsuccessful 2022 “All Hands In” campaign that sought to establish a sectoral bargaining council. While both campaigns chose legislative aims to move worker demands, I interviewed nearly a dozen worker leaders and organizers involved in the campaigns to understand what the people involved in these fights saw as losses, wins and learnings from the organizing over two decades.
The research identifies four key themes shared across both campaigns and generations of nail salon organizing: 1) legislation is a tool for change but not an end goal, 2) campaigns must balance strategic and planned organizing and also be prepared to leverage unexpected opportunities, 3) nail salons sit at complex intersections of gender, race, and labor politics, and 4) effective worker organizing requires authentic movement building, leadership development, addressing immediate needs alongside structural changes, and navigating ethnic and linguistic diversity. Despite the legislative failure of the second campaign, both initiatives significantly advanced worker empowerment and industry standards while creating transformational organizing models for immigrant women workers.
Examining Outcomes for the Theatrical Workforce Development Program
By Jennifer Halpern
This study assesses the extent to which the Theatrical Workforce Development Program, which is vocational training for under-represented theater technicians, has empowered its graduates to sustain careers in a racially homogenous and competitive field.
The history of craft unionism broadly, and of IATSE Local One, the union representing stagehands in New York City’s major live events venues, on matters of equity and diversity, provides a foundation for understanding the industry in which the TWDP is situated.
Using qualitative and quantitative methods, the research finds that while 59 out of 75 graduates are employed theater technicians, their jobs are overwhelmingly non-union, which presents challenges to career longevity in a freelance industry in which union membership offers workers increased stability and security.
Ensuring Worker Safety in NYC Municipal Call Centers: A Pandemic Response Case Study
By Yendi King
The COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted New York City, exposing systemic failures in workplace safety and preparedness. This paper focuses on the experiences of call center employees in city agencies, who were required to work in person under unsafe conditions. Delays in distributing protective equipment, poor ventilation, lack of remote work options, and inadequate union support left many workers vulnerable. Interviews revealed that all but two participants contracted the virus. Employees also faced financial strain due to PPE purchases and increased commuting costs. Despite being essential, many felt neglected. Their accounts underscore the need for proactive health policies, improved infrastructure, and stronger labor advocacy to protect frontline workers. Lessons learned can guide more equitable emergency responses in the future.
From the Front Line to the Picket Line:
Healthcare Worker Organizing After the COVID-19 Pandemic
By Katie Levitt
The COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating effect on healthcare workers. Working on the frontlines of a deadly global catastrophe, healthcare workers were forced to work in brutal and life-threatening conditions. The pandemic also revealed how under-prepared and under-resourced our vital health systems had become. Healthcare workers faced the increasingly detrimental impacts of the profit-driven healthcare system, leading to deteriorating standards of care, rationing of preventive services, and work compression. By exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic affected healthcare worker organizing, I hoped to provide insight into how to increase union density within this vital industry. To illustrate this, I aimed to provide a case study detailing the 2023 strike of resident physicians at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, New York.
Through my research I found that the pandemic had a huge effect on healthcare worker organizing in the Elmhurst residents strike in 2023 because it revealed existing disparities. Each of my interview subjects stated that the pandemic was central to this bargaining campaign.
Organizing Rideshare Drivers: Examining the Impacts of Massachusetts Ballot Question 3
By Pat McCann
In 2024, a ballot question passed in Massachusetts that allowed rideshare drivers the right to unionize. Now, a half-year after that legislation has passed, I speak to organizers involved with that campaign to learn about what they think are possible ramifications from this ballot question’s passing. Through comparative case studies and interviews with those involved on the ground, the question of organizing a precarious labor field is explored, as we try to figure out what this ballot question will do to the future of labor organizing and legislation.
Knowledge and Perception: Exploring the relationship between union awareness and support for organized labor
By Julia Smith
I examined how knowledge about labor unions influences public perception and support for organized labor. I aimed to highlight the importance of labor education by pointing out economic and political challenges that have weakened organized labor. This project was personal because of my firsthand experience at Waldbaum Supermarket my senior year of high school. When the company filed for bankruptcy and offered employee buyouts, I saw many coworkers struggle, unaware of how their union could help them. This knowledge gap left them vulnerable, unable to advocate for themselves effectively. That experience shaped my commitment to labor education, showing me how understanding union protections empowers workers and strengthens collective action.
My findings revealed that individuals with greater awareness of the roles labor unions play such as collective bargaining, wage negotiation, and workplace protections were more likely to support union membership and labor policies. Additionally, exposure to labor education and firsthand experience with union activities significantly shaped positive perceptions. The results emphasized the importance of expanding labor education to strengthen union advocacy, improve worker solidarity, and counteract misconceptions that weaken labor movements.
A Fork in the Road: Tech Workers Organizing Around Layoffs
By Kaarthika Thakker
Between 2022-2024, over 500,000 workers were laid off in the tech industry, coinciding with a wave of workplace organizing within the tech industry: Kickstarter United was formed in 2020, Alphabet Workers Union was formed in January 2021, and The New York Times Tech Guild was formed in April 2021. Through interviews with 14 workers and analysis of internal and external union documentation, I look at what factors affect how a layoff impacts worker organizing in the tech industry.
I found that the size of the layoff relative to the size of the company impacts how devastating layoffs are to worker organizing. Loss of worker leaders also leads to a slowdown in organizing. The level of organization and trust between workers also impacts their ability to fight a layoff. I looked at 10 different workplaces, and each workplace had a “win” from organizing around their layoff. While Elon Musk is currently exporting his layoff tactics developed at Twitter (one of the workplaces I studied) to the federal government, we as a labor movement should think about how we relate to mass layoffs.