History & Purpose
The Mould Senior Thesis Award recognizes excellence in research, creative endeavor or impact in one senior thesis each year. The award was established by the family of Dr. William A. Mould, the first dean of the South Carolina Honors College, to commemorate his legacy. Bill helped craft the Honors College in its earliest days and was a driving force behind the senior thesis requirement, believing that it was the ideal capstone experience for bright, eager young minds. One student completing a thesis in the current academic year is recognized at May Revocation and receives a $1,000 award.
Nominate a Student Thesis
Students are nominated by their thesis directors, and the winning thesis is selected by a committee within the Honors College. The award is presented at spring Revocation each year; however, any student completing their thesis within the current academic year can be nominated.
2024-2025 Mould Award Winner
Each year, Honors College students develop and present an array of outstanding research and creative or applied projects. Selecting the very best out of some 400 projects each year is challenging, to say the least. Through the generosity of the Mould family, we recognized one outstanding thesis projects at the May 2025 Revocation.
Samuel Maloney (B.S. Economics/B.S. Mathematics) addressed an urgent social and public health concern in his senior thesis — opioid addiction. Specifically, he explored whether decisions not to prosecute drug use and related crimes removed barriers to seeking addiction treatment and reduced the number of opioid-related drug overdoses. As noted by his thesis director, Dr. Christina Andrews, “no one has looked at the effect of decriminalization policies on a major intended outcome: reduction in drug-related overdoses. As such, Mr. Maloney's study represents a novel contribution to the scientific literature that has important implications for policy.” Moreover, he “planned and executed an ambitious effort” to hand collect data related to decriminalization efforts and merge this with large-scale datasets on opioid-related overdoses and deaths to conduct his analysis. Dr. Andrews described Sam as “enthusiastic, intellectually curious and very driven ... He has demonstrated an impressive grasp of economic and social theory, particularly for such an early stage in his career.”
Sam is pursuing a Ph.D. in economics at Northwestern University and continuing to ask compelling research questions. You can read more about his thesis here.
2024-2025 Finalists
Esther Adelson, Chemistry & Mathematics
Tunable Photoisomerization Kinetics in Photochromic Metal-Organic Frameworks
Directed by Natalia Shustova
Daniel Burnett, Public Health
Rad51D Splice and Allelic Variant Interactions with the Paraspeckle Proteins
Directed by Douglas Pittman
Peter Caldwell, International Studies & Geography
“Could It Be Cold War?” Exploring Geopolitical Competition Between the U.S. and China
in the South Pacific
Directed by Robert Kopack
Thomas Greene, History
Black Power: The Struggle for Voting Rights in Mississippi, 1960–1966
Directed by Patricia Sullivan
Past Mould Award Winners
Read about our past Mould Senior Thesis Award winners since 2017.