2016 Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award winners announced
Here at Western, undergraduate students have unparalleled access to research opportunities supported by faculty mentors. Western Libraries views the research work of undergraduate students as being tremendously valuable, both in terms of the teaching and learning experience the research process creates, and also because of the research outputs students themselves generate.
Winners of this year’s Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award were honored at a small reception in the library at the Research-Writing Studio on Friday, June 3, 2016, during which Dean of Libraries Mark Greenberg publicly recognized the award-winning students and presented each awardee with a certificate. Also in attendance were friends and family members of the award-winning students, the students’ faculty mentors, and members of the 2016 Undergraduate Research Award review committee.
Every spring, a review committee consisting of a variety of faculty members from the Libraries and other departments at Western selects from among the submissions three papers which demonstrate excellence in the creation of research papers for courses taught across the colleges. Papers must be based on significant inquiry using library resources and collections, and they must demonstrate originality or the potential to lead to subsequent original research.
This year was a little unusual because for the very first time, one of the award-winning submissions was actually written by a team of students. Four students in the Community Health major in the Department of Health and Human Development created a program plan called “Preventing Anorexia in Adolescents through Empowerment and Education (PAATEE).”
Members of the first group to ever win the Libraries Undergraduate Research Award
“The paper is reflection of how group and collaborative work are becoming more common,” explained librarian and review committee member Elizabeth Stephan. “Together with the other papers by Rachel Redjou and Marissa Hall, this year’s winners are excellent examples of the different formats research-based writing can take.”
Each of the six winners received a cash award, a printed certificate, and publication of their prize-winning paper in Western CEDAR, Western Washington University’s institutional repository.
Publishing the research papers in Western CEDAR makes them available to anyone in the world, enabling students to contribute to the scholarship of their chosen fields while also participating in the growing global movement to provide open access to scholarship and creative works. You can find the winning papers at this link: http://cedar.wwu.edu/library_researchaward/.
