Students given awards for undergraduate research

Winners of the Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award were honored at a small reception held in Western Libraries Special Collections on Friday, June 5, 2015, during which Dean of Libraries Mark Greenberg publicly recognized each student for their work and presented the awardees with their award certificates. Also in attendance were members of the 2015 Undergraduate Research Award review committee, friends and family members of each of the award-winning students, and the students’ faculty mentors.

Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award is given annually to three Western Washington University undergraduate students in recognition of their excellence and originality in creating research papers for courses taught across the colleges based on significant inquiry using library resources and collections. Each winner of the Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award receives a certificate, a cash award of $500.00, and publication of their prize-winning paper in Western CEDAR, Western Washington University’s institutional repository.

Award applicants must demonstrate outstanding library research in the writing of their research papers, and winners are selected by an award review committee consisting of a variety of faculty members from Western Libraries and other disciplines at Western. Members of the 2015 award review committee included: Jeanne Armstrong (Libraries), Javier Berzal de Dios (Art), Amanda Eurich (History), Margaret Fast (Western Libraries), and Jeff Purdue (Western Libraries).

The three 2014-2015 winners listed with their paper titles and faculty mentors are:

Andrew Hoffman
Title: Computational Chemistry in Rational Material Design for Organic Photovoltaics
Mentor:  Tim Kowalczyk, Assistant Professor, Chemistry

Corena Sharp
Title: Responding to Sex Workers’ Rights as Workers’ Rights: Reducing Sex Trafficking in the Dominican Republic
Mentor:  Babafemi Akinrinade, Associate Professor of Human Rights, Fairhaven College

Ashley Weyers
Title: Taking Back Birth: Alternative Birth Professionals Empowering Women in Childbirth
Mentor:  Jen Lois, Professor of Sociology

Congratulations to these three remarkable students for all of their accomplishments! To learn more about Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award, contact Jeanne.Armstrong@wwu.edu or Margaret.Fast@wwu.edu.