Western Libraries Announces 2016-17 Undergraduate Research Award Winners

May 17, 2017

Winners of this year’s Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award will be honored at a small reception in the library on June 9, during which Dean of Libraries Mark Greenberg will publicly recognize the award-winning students and present each awardee with a certificate. Friends, family members of the award-winning students, the students’ faculty mentors, and members of the 2016-2017 Undergraduate Research Award review committee will also be invited.

This year's winners are:

  • Christina Becker,  "Framing the Frat Boy: an analysis of frames used in coverage of campus rape by The New York Times," (Faculty Mentor: Brian J. Bowe, Journalism).
  • Nicole Carroll, "A New Look at the Constitutional Convention and State Ratifying Conventions: How Reason and Interest Played a Role," (Faculty Mentor: Johann Neem, History).
  • Jeffrey Guptil, "The Grammaticalization of because in Standard English," (Faculty Mentor: Janet Xing, Linguistics).

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. 

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. 

Congratulations to this year's winners on their excellent work and their award-winning research!