College Library’s Research Award Winners!

April 11, 2014
Undergraduate Symposium 2014
Undergraduate Symposium 2014

The annual Undergraduate Symposium showcases undergraduate research, achievements, creativity, service-learning and other scholarly activities from all areas of study at UW–Madison including the humanities, fine arts, biological sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences. The 2014 Symposium took place yesterday, April 10th, showcasing hundreds of sessions, project displays, and posters, and ending with a reception.

College Library offers Library Research Awards to celebrate excellence and creativity in undergraduate library research. The awards were developed to recognize the part of the research process that includes such efforts as seeking primary sources or conducting a comprehensive review of secondary literature to inform a research project.

Natanya Russek with her award-winning poster
Natanya Russek, 2014 Library Research Award Recipient, with her poster

The Undergraduate Research Awards selection committee selected two students to receive awards this year. The recipients are Natanya Russek for her research on inflammatory cell infiltration following a stroke and Brittany Cobb for her research on the 1914 meeting of the Society of American Indians that took place at UW-Madison.

Natanya Russek worked with faculty mentor Dr. Matthew Jensen, Associate Professor of Neurology in the School of Medicine and Public Health, on a project entitled, “Histological Quantification of Inflammatory Cell Infiltration after Focal Cerebral Infraction: A Systematic Review.” Natanya used several library databases to find studies relevant to her research and developed criteria for inclusion in the review. She then worked with Dr. Jensen to identify the most important methods to highlight for their review. Her work was published in the International Journal of Neuroscience in August of 2013. Dr. Jensen wrote this about Natanya’s research: “Natanya demonstrated her creativity by iteratively crafting a tailored literature search strategy with guidance from research librarians, and she organized and presented her data and conclusions in a clear, informative, and nuanced manner.”

Brittany Cobb, 2014 Undergraduate Research-in-Progress Award Recipient
Brittany Cobb, 2014 Undergraduate Research-in-Progress Award Recipient

Brittany Cobb received the Research-in-Progress Award for her work with faculty mentor Dr. Larry Nesper of the Anthropology Department for her research on the 1914 meeting of the Society of American Indians that took place at UW–Madison. Brittany worked with librarians in the Wisconsin Historical Society to comb through historic newspapers, ancestry databases, and probate records in order to write biographies about some of the people that attended the meeting. Dr. Nesper wrote that Brittany’s “research skills are growing more acute and her intuitions about the lives of Indian people at the turn of the century more developed.”

Congratulations to the two winners for their excellent work!

College Library's Research Award Winners!
College Library’s Research Award Winners!

Campus librarians on the award committee used the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Information Literacy Standards as the main criteria for assessing the applications for the awards. Now in its seventh year, the Undergraduate Research Awards have become an integral part of and will continue to be offered in conjunction with the Undergraduate Symposium. Kelli Hughes, of College Library, led the review committee, which included: Janice Rice from College Library, Lia Vellardita from Ebling Library, Jessica Newman and Lisa Wettleson from Steenbock Library, and Troy Reeves from the University Archives.

If interested in the full listing of undergraduate projects, check out the 2014 Undergraduate Symposium Program.

For more information about the Library Research Awards, check out College Library.