Library Research Awards Announced
Two undergraduate library research awards were presented by Raina Bloom of College Library at the Undergraduate Symposium at Union South on Thursday, April 14. This year’s award recipients are Misty Kabasa for her research on age, gender, and sociolinguistic variation in American English and Hana Sleiman for her research on HPV and anal tumors in mice.
The Undergraduate Library Research Awards were developed to recognize the aspects of the research process that involve the 40+ libraries on the UW-Madison campus. They celebrate students’ exceptional work in campus libraries and the thorough, thoughtful, and creative engagement students make with print materials, online resources, and library staff. This year, the committee received many excellent applications from Symposium students. The Undergraduate Library Research Awards Committee assessed the applications using a new rubric based on the (also) new ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education.
Misty Kabasa worked with faculty mentor Professor Joseph Salmons, Professor of German Linguistics, on a project entitled, “Acquisition of Gender-Aligned Phonetic Variation: Monophthongization of /aI/ in Young Upper Midwestern African American English Speakers.” The library portion of Misty’s research involved a wide range of UW Libraries resources, including subject databases in sociology, linguistics, humanities, language, and mathematics and a noteworthy adventure with interlibrary loan. Professor Salmons wrote this about Misty’s research: “The project demanded a rare combination of knowledge and skills, but crucially also of library resources, covering humanities, social sciences and physical sciences.”
Hana Sleiman, originally from Eau Claire, WI, worked with faculty mentor Dr. Evie Carchman, Assistant Professor in the Colorectal Surgery Section of the Department of Surgery, on a project entitled, “The Role of HPV Oncoprotein E6 in Anal Cancer.” Hana had to be flexible and clever in her library research, as there is little literature available on this important topic. In her application, her description of her research process demonstrated creativity and critical thought about library research. Her mentor, Dr. Carchman, wrote that Hana is one of the most impressive students that she has had the pleasure to work with.
Librarians on the review committee this year include Raina Bloom and Kelli Hughes from College Library, Lia Vellardita from Ebling Library, Jessica Newman at Steenbock Library, Lisa Wettleson from Special Collections, and Troy Reeves from the University Archives.