Clemson Libraries has established a new award to celebrate and recognize undergraduate student research. The award recognizes students who make use of library resources and services to produce outstanding research or scholarly or creative works.

English major Makenzie Anderson and pre-business major Julia Teets are the inaugural first-place recipients of the Clemson Libraries Undergraduate Student Research Award for their project titled “Stereotypes of the ‘Good’ vs. ‘Evil’ Witch: A Counter Narrative to the Poisoned Apple.” The project was a screenplay looking at the portrayal of witches in the media and stereotypes associated with them. They used the libraries’ online resources to search databases for peer-reviewed articles and books on the topic and to validate their sources.

“At the start of the semester, neither of us had any prior experience formulating a research project or screenplay, so we found it difficult to search for credible and applicable sources,” Anderson said. “The Clemson Libraries’ databases helped us to narrow our search and simultaneously strengthened our research skills.”

Both Anderson and Teets are students in the Clemson Honors College. Briana Pocratsky, lecturer in the department of sociology, anthropology and criminal justice and faculty-in-residence for the Honors College, was the faculty mentor on the project.

“We want Clemson Libraries to be known as a research hub for the University, and we want students and faculty across campus to know that we are here to support them in their research endeavors. We also want to celebrate and share the research taking place at the Libraries, especially the outstanding work of our undergraduate students.”

Libraries Dean Chris Cox

The second-place winners were Allison DeLoache, a biological sciences major, and Carter Balach and Conor Joye, both wildlife and fisheries biology majors, for their project “Effects of Trout Stocking on Aquatic Insect Abundance in Western North Carolina Streams,” which was mentored by Catherine Jachowski, assistant professor in the department of forestry and environmental conservation.

Front row: Conor Joye, Alison DeLoache, Makenzie Anderson, Julia Teets, Faith Shupard. Back row: Briana Pocratsky, donors Cindy and Wayne Osef, Dean Chris Cox, Daniel Knapp, Carter Balach

Third place went to Honors College student Faith Shupard and Leah Stokes, both animal and veterinary sciences majors, for their project “Are Laying Hens a Suitable Translational Research Model for Osteoporosis in Humans?” Their faculty mentor was Jeryl Jones, professor of animal and veterinary sciences.

Both the second- and third-place winners were projects in Creative Inquiry, Clemson’s cross-disciplinary undergraduate research program.

The first-place winners received an award of $1,000, with $750 going to second place and $500 going to third place. The recipients’ research papers will be made available in TigerPrints, Clemson’s digital repository.

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