Kiera Doherty and Cynthia Coffey Named Recipients of the 2013 Library Research Awards
Graduate student Kiera Doherty and undergraduate student Cynthia Coffey have been selected to receive the 2013 awards. Both award winners made extensive use of library resources and services, identified authoritative websites, demonstrated the ability to select, evaluate and synthesize the information collected, and showed personal learning and development of research skills as they completed their projects.
Graduate Award
Kiera Doherty's research paper, Charles Berger and Richard Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory: An Examination of Theory and Application to Paul Schrader’s Film The Comfort of Strangers was written for her fall 2012 Communication Theory class. The project was nominated for the award by Communication faculty member Dr. Marina Vujnovic. Kiera’s paper reviews and evaluates the Uncertainty Reduction Theory (1975), an expansion of the theory, and an application of the theory to relationships in the movie The Comfort of Strangers. In her award application essay Kiera explained her research process including the use of a wide variety of resources, such as microfilm, books, multiple research databases, and media, as well as an evaluation of the materials collected to select the best resources to incorporate into her paper.
Undergraduate Award
Cynthia Coffey's research paper, Visuals of the Vietnam War: Impact of Television on Public Support, was written for her Research Seminar in History in the fall of 2012. It was nominated by Dr. Maureen Dorment in History and Anthropology. Cynthia’s paper examines how televised coverage of the war caused public support to drop dramatically by the time troops were withdrawn from Vietnam. In her essay, Cynthia explains that, “research is an ever-evolving process that allows for continual learning. Each search brings challenges including finding the best source for the particular evidence, the precise keywords which will locate the most appropriate sources, especially online, and the decisions in synthesizing the information for the support of the thesis.”