Graduate student Melissa Boege and undergraduate student James Morecraft have been selected to receive the 2014 awards. Both award winners made extensive use of library resources and services, demonstrated the ability to select, evaluate and synthesize the information collected, and showed personal learning and development of research skills.
Melissa Boege’s research paper, The Effect of Rape Education Programs on Rape Culture on College Campuses, was written for her Psychological Counseling Research Methods class taught by faculty member Dr. Nancy Melucci. The research paper hypothesizes that students who attend schools that offer continual and diverse rape education programs are more likely to reject rape myths than those who attend schools that do not offer rape education programs or offer such programs infrequently.
James Morecraft's project titled An Investigation of the Sex Differences in Death Anxiety and Emotion Regulatory Behavior among Emerging Adults, was completed for his senior thesis in Psychology and Gender, and Sex Roles Laboratory, under the direction of faculty member Dr. Janice Stapley. James’ main research question was: How do males and females differ in utilizing emotion regulatory mechanisms during the grieving process and with respect to death anxiety cognitions and perceptions?