Posted 1:19 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021
Congratulations to the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 Scholarship Winners
By Laura Godden
When University of Wisconsin - La Crosse Professor Emeritus of History George Gilkey left a generous bequest to the Murphy Library Special Collections/Area Research Center (SC/ARC) archives in 2010, the library decided the best way to honor his gift and legacy was by establishing a student scholarship in his name. Despite the multitude of challenges brought forth by the COVID-19 pandemic, the George Gilkey Special Collections Research Scholarship selection committee still managed to confer. Fortunately, the scholarship endowment’s strong yield made recognizing multiple recipients possible.
The award recipients for the 2019-2020 academic year were:
- Karlee Freihammer, a broad field social studies education and history major, for her HIS 200 Friendly Finding Aid (FFA) proposal, Pornography: A Battle Over Censorship.
- Gabriel Eagon, a history major, for his HIS 200 paper, The Decline of the German Language in La Crosse’s Early 20th Century Catholic German American Community.
- Brittney DeChambeau, a history education major, for her HIS 200 Friendly Finding Aid (FFA) proposal, Firsthand Experience with Native Americans in the La Crosse Area.
The award recipients for the 2020-2021 academic year were:
- Gabriel Eagon, a history major, for his HIS 308 paper, Crime and Sources: What Court Documents and Newspapers from 1906 can tell us about Crime in La Crosse.
- Jasen Kracht, a cultural anthropology major, for his HIS 200 Friendly Finding Aid (FFA) proposal, Robert Cowie: Champion of the People.
Scholarship applicants submit a single-authored intellectual product, such as a paper, artistic creation, slide presentation, video, news article or other project, that utilized materials from SC/ARC. The selection committee chooses the best submission(s) based on quality and use of archival sources. The committee is composed of faculty members from both the library and campus at large. Its members for the past two years were:
- Teri Holford, Library Department
- Laura Godden, Library Department
- Paul Beck, Library Department Faculty Emeritus
- John Grider, History Department
- Patricia Stovey, History Department
The Gilkey Scholarship is open to all full-time UW-La Crosse students in good standing and is intended to encourage original student research. The library also hopes it will further recognize Gilkey’s essential role in building SC/ARC and help spread his passion for archives. Fun fact, Gilkey spent so many hours researching in SC/ARC that he was granted his own key, as well as a place to store comfortable slippers!
While recipients are typically honored near the end of each spring semester at the university-wide Eagle Excellence Scholarship and Award Recognition ceremony, this event was canceled for the past two years due to COVID-19.
SC/ARC retains and preserves a copy of each year’s winning submission(s) as part of its collection. A complete listing can be found here. Murphy Library hopes this accolade provides scholarship recipients with some much-deserved recognition for their work and congratulates them on their accomplishments!
Students can apply for this year’s George Gilkey Special Collections Research Scholarship via the UWL Foundation webpage. The application deadline is February 1, 2022.