UO Libraries' Award for Undergraduate Research Excellence (LAURE)

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/313

Undergraduate education at the University of Oregon occurs in an environment where teaching, research, and service are integrated and mutually enriching enterprises. Many undergraduates already engage in the UO's research processes by working in laboratories and in the field. The LAURE program (formerly the Undergraduate Research Award) is intended to recognize students who demonstrate extraordinary skill and creativity in the application of library and information resources to original research and scholarship.

Successful projects will:

Make extensive, creative use of library services, resources, and collections in any format.
Demonstrate effective application of information literacy and fluency principles:

determining information needs
evaluating and analyzing information
managing, organizing, and synthesizing information
applying information in the context of the research project
communicating information in formats appropriate to an academic audience
making responsible use of information by providing appropriate and accurate citations and credits

Show evidence of significant personal knowledge in the methods of research and inquiry.
Demonstrate originality of thought, mastery of content appropriate to class level, clear writing, and overall quality of presentation.

For more information, consult the LAURE Research Guide

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 100

Open Access
The 1903-1904 Typhoid Fever Epidemic in Butler, Pennsylvania
(University of Oregon, 2009) Donheffner, Kristen
Open Access
The 1960s NAACP Campaign to Integrate Public Housing in Portland
(University of Oregon, 2007) Matsumaru, Michael
Like many other cities in the U.S. during the 1960s, Portland, Oregon featured an undeniable black ghetto, located in the heart of its Albina district. The Portland branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) struggled throughout the 1960s to keep local government from perpetuating the existing ghetto. For years, the NAACP and other civil rights organizations protested plans from the Housing Authority of Portland (HAP) to build federally subsidized public housing units in the heart of Albina.
Open Access
All-American Babyfaces, Un-American Heels: Race and Nationalism Inside the Squared Circle
(University of Oregon, 2014-06-11) Parry, Brandon
Open Access
Anything but Ringers: Historical Sketches of the Soccer Hotbeds That Produced the 1930 U.S. World Cup Team
(University of Oregon, 2014-06-11) Bigalke, Zachary
This project investigates the impact of four regions of the United States that were integral to the development of soccer in the United States in the early 20th century. During the period, soccer was second in popularity only to baseball in the parts of the country under investigation, and this widespread interest of both players and spectators would lead to the creation of the first professional soccer league in either North or South America in the 1920s. Utilizing newspaper reports from the period, census data, and secondary research from other historians, this project shows the demographic impact of immigrant populations and industrial development on the sport’s growth during the first decades of the 1900s. The data illustrates the rich history of the sport in the United States and shows how these developments helped contribute to the success of the U.S. national team at the first FIFA World Cup in 1930.
Metadata only
As trans as trans could be
(University of Oregon, 2004) Frye, Lezlie
Open Access
Assimilation and Activism: An Analysis of Native Boarding School Curriculum and Native Student Activism in the 20th Century
(University of Oregon, 2014-12-13) Megerssa, Ayantu
This paper will examine Native American student retaliation and activism in the face of assimilationist educational policies and curriculum at both the Warm Springs Boarding School on the Warm Springs Reservation, and at Chemawa Boarding School in Salem Oregon, from the 1930s to the 1970s. I will argue that through the use of vocational education, Christian ethics and citizenship training, and cultural “safety zones” (Ruhl), Oregon Native American boarding schools attempted to assimilate their Native American students by instilling belief in the ideals of American citizenship, Christian morality, and work ethic. I will demonstrate that over the course of the 20th century, student and community activism against these assimilationist policies took the forms of retaliation against school authorities, community legal activism on behalf of the Native American students, creative student activism through literary publications such as The Chemewa American, and finally through student legal activism in the form of the Indian Student Bill of Rights in 1972.
Open Access
Bamboo As a New Fiber Source in the U.S. Paper Industry: A Feasibility Analysis for Booshoot Gardens, LLC
(University of Oregon, 2011-03-21) Kallaway, Emma
This study is a feasibility analysis seeking to answer two questions: Can bamboo be used as a replacement fiber source for paper products, and do market conditions offer potential for a new supplier to enter the industry? Research came from working with scientists in paper engineering, as well as industry research to uncover the potential for a new supplier in the U.S. paper industry. Booshoot staff agrees that in order to succeed in the paper industry the company must supply full grown, chipped bamboo to manufacturers in the sanitary paper industry, a small niche in the larger U.S paper industry. Based on this research Booshoot Gardens, LLC has already begun to find investors and expand the business into the U.S. Paper Industry.
Open Access
Brand Activism: Working Toward Progressive Representations of Social Movements in Advertising
(University of Oregon, 2018-06) Benner, Rachel
Brands and advertising agencies have always used the cultural energy of social movements to connect to new audiences and promote their products. Academics have written a large body of critique about the intersection of social movements and marketing, but it is largely ignored by the advertising industry. This thesis addresses that disconnect, helping advertisers address critical discourse around social movements and brands, leading to industry success and progressive allyship with social movements. After exploring studies of social movements’ framing in advertising messages, this project assesses the strengths and weaknesses of those frames with a theoretical model. In-depth interviews with advertising professionals shape a best practices guide for creating activist ads. Advertisers today can leverage successful framing strategies to address social movements in their work by extending existing critical conversations about brand activism beyond large-scale strategy and into the message creation process. They can also succeed by giving their brand activism the context of tangible action and responsibly researching the audience they seek to reach with their messaging.
Open Access
Bringing it All Back Home: The Height of the Anti-Vietnam Movement at the University of Oregon
(University of Oregon, 2006-06-14) Becker, Alison E
Open Access
Building Community Solidarity: The 1988-90 Strike of the Morgan-Nicolai Door Factory and the Creation of the Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network
(University of Oregon, 2023) Cross, Katie; Lafer, Gordon; Shoop, Casey
The purpose of this research is to document the failed Morgan-Nicolai Door Factory strike of 1988-90 with a specific focus on those in the community who would use the strike as a catalyst for the development of the Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network (ESSN). Through the literature review, the author contextualizes the strike within the greater economic and political forces of the 1970s-1990s. And through newspaper articles and interviews with participants in the movement, the author determines that despite the failure of the Morgan-Nicolai strike itself, the strike and its long-term effects could qualify the movement as a “successful failure.”
Open Access
Cattle Plague in NYC: The Untold Campaign of America’s First Board of Health, 1868
(University of Oregon, 2012) Erlandson, Erik M.
America’s first health board has received ample attention from scholars for its unprecedented containment of cholera in 1866, but there is more to the history of New York’s Metropolitan Board of Health (MBH) than this campaign. In 1868, the nascent health organization faced its next big challenge, which has never been covered by secondary literature. In August, infected Texas cattle arrived at New York slaughterhouses, threatening the food supply of North America’s largest city. To fight the pestilence, the MBH adopted unprecedented policies for 19th century public health institutions, which had long been inclined toward local autonomy. During the cattle plague, however, MBH officers exerted their will outside their legal jurisdiction, and cooperated with other states on public health regulation in historically uncommon ways. This thesis explores how the MBH fought the epizootic, what impact the disease had, and why historically rare activism occurred.
Open Access
Cetacean Hunting at the Par-Tee Site (35CLT 20)?: Ethnographic, Artifact, and Blood Residue Analysis Investigation
(University of Oregon, 2014-01) Sanchez, Gabriel; Erlandson, Jon M.
Anthropologists have long believed that Native Americans on the Northern Oregon Coast did not actively hunt cetaceans; however, archaeological evidence suggests otherwise. My project utilizes ethnographic data, comparative artifact analysis, radiocarbon dating, and blood residue analysis to investigate whether whales may have been hunted during prehistoric times along the Northern Oregon Coast. An artifact from the Par-Tee site (35CLT20), a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) phalange with an embedded bone harpoon point, provides evidence of whale hunting. The dimensions of the embedded harpoon point were determined using computed tomography (CT) scanning in order to complete comparative analysis. Based on comparative analysis three harpoon typologies were selected for blood residue analysis. Blood residue analysis confirmed the use of the leister harpoon for trout, salmon, and steelhead fishing. In addition, future C14 dating will provide a time marker for active or opportunistic whale hunting within Oregon.
Open Access
Challenges to Democratic Inclusion and Contestation of Space: Contemporary Student Activists in Transforming South Africa
(University of Oregon, 2018) Wilms-Crowe, Momo
Twenty-four years into democracy, in a time marked by stark inequality and rising levels of political disillusionment, student activists are key players in the pursuit of a more just, more equitable, and more democratic South Africa. Using universities as spaces to contest, disrupt, and challenge the status quo, student activists challenge narratives of youth political apathy and act as agents of change, encouraging society to meet the goals established in the 1996 Constitution, the document enshrining the very promises they were born into believing would be their reality. Through mobilization and organizing, student actors boldly engage in questions of substantive equality and reveal the limits of South African democracy, highlighting especially how a hegemonic neoliberal framework has coopted radical transformation and maintained exclusionary principles. Yet, while #FeesMustFall protests in 2015-2016 temporarily garnered international media awareness and scholarly recognition, prolonged attention to student activism is lacking in the field of democratization and youth are often popularly conceived as apathetic or disengaged from politics. This study aims to correct this epistemological oversight by focusing on students as political agents and their contributions to the process of social transformation. This focus is especially important in Africa, the youngest continent on earth, where youth hold a key role in the process of development and democratization, but has global relevance. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups with student activists at the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) and a review of secondary literature, this project reflects on the role that student activists and institutions of higher learning play in the larger project of transforming post-94 society and deepening South African democracy. Informed by the voices of student activists involved in #FeesMustFall and more recent campaigns against gender based violence, this study considers how student activists operate within and beyond the university to influence social change. Ultimately, I focus on how student activists conceptualize their role in creating a new social order and how that ideal translates into action. As student activists are often misunderstood, misrepresented or overlooked all together, this work fills a critical space and has important implications for our understanding of transformation in post-94 South Africa. Moreover, examining students and universities has critical significance to the larger field of democratization and international affairs as the parallels between the state and the university reveals compromised experiences of citizenship and the urgency in addressing democratic deficit at a global scale in all spheres of society.
Open Access
Colombian Counterpoint: Transculturation in Sibundoy Valley Ethnohistory
(University of Oregon, 2022-05) Glass, Rowan F. F.
Anthropological and historical scholarship on cultural change in colonially subordinated cultures has often stressed deculturation—cultural loss and degradation—as a consequence of colonialism. This paper disputes that narrative by presenting the case of Indigenous cultural change in the Sibundoy Valley of southwest Colombia from an ethnohistorical perspective. Drawing on historical, ethnographic, and theoretical texts, and relying on the concept of transculturation—understood as a complex process of partial loss, partial gain, and the creation of new cultural phenomena from intercultural encounters—as a more nuanced alternative to deculturation, I outline the history of cultural change in the valley from the prehispanic period to the present. While recognizing that colonialism was experienced as a catastrophe for the Indigenous communities of the valley, I suggest that the latter’s deep historical experience of transculturation in the prehispanic era enabled the preservation and rearticulation of core elements of their native cultures in the post-contact period. That experience allowed for the incorporation of foreign, colonially imposed cultural elements into the pre-existing cultural framework of the valley. The historical continuity of the transcultural experience in the valley demonstrates that its Indigenous communities have not been passive subjects of colonial power, but active agents in negotiating and mitigating its deculturating effects. This approach emphasizes the historical agency of Sibundoy Valley natives and positions them as the central protagonists of their own history, suggesting the applicability of this perspective to other situations of cultural change in colonial contexts.
Open Access
The Combined Success of the International Tropical Timber Agreements
(University of Oregon, 2004) Chirchi, Dunya
The improvement of international environmental regimes is a delicate science that is slowly being mastered through a complicated and costly process of trial and error. Differences in regime effectiveness are influenced by multiple variables, including politics, regime structure, scope, and power and number of actors involved. Only through comparison and analysis of different regimes and counterfactuals can the effectiveness of environmental treaties be determined. In a world with no international authority to enforce compliance of international law, regime design is the only way to improve the environment on a global level. Once evaluated, the specific parts of a regime that made it successful can be adopted and applied to future international agreements. The 1983 International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA), and its successor in 1994, attempted to further conservation of tropical timber for the use of future generations.
Open Access
Common versus Differentiated Goals in the Face of Between-Country Inequities: Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Helsinki and Oslo Protocols on the Reduction of Sulfur Emissions
(University of Oregon, 2011-03-16T20:38:06Z) Forster, Hale
In this paper, I will explore whether, and how the Helsinki and the Oslo Protocols influenced emissions behavior, and whether the use of differentiated targets increased the effectiveness of the Oslo Protocol. The data I will present suggests that while the existence ofthe Oslo Protocol was probably more likely due to its use of differentiated goals, differentiated goals in general did not have an appreciable effect on emissions reductions behavior because of the way in which the goals were set, and because of other variables which had a much stronger effect on the outcome ofthe treaty. I will conclude that while the overall amount of sulfur emissions decreased during the period in which the treaties were in effect, the treaties caused a portion of these reductions in only a limited number of countries, and other, unrelated factors likely caused the bulk of emissions reductions.
Open Access
The Convention for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna: Examining State Behavior under Binding and Nonbinding Accords
(University of Oregon, 2008) Boom, Katherine
In the relatively young realm of international environmental politics, there is a great deal to learn about the most effective and efficient ways in which to mitigate the world's increasing number of environmental problems. Treaties have proven to be a popular mechanism for addressing many of these issues, yet though the number of international environmental treaties has grown significantly in recent years, relatively little work is being done to evaluate whether or not these supposed solutions are in fact effective. In many ways, this analysis is as important as the establishment of treaties themselves, because without it, it is difficult to know if progress has been made. Or, if progress is obvious, it is difficult to know what has caused it. Furthermore, it is important to know not only which agreements are effective, but why. Knowing which elements of an agreement positively influence actors' behavior, and under which circumstances and conditions, not only allows us to adjust techniques to better improve the situation at hand, it allows for other environmental problems to be addressed more effectively. In light of this, this paper will assess the effectiveness of a specific treaty, The Convention for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT), and how the factors influencing behavior in tuna regulation can contribute to theoretical knowledge of international treaty effectiveness. Specifically, in exploring whether the CCSBT influenced member behavior, I will examine the effectiveness of nonbinding agreements, assessing whether an accord needs to be legally binding in order to effectively influence actors' behavior.
Open Access
Deconstructing the Novel: The Critical Function of the Artist’s Book
(University of Oregon, 2014-02-12) Swartzlender, Kyle
This essay explores how the genre of the artist’s book, especially the appropriative manner of artist’s book, may be used as a method of literary criticism. The central argument of the paper is that the book artist, when using a preexisting work of writing to form their own artist’s book, has the potential to not only create an object of interest and beauty, but also a work of intimate and scathing criticism. To demonstrate this point, the paper analyzes three separate artist’s books: A Humument by Tom Phillips, Tree of Codes by Jonathan Saffran-Foer, and Legendary, Lexical, Loquacious Love by Eve Rhymer, each of which represents a different method by which the book artist is able formulate a critique of the original text they have altered.
Open Access
The Ecology and Demography of the Invasive Ascidian Botrylloides violaceus in the Coos Estuary
(University of Oregon, 2017) Dorning, Sandra
Botrylloides violaceus, a colonial ascidian, is a cosmopolitan invader of fouling communities on man-made structures in harbors including Oregon’s Coos Estuary. This study documents seasonal and spatial patterns of B. violaceus distribution, assesses the impact of abiotic factors on this distribution, and characterizes the demography of this population and its interactions with other fouling organisms. I surveyed five fouling communities on docks in the Coos Estuary, and observed B. violaceus at all sites except Isthmus Slough in the upper bay. In laboratory experiments B. violaceus survived temperatures up to 27 degrees centrigrade and salinities down to 25 psu, indicating that temperature and salinity do not limit its distribution to the lower bay as hypothesized. Botrylloides violaceus overgrew all fouling species encountered on settlement plates except for sponge Halichondria bowerbanki. Understanding the interactions between B. violaceus and its abiotic and biotic surroundings is critical for improving invasive species management in the Coos Estuary.
Open Access
Ecuador’s Yasuní-ITT Initiative: A Case Study on International Climate Change Mitigation Narratives
(University of Oregon, 2014) Peck, Mairin
In 2007, Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa presented a novel climate change mitigation plan to the world: Ecuador would leave 846 million barrels of crude oil untouched beneath the Amazon if the global community reciprocated with a contribution of 3.6 billion dollars – half of the oil’s market value (McAvoy 27). The Yasuní-ITT Initiative vowed to preserve immense biodiversity, protect indigenous groups, and prevent the emission of 410 million tons of carbon dioxide (Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues). In 2013, Correa abandoned the initiative, lamenting the lack of international support, and approved oil drilling in the Yasuní (Correa, “Anuncio a la Nación” 3). This analysis utilized Correa’s speeches and government documents to identify the prevailing narratives employed in the initiative. Those narratives – common but unequal responsibility for climate change, a reconceptualization of value, and Ecuador as martyr and revolutionary – reflect a framework that simultaneously criticized and sought authority from the capitalist ideal. The failure of the Yasuní-ITT Initiative to capture the hearts and wallets of the world provides insight into the dominant global forces and perspectives on climate change mitigation policy.

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