Taking advantage of Lone Star College-CyFair’s library resources for their research papers earned Dash Ahlstrom, Mykhailo Mazalevskyi and Michael Veiga this year’s Student Research Award and a cash prize.
“I’m always amazed at the caliber of research from our student nominees,” said Tracy Williams, reference librarian and professor. “The quality of research by our students just gets better every year.”
The Friends of the Library at LSC-CyFair funds this award that recognizes the best student projects which effectively include information from multiple library resources.
“Our winner, Dash, used a variety of primary sources from the 18th and 19th centuries to paint a picture of Nathanael Greene’s contributions to the American Revolution,” said Williams. “Mykhailo and Michael used a variety of scholarly and popular sources to analyze complex economic concepts.”
Pursuing a degree in aerospace administration and operations with plans to become an airline pilot flying transcontinental routes, Ahlstrom won the first-place $500 prize with his paper “The British Turned Back: How Nathanael Greene Turned the Tides of the American Revolution in the South.”
Ahlstrom said he used collections of Greene’s correspondence, published history books, and a master's thesis obtained through the online catalog, the library and inter-library loans in his research. He also learned the value of good pre-research, keeping a timeline, finding as many sources as possible, and organizational structure – all helpful for future writing assignments.
“(The award) helps validate the work I did over the semester, especially the nights I spent up at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. wondering if I'd finish the project,” he said. “It was a lot of work and a lot of revising to get to that final draft, and for someone to decide that it deserves an award hit me hard.”
Mazalevskyi said the second-place award for his paper “Did Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act affect the farm unemployment rate in the United States during the Great Depression (1929-1933)?” meant a lot because it showed recognition for his diligence and he felt his time invested was “indeed meaningful.”
This economics major, who plans to also earn a degree in astronomy or physics, used the library database authentication to get access to JSTOR, a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources, where he found reports for a significant part of his research.
“I finally understood that the most important part of any research is being able to find very sophisticated details,” he said. “For instance, my research paper was mostly based on a table that I found in a large U.S. report dated back to 1920-1936. It took me a few weeks to find the necessary data, but it was that small part of an old document that saved my research.”
Veiga, who is also an economics major, but with a focus on finance and a goal to start his own business, received the third-place award for his paper “Comparing the Productivity Growth of the United States and China.” He said he was “incredibly humbled and grateful to the sponsors” of the award, a recognition proving people are invested in LSC-CyFair students’ futures.
“I learned a lot about how to synthesize relevant information into a coherent idea that was informative ….. By learning fundamental economic laws and using history to make sense of current events, I learned how to analyze present circumstances and create beneficial research effectively,” said Veiga.
One of the library resources he found helpful for his research was meeting with a librarian who showed him the best databases and methods to obtain information he needed.
LSC-CyFair’s librarians are available to share their expertise as resources to assist with classroom and community project success. Go to LoneStar.edu/library/cyfair for information.
Registration for fall classes starting Aug. 29 is underway. For information, go to LoneStar.edu/regcyfair or LoneStar.edu/registration.