Winners of Great Plains Studies Awards Announced
Released on 05/26/2004, at 2:00 AM
Office of University Communications
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
The Center for Great Plains Studies, an interdisciplinary study center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, announced the winners of its annual literary, science and history awards.
Included were the Charles E. Bessey and Leslie Hewes Awards for the best articles published in 2003 in Great Plains Research, and the Frederick C. Luebke Award for the best article published in Great Plains Quarterly. The center also presented its Great Plains Research Science awards at the 2004 Nebraska Junior Academy of Sciences annual meeting in April, and its Great Plains History awards at the Nebraska History Days at Nebraska Wesleyan University, also in April.
Craig A. Davis, assistant professor of zoology at Oklahoma State University and formerly with the Platte River Whooping Crane Trust, won the Bessey natural science award for his article on the habitat use and migration patterns of sandhill cranes along the Platte River from 1998-2001.
The Hewes social science award went to co-authors Alexander C. Vias and Charles O. Collins for their article on population and income migration in the Great Plains from 1995-98. Vias is with the geography department at the University of Connecticut and Collins is in the geography department at the University of Northern Colorado.
Jill E. Martin's article on Indian prohibition laws from 1832-1953 received the Luebke award. Martin is chair of the legal studies department at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn.
Cassie Hill from South Platte High School in Big Springs won the first place award for her paper, "The Freshwater Ecology Killer," and Emily Bruggeman's paper, "Cellar Spiders . . . How Does Light Effect Their Webs?" received honorable mention. Bruggeman is from Lincoln Lutheran High School.
Kari Langemach, Lincoln Science Focus program, won first place in the Great Plains History awards with her senior documentary, "Paving the Way: The MacKay and Evans Expedition of 1975." Second place went to Julia Li, Ope Omojola, Nividetha Rajagopalan and Mark Trost, all from Morton Middle School in Omaha, for their junior group exhibit, "The Stephen H. Long Expedition of 1819-1820: Exploration, Encounter, Exchange in the Trans-Missouri River."
The judges for the Bessey and Hewes awards were Garald Horst, Victoria Smith, Rochelle Dalla, and Larkin Powell, all University of Nebraska faculty who served on the center's publication committee. Judges for the Luebke award were three journal advisory editors: Victoria Smith, UNL; Blake Allmendinger, University of California at Los Angeles; and Patricia Covarrubias, University of Montana.
James Stubbendieck, director of the Center and UNL professor of agronomy, was the judge for the Great Plains Research Science awards. Historian Charles Vollan served as judge for the Great Plains History awards.
Great Plains Research and Great Plains Quarterly are published with the support of the Center for Great Plains Studies and the UNL College of Arts and Sciences. Robert F. Diffendal serves as editor of Great Plains Research and Charles Braithwaite is editor of Great Plains Quarterly. For more information, contact the Center for Great Plains Studies at (402) 472-3082.