Shona Robinson (l) and Sam Bailey’s paper on drinking water at UBC was selected for one of the Open Scholar Awards.
A review of drinking water at UBC and a podcast focusing on a Latin epic poem are the latest graduate student submissions to win the GSS cIRcle Open Scholar Award.
Sam Bailey and Shona Robinson were recognized for their entry Aesthetic Assessment of Drinking Water at UBC: A Comparison of Waterfillz and Tap Water; both belong to the Pollution Control and Waste Management Group at UBC’s Department of Civil Engineering.
Meanwhile, Christian Brady – a Master’s student in the Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies – was selected for his entry, entitled Podcasting Lucan and the Classical World.
Authors of each winning submission receive $500, and their work is made publicly available on a long-term basis by UBC Library.
The Open Scholar Award highlights UBC as a leader in the open dissemination of graduate student work, and creates an incentive for graduate students to populate cIRcle with material beyond theses and dissertations.
“In grad school, there is so much emphasis on the thesis, but a lot of great coursework happens along the way, stuff that we’re proud of but doesn’t really get too much recognition beyond a course grade,” says Bailey. “The Open Scholar Award gives an opportunity for that work to stand out.”
cIRcle also proved to be a valuable resource while Bailey and Robinson were working on their award-winning entry. “In researching the precedent for our paper, we came across an undergraduate publication on cIRcle that examined the economics of various water sources on campus,” notes Robinson. “That work provided some essential background details to our study.”
“The Open Scholar Award gives me so many opportunities that I hadn’t even imagined before,” adds Brady. “I’m happy to have the funding to expand some projects and pursue more stories for future episodes.” Brady has uploaded four podcasts to cIRcle, and more are on the way.
“Making the podcast into an effective teaching tool is a really exciting challenge,” he says. “I think the key is to focus on creating an aesthetically pleasing piece of work. If people are interested in what they’re hearing, they’ll take the time to dig deeper into the material.”
The Open Scholar Award is a collaboration between the Graduate Student Society and cIRcle, UBC’s digital repository that was set up by the Library in 2007.
The award, given twice a year, is based on a lottery system. The submission deadline for the next award instalment is March 24, 2014, although submissions can be made at any time – please visit cIRcle for more information.