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Gilkey Scholarship Keeps Awarding (through COVID-19)

Posted 1:19 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021

George Gilkey

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:  

The award recipients for the 2020-2021 academic year were:  

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: 

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.  

You can read the winning submissions by visiting Murphy Library Special collections and Area Research Center.

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. 



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