UK Libraries recognizes 2 students for excellence in undergraduate scholarship

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 5, 2025) — University of Kentucky Libraries is proud to recognize junior Gabriel Portugal and senior Avery Schanbacher with the 2025 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Scholarship. The annual prize celebrates exceptional and original scholarship in a traditional paper and a media or digital project, and is awarded to students whose research makes substantive and creative use of UK Libraries’ collections, services and resources.

Gabriel Portugal

Portugal, a product design and psychology dual degree student, was awarded for his digital methodologies project, “Research and Development of a Hands-Free Jar Opener for Consumers with Limited Arm Strength.”

After observing his mother having difficulty opening stiff lids, Portugal was inspired to survey the existing market in appliances that help consumers to open jars. Finding few products that offered easy, automatic, and hands-free assistance, Portugal set out to design his own.

Portugal’s project included not only a 3D-printed prototype of the product but also an extensive report on the research and design process. Portugal began his research by conducting an “Internet ethnography,” reading reviews of existing projects and consulting dozens of user-produced videos.

“It was amazing what I was able to find,” Portugal said. “Here would be a video of someone who only had one arm, or who was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, explaining their process for navigating difficulties like these. I found so many insights from people who were working their way through these everyday tasks and uploading their methods to help others with disabilities.”

After synthesizing insights from his ethnography, Portugal then conducted extensive research on existing appliances, anticipated market trends, and common specifications for jars. Next, Portugal put pen to paper.

“In the design phase I turned to drawing, getting out a huge array of ideas,” Portugal said.

He also spoke with peers in the product design department.

“One of my classmates cracked the most difficult problem: the ‘problem of the twist.’ He told me that oil filters deal with a similar challenge, so I picked up an oil filter and discovered that by adapting its mechanisms I could solve the biggest hurdle I’d been facing.”

Beginning with a cardboard prototype, then a foam prototype, Portugal determined the sizes of the appliance’s parts and how they would interact with each other.

“Then it was time to get the design into the SolidWorks design program, refining it further with each iteration,” he said.

After several months of research and design, at last a final prototype was 3D printed. The results have been promising so far: the prototype was displayed at the Lewis Honors College; Portugal was accepted to give an oral presentation at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Pittsburgh; and the Dean’s Award has rounded out the project’s accolades.

Portugal was mentored throughout the process by Kristi Bartlett, Ph.D., associate professor of product design, and Mitzi Vernon, professor of product design. Portugal began work on his project as a submission to the International Housewares Association’s annual Student Design Competition.

UK Libraries resources were instrumental to Portugal throughout his research, design and project publication process.

“Dr. Vernon brought Carla Cantagallo (Liaison to the College of Design) to speak to our class, and she gave us so many insights into design-specific resources,” he said.

Among these were Mintel Academic, a database with market and consumer reports, forecasts and product information, and Academic Search Complete; numerous books on materials and manufacturing processes; and Adobe Suite software that allowed him to publish his design and research report.

“Design Research Methods is a critical area of focus for all product design students. That array of methods is a broad spectrum that includes and highlights library databases and librarians themselves, as we did this academic year,” Vernon said. “We are delighted that Gabriel understood that value and took full advantage of the library in his project. Gabriel successfully provides a model for other students in how to align more than one form of research within a complex design problem. As a program we are delighted to have a clear umbilical with the library through our students and student projects.”

“We are delighted that Gabriel has won this award. Gabriel’s use of library resources went above and beyond for a product design project,” Bartlett said. “Throughout the project, he frequently visited the library to check out books and consulted with the Design Librarian, Carla Cantagallo, for more information about design resources and online library pathways. We are excited to have our product design students taking full advantage of the valuable resources that UK offers.”

“I would love to partner with other students in business and marketing, and connect with students who are conducting engineering capstones next year,” Portugal said. “It would be amazing to release a product that from start to finish had been designed, engineered and marketed by students at the University of Kentucky.”

Although he aims to eventually secure a patent for the product, Portugal says that what he really wants to do is to help people.

“Seeing my mom struggling with jars was really eye-opening to me: how do people with much more significant limitations navigate these kinds of tasks that many of us take for granted?”

Portugal will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology this May and a Bachelor of Science in product design in May 2026. He hopes to pursue a career that combines insights from each.

Avery Schanbacher

Schanbacher, a senior music and English double major, was awarded for her paper, “‘Single Girl, Married Girl’: Female Perspectives on Marriage, Maidenhood, and Motherhood in English-Language Folk Music.”

Conducted as her senior thesis project, the paper explores how female-narrated folk song traditions contrast married and single life, often connecting marriage with a loss of personal and financial agency. Schanbacher analyzed 125 versions of “The Single Girl” type — #436 in the Roud Folk Song Index — recorded from 1904-2023. 

Schanbacher first encountered “The Single Girl” in a folk song collection by Alan Lomax, about a married woman who expresses feelings of nostalgia for the time when she was single as she struggles to provide for herself and her family and grows exhausted with the many household tasks that she is solely responsible for.

“Even though so much is different today about marriage, gender equality and domestic labor, folk songs of this type continue to be written: something in these lyrics still resonates with people, and that’s what I wanted to explore.”

Particularly interesting were the ways that topics and lyrical themes lined up with cultural shifts including the Great Depression, the post-war era, and second-wave feminism.

“Early songs in this primarily Appalachian tradition depict harsh realities of gendered labor, poverty and domestic violence impacting married women in rural settings, while later versions emphasize nostalgia for the freedom of being single, mirroring new feminist movements,” she said.

“Ultimately, I think that the way these songs have been recorded and passed down has allowed them to preserve stories that might have otherwise been scarce, while also serving as a lens through which we can better understand how women’s roles and experiences have changed throughout our history,” Schanbacher said. “This persistence communicates the continued relevance of these songs’ themes and allows modern listeners and performers to frame present-day perspectives in stories from the past, showing the importance of female-led folk traditions in documenting women’s experiences and transmitting generational knowledge.”

Schanbacher conducted her project as part of a Gaines Fellowship in the Humanities advised by a committee of three faculty members: James Revell Carr, Ph.D., associate professor of ethnomusicology and musicology and director of the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music; Tara Tuttle, Ph.D., senior lecturer in the Lewis Honors College; and Michelle Sizemore, Ph.D., associate professor of English and director of the Gaines Center for the Humanities.

“Avery's research is in some ways a throwback to a time when scholars closely analyzed ballad texts as a window into the lives and cultural values of the people of Appalachia,” Carr said. “This type of ballad scholarship has become rarer in the 21st century, but Avery’s focus on women and discourses about marriage and family in the ballads gives her research a fresh perspective on these venerable songs, and I feel that she is really blazing a trail for a new generation of ballad scholars.”

“I was thrilled when I learned that Avery had won the Dean’s Award for Undergraduate Scholarship, because she is a remarkably talented and sharp young woman and deserves recognition for her work, but also because humanistic research in the arts is often overshadowed by other high-profile fields,” Carr added. “It’s wonderful to see young scholars like Avery engaging in research that speaks to social institutions and culture-based forms of art that tell us about the human condition over the arc of centuries.”

Schanbacher made extensive use of UK Libraries resources throughout the duration of her project, including print collections, databases, interlibrary loan services and archival materials from the Special Collections Research Center.

“I was excited to find lots of books related to my topic at Young Library and the Little Fine Arts Library, and even more available online in digitized versions via InfoKat,” Schanbacher said. “The Fine Arts Library has a lot of really interesting collections of folk songs from different regions, and it was very exciting to go to that section to find one book and end up looking through every other one nearby, searching for similarities from region to region.”

In particular, Schanbacher used JSTOR, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and Dissertations & Theses Global (ProQuest) to search through scholarship related to women in folk music.

“UK Libraries’ research services and online databases were truly indispensable to this research process,” Schanbacher said. “They enabled me to explore extensive and diverse perspectives on my topic, gain insight into the context of the ethnomusicological work I was referencing, and to find details about the folk revival movements that inspired the collections I utilized.”

Schanbacher will graduate in May and plans to pursue a master’s degree in library and information science at Simmons University beginning in the fall, where she will be focusing on archival studies.

“I’m incredibly honored to have been selected for this award, and I’m so grateful for the UK Libraries’ support of undergraduate research, especially in the humanities. This project would not have been the same without the access to resources that the libraries make possible,” said Schanbacher. “Being able to learn from archival research materials and primary sources has really impacted my own learning and education, as well as motivated me to work to foster increased access to these resources in my career.”

As Dean’s Award recipients, Portugal and Schanbacher each will receive a $1,000 cash award, and their work will be published through UKnowledge, UK Libraries’ open access digital collection of scholarship created by University of Kentucky faculty, staff, students, departments, research centers and administration.

Portugal and Schanbacher will be honored at the annual Spring Celebration on May 15 alongside this year’s recipients of the Medallion for Intellectual Achievement, the Paul A. Willis Award for Outstanding Libraries Faculty and the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Staff Performance.

As the premier research library in Kentucky, UK Libraries empowers lifelong learners to discover, create and connect by providing ever-expanding access to quality information and collaborating with academic and creative communities worldwide to advance knowledge, enhance scholarship and preserve the history and culture of the state. More information about UK Libraries can be found on its website.