Elisabeth McCumber, a recent graduate of the MA program in applied anthropology, was selected as the recipient of OSU’s WAGS/ProQuest Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award for the Humanities, Social Sciences, Education, and Business category. Elisabeth’s thesis, “Deepening: Place Relationship in the Valley of Lake Creek, Oregon,” is an interdisciplinary ethnography that examines not just the human construction of place or the social history of humans on a landscape, but the living and mutual dynamics between people and land at Lake Creek.
OSU’s Graduate School has also forwarded Elisabeth’s thesis for consideration in the WAGS/ProQuest regional award competition. Elisabeth was nominated by her major professor, Dr. Joan Gross, professor emerita in the anthropology program at OSU. Dr. David Lewis, assistant professor in the anthropology program, also served as a member of Elisabeth’s thesis committee.