Trent Ukasick Receives the 2024 Graduate Research Excellence Award

Congratulations to Trent Ukasick on receiving the 2024 Graduate Research Excellence Award! Here's more about Trent’s research in his own words:

"I received the Department Excellence Award for Autumn 2024, which has helped enormously with my research. The award gave me the opportunity to focus full time on writing my dissertation and has allowed me to stay on track for my expected defense in Spring 2025.

During the 2023-2024 academic year, I carried out fieldwork in China, where I developed an audio and video corpus of Gyegu Tibetan totaling more than 20 hours of recorded material. This large amount of data requires significant time to process. Once the files are properly named, sorted, and backed up, there is still a considerable amount of work to do.

The Excellence Award has allowed me to continue processing this data and turning the corpus into a product that is usable and interpretable for future generations. Despite the amount of data already collected, as I continue writing my dissertation, some specific data points are occasionally missing. The award has provided me with funds that allow me to continue working with consultants remotely. This has given me the opportunity to collect more data and improve the quality of my dissertation. Finally, the award has also provided funds that can be put towards future fieldwork trips, which between flights, hotels, and equipment can get quite expensive! I am excited to return to the department in-person in Spring 2025 and learn more about the progress that everyone has been making in their own research and education."