Merrifield Competition winner selected Graduate student Barry Striegel is the winner of the 2007 Chester Fritz Library Merrifield Competition scholarship award for his paper titled "Vito Perrone: Educational Entrepreneur on the Prairie." The annual award includes a $1,500 scholarship and recognizes outstanding scholarly research that utilizes primary resource materials housed within the library's Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections. The Merrifield Competition is named in honor of Webster Merrifield, UND's first University librarian of record and president of the University from 1891 to 1909. A grant from the UND Alumni Association and Foundation enables the Library to hold this annual competition. A five-member jury reviewed the research papers submitted for the 2007 Competition. Members included Sandy Slater, head, Department of Special Collections; Carl Barrentine, Humanities and Integrated Studies; David Flynn, Economics; Anne Kelsch, History; and Yvette Koepke-Nelson, English. The papers were judged on quality of research, clarity and writing skill, and the extent to which the author utilized primary source materials housed in Special Collections. Barry Striegel is a doctoral student in the Department of Teaching and Learning, working toward an Ed.D in teacher education. He graduated from UND's Center for Teaching and Learning in 1975 and earned his master's degree from Minot State University in 1985. He has been a K-8 classroom teacher for more than 25 years, specializing in the education of gifted and talented learners and in facilitating classroom enrichment activities for all students. Striegel was one of Dr. Perrone's students in the New School and credits Vito with instilling in him a passion for the educational philosophy of John Dewey, experience-based learning and teaching, greater campus-wide, interdisciplinary collaboration in teacher education, and more autonomy for teachers and learners in the classroom. Vito's philosophy that "teachers teach as they're taught" underlies his whole approach to teacher education. During his classroom career, Striegel also served as education coordinator for the Devils Lake/Red River Basin Water Management Research Project involving the collaboration of middle school science students from several school districts, was instrumental in the introduction of the Odyssey of the Mind Program to North Dakota schools, the organization of the Marketplace for Kids Program, and in the creation of the Mini-Society Entrepreneurship Summer Camps. -- Sandy Slater, Head, Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library, sandyslater@mail.und.edu, 777-4625