- From the University Librarian
- A conversation with Pablo Reguerin, Assistant Vice Provost for Student Success: How he defines student success, how the library can play a critical role in student success, and why he loves his job
- Gifts that make an impact: The Paul & Anne Irwin Library Subject Endowment for Students
- Active Learning Classroom coming soon
- New exhibit commemorating the Summer of Love opening soon
- Graduate student research highlighted at the Library
- Symposium: Charting the Library's Future
- Koret Scholars Undergraduate Research Slam
From the University Librarian
It is safe to say that libraries have been going through an enormous transition for the past twenty years. The digital age has had an unprecedented impact on how all of us consume, preserve, and browse for information.
As one can imagine, this shift has not always been easy for librarians. But stubbornly resisting change and becoming obsolete was never an option. So we reinvented ourselves. And while not every library patron has been enthusiastic about this, a huge and growing majority of our patrons have embraced the new opportunities of a 21st-century library. Libraries today are more popular than ever before.
It is my promise to everyone we serve that we will further increase and facilitate access to content, and that we will continue to set the standard of what it means to offer a comprehensive learning and research experience to our students and faculty.
This quarter in our newsletter we present information on some of the work that has already been going on at the S&E Library, with an update on the Active Learning Classroom. Improved Student Success is the measuring stick of a renovated S&E Library, so we also include an interview with Pablo Reguerin, Assistant Vice Provost for Student Success. Please also mark your calendars and join us on campus for our upcoming symposium “Charting The Library’s Future” on May 31, which is announced below. I hope to see many of you there!
Elizabeth Cowell
Richard L. Press University Librarian
Presidential Chair
Student success used to be narrowly defined and was mainly measured in terms of admission versus graduation rates. This has changed. It is not just about crossing the finish line anymore. Student success today is about students feeling like they belong and about their chances for success, including after graduation.
Our students come from increasingly diverse backgrounds. For many, getting into UCSC is a wonderful milestone, but thriving here, and feeling prepared to launch a professional life, often remains a challenge. We want our students to feel like they have had a transformative experience at UCSC. We want them to graduate with a high level of academic self-concept. If someone studied biology here, we want her to feel like she is a biologist. We want her to leave UCSC with social agency, with the confidence that she can change the world and that she can have an impact.
Recently our campus reorganized structurally to better address the issue of student success. About a year ago, we launched the Division of Student Success. There are an increasing number of areas on campus where we are enabling student success, but a division specifically devoted to this helps create systems and helps integrate all of the wonderful work that is happening with new initiatives.
Student success is a campus-wide responsibility. We all know that students struggle with academic and non-academic issues that affect their success. And so it is pertinent that we collaborate across the campus and ensure we respond to their needs. We can all have an impact on this—every student, faculty, and staff member.
The Library for instance, as the hub of academic support, learning, and academic engagement, is the ideal supplement to the classroom experience. Ideally, the library would have, in addition to direct curricular support, a strong integration of student support services. Most students use the library and so it is logistically helpful to meet the students where they are. A library that is centered around student success would enable a student to see their tutor at the library, meet their classmates for group study, and rely on a librarian to help them hone their research skills—all in one stop. The library would be a true launching pad for all students but especially for those students who need some additional help: an equalizer. That is why the Division of Student Success is eager to build a transformative partnership with the Library. It is our chance to develop an innovative hub for student success.
The reason I love my work? It’s personal. I am passionate about this field and about equity, particularly as it relates to historically marginalized students. As a UCSC alum (Oakes College 1994, BA in Latin American Studies), I am very aware of the challenges these students face every day. UCSC changed my life. My own personal liberation happened here. This work is a way for me to give back. Growing up as a Latino immigrant in the US, I knew injustices existed even in my high school. I may not have had the language or the tools to make sense of these things but I was aware of them and knew that our situations could be better. Once at UCSC, I got a strong sense of affirmation for things I did inside and outside the classroom. I pursued Latin American Studies because I was hungry to learn about my cultural background and myself. UCSC helped me to focus my interests and to connect my academic and social experiences. This school gave me the confidence to change a narrative I am very passionate about.
Although UCSC is confronting and tackling these difficult issues, and we have had some amazing success, we still have a long road ahead of us. This is not a 5-step program but rather a complicated ongoing process. We have to be willing to stay reflective about our practices and work towards the elimination of any kind of inequity. We are committed as a school to this, but we have to persistently question ourselves and be ready to work or even teach differently, and we have to embrace new, innovative ways of cross-campus collaboration. Working with the Library will be a great experience in this sense.
In the end, we all work for the students. When I see people succeed I am reminded of why I do this. I see so many students arrive here with a lot of drive and a lot of interest in improving their education and community. But they do not always know where to start. Some face challenges like poverty and discrimination. But their stories of how they overcome the odds exemplify the equalizing power of our work. These kids just need an opportunity to be successful.
Particularly for first-in-family students, challenges go far beyond the classroom and are more holistic. One African-American student I worked with who grew up in Vallejo for instance faced the challenges of a minority student. But during her undergraduate work in marine biology she was able to go on a study trip to the Caribbean. She explained to me how her life changed when, during her work in the Caribbean, she was sitting in a room and all of a sudden realized that every scientist in that room had black skin just like her. It was a life-changing moment for her to see herself in the people she worked with. Today she is successfully pursuing a graduate program.
We have to listen to the students. They are our curriculum and hold a lot of the answers. If we listen and address the issues they talk about we will move the needle of success and our work will have the impact we seek.
Gifts that make an impact: The Paul & Anne Irwin Library Subject Endowment for Students:
UCSC undergraduates make the greatest use of our demand-driven acquisitions (DDA) program, requesting thousands of titles annuall
y. Thanks to the generosity of the Paul & Anne Irwin Library Subject Endowment for Students, the library is able to supplement support for their diverse needs in print and online. To date, the endowment has funded titles across the disciplinary spectrum: Books about film, statistics, Latin American poetry, mathematics, and psychology have all been purchased with this endowment. Because DDA ensures that the book requested is definitely needed and will be used, the Irwin endowment is emphatically meeting its intended purpose: supporting UCSC student needs.
Active Learning Classroom coming soon
At the beginning of fall quarter 2017, the Science & Engineering (S&E) Library will become the home of the Active Learning Classroom (ALC). The ALC is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant-funded collaboration between the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences and the University Library. The 98-seat, technology-rich classroom will support innovative approaches to teaching STEM curricula that focus on active learning rather than traditional lectures. The space and furniture are designed to be flexible to support a variety of configurations and approaches to teaching and learning.
When the ALC is not being used for teaching, it will be available to the library to provide much-needed study space for UCSC students.
New exhibit commemorating the Summer of Love opening soon
Love on Haight: the Grateful Dead and San Francisco in 1967 will highlight materials from multiple collections housed in the Library’s Special Collections & Archives. The exhibit will feature posters, photography, and ephemera from the Grateful Dead Archive and photographs from Ruth-Marion Baruch’s 1967 Haight-Ashbury series. Additionally, the exhibit will include a selection from the Library’s exceptionally rich holdings in alternative publications from this time period: a variety of newspapers and magazines, comic books, literary journals, and broadsides, as well as political tracts.
There will also be an audiovisual component in Dead Central—films about the Summer of Love (including Michael McClure’s documentary for KPIX), snippets of performances, and of course music.
For those visitors who are interested in actually browsing some of the publications on display, there will be a “reading corner
” upstairs in Special Collections on the third floor of McHenry Library. Reserve some time to take a closer look at titles like Lenore Kandel’s Love Book, issues of the Oracle, Michael McClure’s Beard, San Francisco poetry, comics including Strange Tales and Zap comix, contemporary news reports on the Haight-Ashbury . . . and much more!
We hope that the materials chosen for display will provide a context for the Grateful Dead in 1967 and help evoke the experience of what it might have been like to wander the streets of the Haight-Ashbury fifty years ago.
The Brittingham Family Foundation Dead Central exhibit space will be closed during the month of May for renovation and installation of the new exhibit. Join us on June 6th for the opening of Love on Haight.
Upcoming Events
Graduate student research highlighted at the Library
The main floor of
McHenry will be humming with graduate students and their research endeavors on Friday, May 12, at 1:30 pm. This is the 13th Annual Graduate Research Symposium, and the fifth to be held at the library. Students will discuss the impacts of their research using posters, oral presentations, and media presentations, giving them the opportunity to explain their work to a non-specialist audience.
It's a rewarding event to attend, and is connected to the Library's mission of supporting campus research and learning. Graduate student presentations will be judged, with prizes awarded at a reception directly following the Symposium at 3:30pm.
Visit the Graduate Research Symposium page for more information about this year’s event.
Past Symposium programs, winners, and examples of student work can be found at the UCSC Graduate Division eScholarship page.
Symposium: Charting the Library's Future
Join us for a discussion on how universities create, consume, and share knowledge.
May 31, 2017
10am - 3pm
McHenry Library, Room 4286
Click here for program details and to register
Koret Scholars Undergraduate Research Slam
Come join us on the afternoon of Friday, June 9, at 1:30 p.m., as McHenry Library hosts the inaugural Koret Scholars Undergraduate Research Slam. This event will celebrate the achievement of 50 Koret Scholars who performed original research this year under the mentorship of a UCSC faculty member or graduate student. These students pursued a broad range of research interests in the arts, humanities, social sciences, science, and engineering. They will share their discoveries and experiences at an interactive poster session, followed by an outdoor reception with light refreshments.
1:30–3:30pm: Opening remarks and research poster exhibition in McHenry Library
3:30–4:30pm: Reception on the south lawn
This program was conceived by the Division of Student Success and realized with generous support from the Koret Foundation. The goals of the program are to foster closer working relationships between undergraduate students and their faculty or graduate student mentors, and to improve undergraduate student success. For more information about Koret Scholarships, see https://ugr.ue.ucsc.edu/koretscholars.
The University Library’s Undergraduate Experience Team is delighted to have this opportunity to work with the Office of Undergraduate Honors and Research Opportunities to celebrate these remarkable students.
Santa Cruz, CA
