Faculty Stars

The staff of the SU Libraries works closely with many academic faculty to teach students information literacy skills – that is, how to find, evaluate and use information. In 2014, we started a program to recognize Information Literacy Partners of the Month, honoring usually three or four per year, despite the name. Librarians nominate faculty based on their willingness to work with us to teach information literacy skills and to teach creatively. Here is some information about our most recent IL Partners of the Month, as written by the librarians who nominated them:

Jennifer Kruglinski, Department of Art: Jenn Kruglinski has brought her ART 391 (History of Photography) class to the Nabb Center classroom five times this semester (with two more visits planned) to work with different examples of historic photographs from the archival collections and cameras from the artifact collection. In the first visit, I spoke to the students about the Nabb Center collections and photographic preservation. [During] [m]ost visits, Jenn conducts a lecture about a photographic process or period and allows the students to spend time with collections we’ve pulled in connection with the lecture. Working hands-on with these primary sources, the students have tangibly engaged with the content of the lectures in a unique way that has led to interesting class discussions, a better understanding of photography on the Delmarva Peninsula, and an appreciation for the role libraries, archives and museums play in cultural preservation. Jenn also has used photographer advertisements she found in our local newspapers for lectures and brought in her ART 300 class to work with Japanese woodblock prints during her lecture on modernist painters.

Jennifer Liston, Department of Art: Dr. Liston has consistently sought me out for assistance with her art history courses each semester that I have been here at Salisbury. Together, we have worked diligently to develop sessions and assignments that have boosted the information literacy skills of students enrolled in her art history courses, focusing specifically on topic development and source evaluation. This past summer, Dr. Liston was awarded one of the SU Libraries Course Enhancement Grants for the Introduction to Art History online course, working with me to develop training modules to reach her online students. Throughout our time working together, Dr. Liston has continually impressed me with her dedication to her students and their education.

Dean Ravizza, Department of Secondary and Physical Education: Dr. Ravizza has consistently worked with the library during my time here at Salisbury University, bringing me in to work with his PHED 400 course every spring semester. In this class, which focuses on adapted physical education, we work with the students to connect their growing information literacy skills to their future work as practitioners in the field of physical education. This semester, even through all of its changes in moving to an online environment, was no different. Dr. Ravizza was intent on providing a similar experience to his students, working with me to create tutorial videos for his students to watch and practice their IL skills as they worked on their research assignments. His students are fortunate to have such a dedicated professor.

Yujia Song, Department of Philosophy: Dr. Song has allowed me to work with her upper-level course, Philosophical Perspectives on Mental Health, giving me the opportunity to talk to students about open access resources in addition to general information literacy. We worked over the summer to plan the course to be fully online. This course also opened up the opportunity to work with the PHIL 101 class in more depth. For example, we gave these students an assignment to use some of our reference sources to define course topics and how these definitions can help with further research, and we created a “quiz” in My Classes where students had to think about scholarship, not just what it is but who is writing it. Planning these classes during the pandemic allowed us to be truly creative. I’ve come out of our planning meetings feeling energized and excited about the possibilities.

These faculty are stars in librarians’ eyes, and we thank them for working with us.