Library Newsletter Fall 2016

NEWSLETTER FALL 2016 Message from the Dean of the Library and Learning Technologies Another academic year is underway and on week one the library had already filled with students studying, writing, and working in groups. The 2016-2017 Stetson students have hit the ground running. We always look forward to August when the campus comes back to life and the rhythm of a new year begins. But summers in the library are anything but quiet – every summer we undergo facilities and/or technology upgrades, and rethink our strategies for providing library collections and services to the next crop of Hatters. (Check out in this issue the photos of our new Café duPont and the installation of Dan Gunderson’s art piece for two examples of our ever-changing building.) This summer, however, we also did a lot of hiring. Due to an unusual number of retirements over the past year, about one-third of the library staff is new. While so many new people all at once can provide training challenges, we look at this as a great opportunity to see our library through many new sets of eyes. We’ve hired some experienced and skilled librarians and staff members and we are eager to take advantage of their fresh perspectives, great ideas, and enthusiasm in moving the library forward. We will profile two of our new hires in this Newsletter, but we hope you will stop by the library and meet all of them for yourselves. New year, new students, new librarians, new staff. It’s an exciting time at the duPont-Ball Library! Susan M. Ryan, Dean of the duPont-Ball Library Gunderson Art Piece Installed Dan Gunderson, Stetson Professor of Art, discovered the library’s Innovation Lab this summer and it opened the door for several new art pieces done completely or partially from items printed on the library’s 3D printers. Gunderson, who has in the past used small plastic toys to create beautiful graphic art work (featured in a recent book he has published), wanted to find a way to scale the toys to various sizes. Using 3D printing, he was able to quickly and effectively create the items he needed in a variety of dimensions. The resulting completed works are stunning, and Gunderson donated Natural Abstraction, his first completed 3D-printed piece, to the library which was unveiled during our annual August reception and which is displayed at the entry of the Innovation Lab. We love that our 3D printers, used heavily by students and faculty in the natural sciences, have now been used in the creative arts. A big thank you to Dan for the gift. ___________________________________________ Follow the Library on Facebook Stay up-to-date on library news http://facebook.com/StetsonLibrary Welcome Molly and Jennifer Molly Brown (MLS, 2008; BA, 1992), our new User Experience and Outreach Librarian, has worked in academic libraries for 13 years. She most recently served as the User Experience and Reference/Instruction Librarian at SUNY Oneonta, where she led a team of librarians to develop assessment projects of library services and the library’s virtual presence. Before going to SUNY Oneonta, Molly worked in various public service positions in academic libraries, including the University of West Florida, Wells College, and Amherst College. As part of a grant-funded team, she traveled with other librarians to Pristina to help train librarians at the University Library of Kosovo. Molly is passionate about the User Experience movement in libraries and she brings to Stetson a wealth of experience in library instruction, information literacy, and outreach. Jennifer Corbin (MLS, 1999; BA, 1996), Director of Public Services, comes to us from Tulane University where she headed the Center for Library User Education. At Tulane, she had numerous administrative and supervisory duties, including oversight of reference and instruction services, as well as the information literacy instruction program. Jennifer worked to increase the number and quality of course-related sessions with the goal of providing instruction at key times during a student’s academic career. Previous positions at Indiana University, Allegheny College, and Washington & Jefferson College all involved various aspects of library public services. Jennifer brings to Stetson a great enthusiasm for the library user experience movement and is student-centered in her approach to library services. Café duPont Open for Business The Library continually seeks to upgrade its facilities to make a better research, study, and learning environment for our students. Students have long asked for a library vending area to sustain them through long library study sessions, and this summer, with financial support from the Student Government Association (SGA) and the John Haire Family Library Endowment, as well as renovation/construction assistance from Stetson’s Facilities staff, we have created Café duPont where students, faculty, and staff can take a break and purchase coffee, drinks, and snacks. On seeing photos of the new library space, one alumnus commented on Facebook, “Makes me want to re-enroll for my graduate studies. Blown away by the renovations to the campus! Great professors, faculty, and now every building is getting the same quality across the whole campus.” We couldn’t agree more! Thanks to SGA and the Haire family for helping to make this possible for our students. Faculty Members Honored The library has a tradition of honoring faculty members at our annual August reception who have been recently tenured and/or promoted. We ask each faculty member to choose a book that has been particularly meaningful to them in their personal or professional lives and we add that book to our collection with a commemorative bookplate. Chris Colwell, tenured as Associate Professor of Education: The Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders. “My research centers around school leadership. I am particularly interested in what school leaders can learn from leadership research in the private sector and study the ways in which K-12 school leaders can benefit from leadership development in other sectors. One major influence on my work is the work of John Zenger & Joseph Folkman. I have all of their books but recommend The Extraordinary Leader.” Chris Ferguson, promoted to Professor of Psychology: Ghost Story. “I first read Ghost Story when I was maybe 11. It really awakened me to the potential for darkness and horror to inspire beautiful narrative, a tradition now passed down through other books such as The Woman in Black and movies such as The Others. Ultimately, much of my career seems to have focused on defending literary darkness from moral absolutism. But I still hope to cap it all off by writing a truly good ghost story of my own.” David Hill, promoted to Professor of Political Science: “Voice and Equality: Civic Volunteerism in American Politics was published in my second year of graduate school, which was about the time I began to focus on political participation as my main topic of study. The argument of the book is simple: individual level political participation is a function of resources (education, income, etc.), motivation (attitudes conducive to participation such as interest in politics and political efficacy), and mobilization (contact by candidates, parties, and groups). Because of the reality of socioeconomic inequality in the United States and the strong connection between socioeconomic status and resources, motivation, and mobilization, political participation in the United States is heavily skewed toward the middle and upper classes. Like most students of American politics at this time, Voice and Equality had a strong influence on my thinking (and several publications!), and remains the key framework for my teaching and research on American political participation to this day.” Tim Peter, tenured as Professor of Music: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. “One of the most influential Lutheran theologians, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is an inspiration to me as someone who understood what human justice and acceptance of all people meant during some of the darkest years of world history during Germany’s Nazi influence in the 1930s and 1940s. Metaxas’ biography is detailed, engaging; honest, yet clever; accurate, yet inspirationally written. Courage, appreciation of culture and education, and the value of humanity and faith are central themes that spoke to me during a summer read a few years back.” Tara Schuwerk, tenured and promoted as Associate Professor of Communication and Mass Media Studies: The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd edition). “This text inspired my pursuit of qualitative methodologies while helping to solidify my knowledge and understanding of qualitative research.” Rajni Shankar-Brown, tenured as Associate Professor of Education: Pedagogy of the Oppressed. “As a social justice educator, Paulo Freire’s revolutionary work Pedagogy of the Oppressed has inspired, challenged, and sustained me. The book was first published in Portuguese in 1968 and translated and published in English in 1970. The book holds special significance in my life. Beyond providing me with profoundly insightful ideas on critical pedagogy and education as praxis, I find immeasurable hope in this text. I am indebted to Paulo Freire for his thought-provoking and compassionate writings. Moreover, I am grateful for his life example – an educator who championed education as a vehicle for social change; an educator who dedicated is life to dismantling oppressive, intersectional systems such as classism, racism, and sexism; an educator who actively engaged in the struggle for equity and justice. Although Freire passed away in 1997, he continues to live through his radical teachings and his work empowers lives around the world including my own. In particular, Pedagogy of the Oppressed has influenced me personally and professionally and continues to guide my journey. It positively impacts my teaching, scholarship, and service. It reminds me to engage our students in promoting individual and community empowerment, especially those preparing to be teachers and educational leaders. It inspires me to work towards social transformation and to view education as (in Freire’s dynamic words) “the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” Honored also were: Shahram Amiri, promoted to Professor of Decision and Information Sciences, and Jason Bent and Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, both tenured as Associate Professor of Law. Congratulations to all of our tenured and promoted faculty members! FACULTY AUTHORS Also celebrated at the library’s August reception were those faculty members who wrote a book in the past year: Chris Colwell, Associate Professor of Education: Impact: How Assistant Principals Can Be High Performing Leaders; Chris Ferguson, Professor of Psychology: Media Psychology 101; Dan Gunderson, Professor of Art: Radial Rhythms; and Terri Witek, Professor of English: Body Switch. ______________________________________ Friend of the University Archives The library lost a great “institutional memory” when Stetson alumnus James “Jimmy” Jordan (’51) passed away at age 89 earlier this year. Whenever librarians had a question about Stetson athletics history, Jimmy was our best source. A long-time newsman, Jimmy also spent more than a decade as the executive director of the Hatter Athletics booster organization. We will miss his deep knowledge of Hatter sports history and we offer our condolences to his family. duPont-Ball Library • Stetson University • 421 N. Woodland Blvd., Unit 8418 • DeLand, FL 32723 (386)822-7183 • stetson.edu/library • facebook.com/StetsonLibrary