As I write this, students are filling every nook and cranny of the Guerrieri Academic Commons, studying for finals. Tension levels are high. We are open 24/5 the last week of the semester and finals week; although, honestly, I would prefer that students would go home and get a good night’s sleep.
The winner of the SU Libraries Undergraduate Research Prize is Josh Arinze in the Junior/Senior Category. Josh submitted a project he did for Rachel Buchanan’s SOWK 490 class titled “Realities in Mental Health for Latinx Sexual Minority Youth,” which consists of a website and a series of podcasts.
In this issue, we profile Sarah Hancock, a student worker at the Curriculum Resource Center (CRC). Sarah is from the Eastern Shore, born in Salisbury and raised in Ocean City. She chose to stay local and study at SU because, she shared, SU “has all the connections and accommodations that I need, with the personable professors that I wouldn’t have gotten at a larger school.”
Once upon a time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, historians and genealogists headed off to dusty archives or historical societies, scouring original handwritten records or slowly scrolling through endless reels of microfilm. As with so much else in our world, computers have transformed historical and genealogical research.
Thanks to a generous endowment provided by the Middendorf Foundation in 2007, the SU Libraries are able to award a Library Art Prize, purchasing pieces at SU’s Senior Art Shows each year. This spring, the prize committee chose three prints by Baylee Bruso as the prize winner. The three prints, collectively known as “Rainy Day on the River,” charmed the committee with their whimsical but well-executed style.
Well, these are faculty who shine, at least in librarians’ eyes! One of the key purposes of the SU Libraries is to help our students become information literate. We do this mostly by partnering with the faculty to teach students how to search for, cite and use information in a variety of formats. We could not reach nearly as many students as we do – a lot! – nor would we have nearly as much impact without our faculty partners.
The SU Libraries and especially the staff of the Dr. Ernie Bond Curriculum Resource Center (CRC) bid a fond farewell to Dr. Patty Dean, associate professor of early and elementary education, who is retiring after 20 years at SU. Dr. Dean has been a steadfast friend of the CRC, donating more than three thousand – yes, you read that right, three thousand – children’s literature books over the years.