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Every year the USF Student Success unit celebrates faculty, staff, departments, and community partners who have worked hard to transform the institutional culture and raise performance levels across the board. The annual Student Success Awards honor these outstanding individuals’ and teams’ exceptional contributions to student success.
This year, two of the USF Libraries’ departments were honored at the 2020-2021 Awards. The first is our Research & Instruction team, from all three campuses, for the Collaboration Award, which honors the work of a team that has demonstrated the value of reaching across campuses, colleges, and/or units to generate impactful programs and practices to advance student success.
Research & Instruction was honored for their collaborative efforts in designing the Info + Data Literacy Workshops program, which supports and enables student success, especially during COVID-19 remote instruction. These workshops enrich courses with a research component, and are short and Canvas-based. They are self-guided, and can be self-assigned or assigned by faculty as a course requirement or for extra credit. The workshops align with USF general education learning objectives and requirements, and upon completion, provide students badging to add to their LinkedIn or Handshake profiles or resume. Before launching the program, workshops went through a peer-reviewed process for online instruction by both librarians and graduate students and incorporated faculty feedback.
Since the program’s inception, over 2,500 USF students from all three campuses have completed at least one workshop. Students come from a wide range of departments, including Chemistry, Psychology, Marketing, and Finance, just to name a few. Students reported that they learned how to read scientific papers, search online databases, and publish in undergraduate research journals.
The R&I unit also supports faculty research, and provides a range of collaborative teaching and research activities, including workshops for professional development and for researchers, library guides, and curated open resources and course material lists. They continue to collaborate on notable USF strategic initiatives like Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, Florida COVID-19 Research, and Piney Point and USF Forest Preserve collections.
To learn more about the R&I librarians, or to schedule a consultation, head to lib.usf.edu/research-and-instruction.
The second Student Success Award was the Regional Chancellor Award, celebrating the Virtual Book Club coordinators. This award honors the work of an individual, team, department, or college for outstanding contributions made to advancing student success on the St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee campuses.
The Virtual Book Club (VBC) at USF Sarasota Manatee began in April 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the swift transition to remote instruction. Student worker Scarleth Andino contacted Jessica Szempruch, USF Sarasota-Manatee campus librarian, and Kati Hinds, Coordinator of Student Organizations & Leadership at the Office of Student Engagement, to start a book club that could virtually bring together students to stay connected and recreate the community so missed from on-campus activities. Library specialist Evan Fruehauf was brought onto the team, to help organize and facilitate student engagement, and officially VBC was born.
Today, Virtual Book Club has become a signature program for the Office of Student Engagement and Library Services on the Sarasota-Manatee campus. VBC has now read 10 books and engaged over 150 students from across all three USF campuses. As of Fall 2021, they continue to meet weekly in the virtual setting, and recommend and vote on which books to read. Those under financial strain can sign up to receive a complimentary book funded by the Office of Student Engagement — which is shipped directly to their home. The group meets on Microsoft Teams to discuss book sections in manageable chunks, and meetings typically have between 15-20 participants. A full 100% of student participants surveyed indicated that they would recommend Virtual Book Club to other students.
In Spring 2021, a LibGuide was created to further enhance meaningful connections between USF Libraries resources and VBC picks. Students are invited to join VBC, which they can do on BullsConnect. If you are a faculty or staff member interested in learning more about VBC, or getting involved yourself, please contact Jessica Szempruch at jszempru@usf.edu.
You can check out all 2021 Student Success Awards recipients here. Congratulations to R&I and VBC! We are so honored to have you on our team at the USF Libraries!