Education Commons^™

Campus Poetry Walk: (Re)Creating And Reconnecting A Community (Presentation), Lisa Villa

Staff publications

In January 2020, the Outreach and Engagement Team at the College of the Holy Cross began preparing a poetry walk, which was reconfigured to a social media “poetry event” due to COVID-19. With the anticipated return of students to campus for the Spring 2021 semester and a need for the community (especially students) to have recreational opportunities that were safe, socially distanced and preferably outside, the Team attempted for a second time to plan a poetry walk. CrossWorks, the institutional repository for the College, was a part of this plan from the beginning. Foremost, CrossWorks would support the scholarly and …

The Undergraduate That Could: Crafting A Collaborative Student Training Program, Jennifer L.A. Whelan, Jared Andrew Rex

Staff publications

Since the mid-19th century, student worker programs have been an integral component of academic libraries, and the evolution of the profession has put more students, even undergraduates, into positions with greater responsibility, raising questions about the level of expertise of which undergraduate students are capable. The authors address these questions through the lens of the collaborative redevelopment of two distinct library student worker programs at a small liberal arts college. Included is a discussion of successes and challenges, as well as a consideration of the benefits of a “cross-library” support system in developing such a program.

Drawing On Walls And Other Alliances, Barbara Merolli

Staff publications

How can the divide between science and the humanities be bridged? This article describes a series of collaborative art projects initiated by the science librarian at the College of the Holy Cross, who worked with faculty from Visual Arts and Creative Writing. Participating faculty were eager to help design opportunities that would highlight student work as well as form alliances with the libraries. These collaborations were innovative in that they brought together two academic worlds which don’t always have opportunities to mix with each other, generated other projects that drew non-traditional users into the science library, and, most significantly, enabled …

Habits Of Mind In The Classroom: Threshold Concepts, Instructional Philosophy, And Sotl, Alicia S. Hansen, Brad Petitfils Ph.D.

Staff publications

Students performing research in higher education, especially at the undergraduate level, is a progressively dazzling task in the universe of digital and print resources. Using sound pedagogy to create student confidence in approaching research, hand in hand with creating scholarship, is a challenge tackled well by librarians and teaching faculty together.

We will discuss three theories and their place in research methods, using ACRL’sFramework for Information Literacy as context. First, Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory. Second, Perry’s Epistemology of Learning: moving a student’s absolute belief in all things defined by authority toward a belief in his own values and …

Reference Resilience: Balancing Sustainability With Customized And Effective Research Support, Jennifer Adams, Laura Hibbler

Staff publications

As we see fewer "walk-up" questions at the reference desk, our librarians faced difficult questions about how best to focus research support for Holy Cross students. While so-called 'ready-reference' information is now available online, the expanse of information on the Internet combined with the increasing complexity of tools like research databases, pointed to a need for a different kind of research assistance which is more in-depth and focuses on effective search strategies. For many libraries, including ours, this calls for shifting our priorities and hours from traditional time at the reference desk to other, more-personalized activities such as meeting with …

Case Study: Student Art As Construction Beautification, Barbara Merolli

Staff publications

The article presents a case study of using student art as decoration at the College of the Holy Cross. The College's library was undergoing some construction and as a result the Atrium, one of the most aesthetically pleasing features of the library, was boarded up. Cristi Rinklin, a visual arts assistant professor, coordinated a final project for her students of a course on the principles of color theory to create artwork through scientific inspiration which was then turned to wallpaper.