The Benefits of Librarian Leadership in University Teaching and Learning Centers: An Overview and Case Study

Most library outreach to teaching faculty relies on direct librarian-faculty contact through liaison relationships, and not on involvement in faculty development programs. That is unfortunate since these programs, whether focusing on faculty development or on instructional development, could be a locus for librarian leadership on campus. Our survey of centers for teaching and learning at selected US colleges and universities found significant opportunities for librarians. At Eastern Michigan University, librarians became active leaders on the university-wide Teaching and Learning Resources Team. In that role we collaborated to plan integrated services with the directors of various faculty support offices, including the Faculty Center for Instructional Excellence (FCIE), the Center for Research Support (CRS), and the Center for Instructional Computing (CIC). As a consequence of this collaboration, the support centers were able to design programs that were more successful in meeting faculty needs, and library outreach programs themselves were strengthened. This case study demonstrates the mutual positive benefit derived from librarian leadership in faculty development and teaching and learning programs. Our paper contains specific examples of how librarians can promote information literacy and library learning while supporting faculty development and teaching and learning programs. We show how librarians epitomize the link between classroom skills and the newer concerns of computer literacy and information literacy. Based on our survey, we conclude by suggesting the types of librarian support and collaborative arrangements that would be most beneficial to faculty development or teaching and learning programs. Introduction In this paper, we offer a case study demonstrating the mutual positive benefit derived from librarian leadership in faculty development and teaching and learning programs. We will describe a survey we conducted exploring how teaching and learning centers across the U.S. have MLA Forum, Vol. III, Issue 2 July 14, 2004 2 collaborated with libraries, which found significant opportunities for librarians. Finally, we will conclude with some examples of librarian leadership and collaborative arrangement that most benefit faculty development and teaching and learning programs. The context of EMU librarian participation in teaching and learning In the year 2000, Baier and Klopfer were hired at EMU as the multimedia librarian and the faculty outreach librarian, respectively. In the past, positions such as ours would have been understood from the library’s point of view as simple vectors from library to various departments and individual faculty members. There would have been no assumption that we would be leaders or even players in faculty development. In the vision of our director at the time, however, the library was to lead in many aspects of learning, including academic software support and “library in your office” resources for faculty. When we began, we found that our actual points of access to faculty were typical for most library outreach efforts. They included: • a 40-minute slot in the university orientation for new faculty, • our two annual meetings for departmental liaisons to the library, librarian representation on university committees, • and personal contact by each librarian in the daily course of his or her work in selection, reference and instruction. We presume that this range of contact is probably also true for most university libraries. It represents the typical expectation that library outreach is done through relationships and programs created by the library and expressly about the library. Like most programs, these ran relatively smoothly, but there was not a great deal of faculty enthusiasm. In fact, some faculty members, even those designated as liaisons to the library, questioned the need for our efforts. At the same time, we ourselves perceived huge gaps in faculty awareness about library services and resources. At that time, faculty development at EMU was facilitated through three separate offices: the Faculty Center for Instructional Excellence (FCIE), the Center for Research Support (CRS) and the Center for Instructional Computing (CIC). Co-author Karabenick served as director and associate director of the CRS and CIC, respectively, throughout the period under discussion. These three centers were housed since 1999 in the then new library building and had cordial relations with librarians, who occasionally offered seminars or other assistance to them, and took part in the teamdesigned Instructional Technology Across the Curriculum workshops in 2000 and 2001. There was no librarian participation, however, in the leadership of the centers, nor were center directors invited to participate in library outreach programs. EMU’s experiment in teaching and learning collaboration We two librarians joined EMU just at the point of the reorganization of academic computing and the cutback of support for the three faculty development centers. One of the effects of these was to nudge the library back into its more traditional (passive) role. The resulting loss of support for MLA Forum, Vol. III, Issue 2 July 14, 2004 3 faculty development, however, inspired a remarkable ad hoc cross-campus team of academics and professionals interested in supporting teaching and learning. Coalescence of the existing centers into a single administrative unit was not possible, so they remained independent, but a combination of major budget cuts, lack of administrative support and the cooperative attitude of the center directors all made teamwork more advantageous. The directors realized that collaboration and coordination of programs gave the centers more impact and expanded their reach. Therefore, the center directors opted to create an informal collaborative entity, the Teaching and Learning Resource Team (TLRT) (http://www.emich.edu/public /fcie/tlrt.htm). Notably, this actualized the vision of Morell Boone who designed the physical space in the library building that houses the centers with this goal in mind. Physical proximity and previous collaborative planning efforts led to inclusion of library faculty on the team as the fourth entity. Several other units were also represented in TLRT planning meetings and programs, including Student Affairs, Information and Communications Technology, student support services (Holman Learning Center), Office of Service Learning, Continuing Education, and the writing across the curriculum program. Synergy was the norm; despite its being completely voluntary, it was not unusual for attendance at weekly planning sessions to exceed 15 people. TLRT collaboration continued for two years at EMU, building up promising momentum, until the administration effectively closed one of the centers entirely and signaled distinct lack of endorsement for the efforts of the other centers and of the TLRT itself. At that point, the Faculty Council took on the task of lobbying for a development center, and the TLRT members dissolved their voluntary efforts. During the period of its activity, however short, the TLRT did demonstrate the advantages brought by coordination and collaboration. At the simplest level, a joint calendar assisted all the participating groups in scheduling faculty programs effectively, thereby avoiding timing conflicts. In addition, coordination ensured that all the programs were aware of each others’ program plans, so that overlaps could be avoided and gaps filled in. For example, simply from coordinating our calendars we discovered that the Library and the Center for Instructional Computing were both planning workshops on bibliographic software, while no one was effectively assisting faculty to use or teach about Web search engines. Collaboration developed almost automatically from the coordination. Using a graduated model of learning from Chickering and Gamson (1991), TLRT members plotted out a matrix of desired teaching and learning outcomes, and mapped the various programs to that matrix. In so doing we began to see how our various programs nested together, and also how we could jointly devise programs on some topics. Librarian leadership in the TLRT Librarians participated in the TLRT as equal partners with particular knowledge of library research and the application of information literacy in many different disciplines. Our experience on this team expanded our understanding of library outreach. We realized that library outreach did not have to be initiated entirely by the library for the library, but instead would be much more effective if it were integrated into meaningful, problem-focused faculty development programs. MLA Forum, Vol. III, Issue 2 July 14, 2004 4 Thus, outreach itself was transformed into something more interactive and more substantial. Working through the TLRT, we librarians not only gained the attention of departments and faculty members who generally ignored us, but we found we could make library resources more meaningful by integrating them with other faculty development services. For example, instead of simply demonstrating subject guide web pages, or offering templates and encouraging faculty to link their syllabus to the library site, we could integrate our contribution into the Syllabus Project (FCIE & TLRT, 2001), thereby ensuring that the important library elements of syllabi were introduced in a meaningful sequence along with information about devising syllabus content, and managing the technology of online syllabi. Similarly, instead of repeating over and over that most undergraduates do not know how to use library resources, working with colleagues in the TLRT we could demonstrate the fact through extremely simple classroom assessments. Such demonstrations drive the fact home to startled faculty members in a way no manner of lecturing can attain, and has the added advantage of being integrated into other assessable issues such a