Many faculty at City Tech, myself included, are introduced to City Tech’s Honors and Undergraduate Research program by attending or volunteering as a judge at the semi-annual poster session for student research. It was great talking to the students and learning more about their work and their plans for the future. The experience was similar to attending commencement but intimate. This article discusses how the library has been able to form a deeper connection to undergraduate research at City Tech.
Back in 2014, at a conference, The Academic Librarian in the Open Access Future, Stephanie Davis-Kahl presented on how undergraduates at her campus were involved with open access and using the institutional repository. At the conference’s birds-of-a-feather discussion, we strategized how to get our campuses on board with our local institutional repository. At City Tech and throughout CUNY, we use Academic Works as our institutional repository and it is chiefly a platform that enables faculty scholarship to be made open access (allowing scholarship to be freely available to all readers) and to be preserved.
Connecting City Tech’s emphasis on quality teaching and Davis-Kahl’s talk, I thought
Wouldn’t it be great if students were involved in our institutional repository?
Although it took several years, we developed an excellent synergy between undergraduate research and Academic Works. I am so grateful to be part of our excellent Undergraduate Research Committee. The Committee’s work, especially their mentoring handbook, has been acknowledged as outstanding at CUNY and nationally. Being a member of the committee made a critical difference in connecting the library.
Academic Works is now well integrated into the undergraduate research and honors experience. Workshops teach students learn how to self-archive . They especially like being able to link to their posters on their resumes and graduate school applications. Having the posters in Academic Works marks them as scholars. Below is the Fall 2019 winner for individual STEM posters.
Lastly, in addition to a required workshop teaching all undergraduate researchers how to perform the literature review, the library now offers an exciting, new workshop on how to research graduate school. The partnership between undergraduate research and the library continues to grow and strengthen and gives librarians opportunities for new roles as teachers and experts on research.
