Start Date

3-16-2020 2:30 PM

End Date

3-16-2020 3:30 PM

Author(s) Bio

Wendy Doucette is an assistant professor and the Graduate Research and Instruction Librarian at East Tennessee State University. She is the lead instructor and developer of the Sherrod Library Graduate-Level Academic Workshop series and an embedded librarian for the Graduate School’s Thesis and Dissertation Boot Camp. She holds an MS in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and a PhD from Stanford University. Her research interests center on 360-degree literacy, problem-based learning, visual literacy, and professional development and motivation. Elizabeth Kline, Research & Learning Librarian at the University of Arizona Libraries, serves the research and instruction needs of various users in the College of Science. Besides those main job responsibilities she is a member of the university’s Graduate Council, the shared-governance body for graduate education that is part of the Faculty Senate. Her main areas of research interests are exploring the complexities of the intellectual journeys of graduate education and making improvements to library services in an effort to facilitate students’ progression to degree completion.

Keywords

scholarship, fellowship, funding, training, research

Description of Proposal

Graduate programs in all disciplines view external funding as a benchmark of success. For students on research teams and for those seeking academic careers, faculty role models demonstrate the need for funding as an integral part of the research cycle. Closer to home, the increasing cost of graduate education requires students seek supplemental funding. This session, divided into two segments (internal and external funding), will present experiential case studies for how academic libraries can design scholarships and fellowships to serve graduate students in this often overlooked phase of their graduate education.

Sherrod Library at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) has developed two internal graduate student scholarships. The Outstanding Graduate Assistant Scholarship provides a mechanism to reward library graduate assistant employees who have excelled in performance of their job duties. The second award, the Graduate Student Scholarship for Excellence in Research, is open to all graduate students and recognizes individuals who demonstrate research acumen and a successful, strategic search strategy in utilizing library resources to conduct research. Unlike other ETSU graduate scholarships, which are awarded for thesis, dissertation, or capstone, this scholarship focuses on research done in foundational coursework and requires careful reflection and examination of the research process itself. This scholarship provides the library an opportunity to support graduate education and raises the library’s profile at the university level via the annual Graduate Awards Ceremony.

At the University of Arizona Libraries, a new initiative provides successful candidates a $1500 stipend through the Digital Scholarship & Data Science Fellowship Program. The focus is to train graduate students in pedagogical best practices, a unique area where the library contributes to teacher training, and also provides a forum where the students provide training for in-demand digital and computational skills to a community of interested learners.

The second half of the presentation will focus on external funding, the ruling funding force for those in academic training. Grant writing has traditionally been left to an experienced principal investigator since, even for trained scholars, securing federal funding can be quite challenging. Increasingly, doctoral students are leading the development of research proposals and competing for external funding. Incorporating training for grant funding as part of graduate education provides students with a training exercise aimed to introduce them to the reality and process of writing competitive research grants.

We will explore possible ways that libraries can serve graduate students navigating this aspect of graduate education. The analysis on external funding will share observations of new grant writing training occurring in academic disciplinary programs, including examples of how these practices contribute to meeting comprehensive exam requirements in some programs at the University of Arizona.

Session participants will leave with a model for structuring an in-house scholarship program. This includes opportunities for funding; putting together a team; scheduling, marketing and promotion; rubrics; and software. This session strives to have an interactive component. Participants will be invited to share their own scholarship and fellowship initiatives so that we may learn from each other.

What takeaways will attendees learn from your session?

Session participants will leave with a model for structuring an in-house scholarship program. This includes opportunities for funding; putting together a team; scheduling, marketing and promotion; rubrics; and software. This session strives to have an interactive component. Participants will be invited to share their own scholarship and fellowship initiatives so that we may learn from each other.

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Mar 16th, 2:30 PM Mar 16th, 3:30 PM

Money Matters: Academic Library Scholarship and Funding Initiatives for Graduate Students

Graduate programs in all disciplines view external funding as a benchmark of success. For students on research teams and for those seeking academic careers, faculty role models demonstrate the need for funding as an integral part of the research cycle. Closer to home, the increasing cost of graduate education requires students seek supplemental funding. This session, divided into two segments (internal and external funding), will present experiential case studies for how academic libraries can design scholarships and fellowships to serve graduate students in this often overlooked phase of their graduate education.

Sherrod Library at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) has developed two internal graduate student scholarships. The Outstanding Graduate Assistant Scholarship provides a mechanism to reward library graduate assistant employees who have excelled in performance of their job duties. The second award, the Graduate Student Scholarship for Excellence in Research, is open to all graduate students and recognizes individuals who demonstrate research acumen and a successful, strategic search strategy in utilizing library resources to conduct research. Unlike other ETSU graduate scholarships, which are awarded for thesis, dissertation, or capstone, this scholarship focuses on research done in foundational coursework and requires careful reflection and examination of the research process itself. This scholarship provides the library an opportunity to support graduate education and raises the library’s profile at the university level via the annual Graduate Awards Ceremony.

At the University of Arizona Libraries, a new initiative provides successful candidates a $1500 stipend through the Digital Scholarship & Data Science Fellowship Program. The focus is to train graduate students in pedagogical best practices, a unique area where the library contributes to teacher training, and also provides a forum where the students provide training for in-demand digital and computational skills to a community of interested learners.

The second half of the presentation will focus on external funding, the ruling funding force for those in academic training. Grant writing has traditionally been left to an experienced principal investigator since, even for trained scholars, securing federal funding can be quite challenging. Increasingly, doctoral students are leading the development of research proposals and competing for external funding. Incorporating training for grant funding as part of graduate education provides students with a training exercise aimed to introduce them to the reality and process of writing competitive research grants.

We will explore possible ways that libraries can serve graduate students navigating this aspect of graduate education. The analysis on external funding will share observations of new grant writing training occurring in academic disciplinary programs, including examples of how these practices contribute to meeting comprehensive exam requirements in some programs at the University of Arizona.

Session participants will leave with a model for structuring an in-house scholarship program. This includes opportunities for funding; putting together a team; scheduling, marketing and promotion; rubrics; and software. This session strives to have an interactive component. Participants will be invited to share their own scholarship and fellowship initiatives so that we may learn from each other.