Not a Challenge but an Opportunity: Harnessing the ACRL Framework to Situate Graduate Students as Active Members of the Academic Community

There is NO more traditional library function for instruction librarians than teaching information literacy. Without sacrificing expected librarian services such as demonstrating searching and citation management, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education allows us to orient students with a high-level, integrated view of how the seemingly disparate pieces and requirements of graduate research form an integrated whole

Teaching Motivation that Works: Structuring Graduate-Level Research Support Workshops to Foster Centered, Focused Self-Sufficient Learners

All too frequently, instruction librarians’ only opportunity to teach students distills down to the fifty-minute, one-shot, make-or-break experience. We disseminate the essential information as requested—how to use the library, how to search the databases, and so on—with little time to explain why all the pieces fit together and why they are important. Worse, well-intentioned librarians often strive to cover as much as possible in these sessions, oversaturating and frustrating their student audience. Even in settings of brief duration with no follow-up, another approach is possible. Rather than attempting to demonstrate everything at once, we can interject effective, real-life motivational tactics into the session by highlighting the underlying purpose of the process demonstrated. In other words, we can focus not simply on “what” or “how” but on “why.” Providing this context and structure not only grounds students, it clarifies and demystifies the process. Understanding that purpose and method are as important as data better empowers students with strategies to pursue their own needs independently. This chapter focuses on graduate students, particularly those in doctoral programs, but with a little creative thinking, these strategies could also be adapted for application with undergraduate learners

Not a Challenge but an Opportunity: Harnessing the ACRL Framework to Situate Graduate Students as Active Members of the Academic Community

There is NO more traditional library function for instruction librarians than teaching information literacy. Without sacrificing expected librarian services such as demonstrating searching and citation management, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education allows us to orient students with a high-level, integrated view of how the seemingly disparate pieces and requirements of graduate research form an integrated whole

Why Our Financial Literacy Programming Died (and How Yours Can Succeed)

This is the story of a financial literacy endeavor that sputtered, surged, and then died. While it did not succeed at my institution, I share the story and the resources in the hope that its successes and failures might be of use to others. Although I had already been a professional librarian for seven years when I took my new position as Graduate Research and Instruction Librarian at East Tennessee State University near the beginning of fall semester 2014, I had never worked in public services. Fortunately, I had been a teacher, received professional training in pedagogy, and was comfortable with the instruction piece of my job. “Outreach” was a little more difficult. For my first effort, I chose something I believed would appeal to a wide diversity of students: money

Culture Matters: Three Initiatives to Understand International Students’ Academic Needs and Expectations

This paper describes three initiatives to target our library\u27s outreach efforts through better understanding the challenges faced by our international students. We first convened a research advisory focus group of international graduate students to hear first-hand the type of specific support students were seeking in their programs. The majority of our graduate students are African, a group severely underrepresented in library literature regarding instruction and services. Letting students speak in their own words and tell their own stories reveals not only their preconceptions about academic success in the United States but their experiential ability to identify the gaps which present so high a risk to retention and graduation. We then broadened the participant base to include undergraduate international students to solicit qualitative responses with the goal of understanding how the cultural background, educational expectations, and research process differ domestically and abroad; challenges that our international learners face using academic libraries in the United States; and the problems posed by working on complex material in English. Finally, all international students were invited to participate in a pilot workshop on academic writing. The paper concludes by describing how strategies for serving international students through instruction and outreach have resulted in internationalizing our services for all students

Silver Linings: Finding the Hidden Value in a Sudden Shift to Online Service Models

In March 2020, the Sherrod Library at East Tennessee State University found itself in the same position as most academic libraries across the country: making a rapid shift from a face-to-face model of service to an online model. All classes moved online and all employees worked remotely. Join Sherrod instruction librarians as we discuss how we maneuvered through this shift and came out the other end with a more robust model of service and a new perspective. Participants will come away with tips for establishing an online service model from the ground up as well as tools for assessment and collaboration

Characterization of Actions Taken During the Delivery of Medication Therapy Management: A Time-and-Motion Approach

OBJECTIVES: To characterize actions performed by pharmacists and support staff during provision of medication therapy management (MTM) and to compare actions performed according to practice characteristics. METHODS: A purposeful sample of 7 MTM practices (2 call centers and 5 community practices) was identified and visited by investigators. Pharmacists and support staff were observed during their routine provision of MTM. Investigators characterized "major" (e.g., preparation for a comprehensive medication review) and "minor" (i.e., specific steps in overarching major action) actions with the use of a time-and-motion approach. RESULTS: A total of 32 major and 469 minor actions were observed. Practices were characterized as Later Maturity Level or Early Maturity Level on the basis of their self-reported MTM appointment volume, self-assessment of the extent of integration of chronic care model principles, and payer mix. Later Maturity Level practices were more likely to deliver follow-up medication therapy reviews and comprehensive medication reviews (CMRs) as opposed to targeted medication reviews (TMRs) and to receive physician referrals for MTM. Later Maturity Level practices were also more likely to use paid interns than pharmacy rotation students. CMR activities observed at Later Maturity Level practices lasted a median of 30.8 minutes versus 20.3 minutes for CMR activities at Early Maturity Level practices. Similarly, TMR activities observed at Later Maturity Level practices were longer: a median of 31.0 minutes versus 12.3 minutes. At Later Maturity Level practices, pharmacists spent a greater proportion of time providing patient education, while support staff spent a greater proportion of time on tasks such as capturing demographics and introducing or explaining MTM. CONCLUSION: MTM activities were longer at Later Maturity Level practices, and these practices were more likely to use paid pharmacy interns and to receive physician referrals for MTM. This work provides a foundation for future research

Identification of Anti-Malarial Compounds as Novel Antagonists to Chemokine Receptor CXCR4 in Pancreatic Cancer Cells

Despite recent advances in targeted therapies, patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma continue to have poor survival highlighting the urgency to identify novel therapeutic targets. Our previous investigations have implicated chemokine receptor CXCR4 and its selective ligand CXCL12 in the pathogenesis and progression of pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia and invasive pancreatic cancer; hence, CXCR4 is a promising target for suppression of pancreatic cancer growth. Here, we combined in silico structural modeling of CXCR4 to screen for candidate anti-CXCR4 compounds with in vitro cell line assays and identified NSC56612 from the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Open Chemical Repository Collection as an inhibitor of activated CXCR4. Next, we identified that NSC56612 is structurally similar to the established anti-malarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine. We evaluated these compounds in pancreatic cancer cells in vitro and observed specific antagonism of CXCR4-mediated signaling and cell proliferation. Recent in vivo therapeutic applications of chloroquine in pancreatic cancer mouse models have demonstrated decreased tumor growth and improved survival. Our results thus provide a molecular target and basis for further evaluation of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in pancreatic cancer. Historically safe in humans, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine appear to be promising agents to safely and effectively target CXCR4 in patients with pancreatic cancer

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Becoming a Relatable Faculty Ally through Story

During this session, participants will reflect on the pivotal points in their own educational process and select moments of clarity or misunderstanding which shaped the course of their academic or professional career. Whether positive or negative, these teachable moments made us who we are, and remain relevant to understanding how and what we teach. As a group, we will share some of our personal stories and discuss how to incorporate them into specific courses, how they demonstrate empathy in a relatable way, and what we hope to evoke in our students through this exchange. The handout for this session will serve as a template for participants to refer to, and build upon. This presentation relates directly to the conference theme of validating emotion as an intrinsic component of the educational process and specifically, to the concept of self-disclosure in Chapter 3 of Dr. Cavanagh’s book, The Spark of Learning