The need to equip society with information literacy (IL) has become essential, as evidenced by the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections, COVID 19 pandemic, and QAnon. A deficiency in information provenance and credibility, combined with internet users’ poor information-seeking habits, has fostered the perfect environment for misinformation. In this atmosphere, higher education institutions (HEIs) must take the lead in developing a citizenry with the necessary IL skills to make informed judgments. The need to impart IL is even more crucial among the underserved student population (i.e., low-income, first-generation college students, and students of colour) who suffer from a deficiency in IL, because of the digital divide, when arriving at HEIs. The problem of practice (PoP) addressed here concerns the impact of Golden State Academy – Valley (GSA-V) not implementing an academic librarian (AL) taught IL credit-bearing course, crucial for its large underserved student population. GSA-V continues to underutilize its AL concerning the development of such courses, despite their expertise in IL and the literature demonstrating the positive impact on academic success. As a proponent of the critical paradigm, I envision this PoP as an opportunity for empowering marginalized voices. Using Kotter’s eight-stage process, combined with distributed and servant leadership principles, this Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) proposes the development of an experimental AL-taught IL credit-bearing course. The aim is to utilize this course as an entryway for improving AL instructional roles and developing the IL skills of GSA-V’s underserved student population. The hope is that the experimental course can act as a catalyst for creating a general education IL requirement, thereby significantly increasing the reach and impact of such instruction
