“There are two places you need to go often: The place that heals you and the place that inspires you.” ~ TinyBuddha
life winners
My delightful friend and coworker Carol Street, whom you’ve met a few times now, above with husband Brent Potter, didn’t win a formal award at last night’s Spring Gala, but she got something that, in some ways, was a lot more gratifying. She was called out in a speech by the Director of the Gaines Center, Michelle Sizemore, for her work and mentorship to one of the students who won an award from the libraries and will now pursue a master’s degree in Library Science. Carol runs the Learning Lab in Special Collections that trains students on the value of archival collections so that they’ve put together whole research projects based on our collections at the end of the year. This past year, all ten of Carol’s students had research papers accepted to an international conference, and that’s not too uncommon for her. Almost all of Carol’s students get accepted and travel abroad with the research they produce under her tutelage. Some of our librarians teach, but they do it as guests in other faculty’s classes, perhaps teaching info literacy or something more specific to the class. However, Carol has the same students over the course of a year, more like typical faculty on campus. And what does the library get out of it, besides an actual traditional teaching faculty (a point of contention for some faculty on campus, apparently)? The libraries get their collections used, an incredible philanthropic generator, and better PR than almost anything else. I expect Carol will be one of our Willis Outstanding Faculty Award winners one day. Until then, I will continue to sing her praises at every turn and marvel that it is Brent, not Carol, who is sporting the rock and roll horns. He’s a man after my heart. She married well.
class clowns
serious class clowns
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