Borough of Manhattan Community College

I have had the opportunity this spring to speak with students about their educational objectives, their academic and information usage practices, and the barriers they face as a part of the first phase of the Community College Libraries & Academic Support for Student Success (CCLASSS) project. Through this project, we and seven other partner colleges, aim to explore (1) how student success can be defined in a way that is inclusive of both policy priorities and students’ own needs, and (2) what services academic libraries can offer to most effectively help students attain success.

Pierce College District

We are joined by Dr. Braddlee from Northern Virginia Community College in leading this project, and are thrilled to be partnering with Jean Amaral from the Borough of Manhattan Community College, Katie Ghidiu from Monroe Community College, Christie Flynn from Pierce College District, Jeanne Galvin from Queensborough Community College, Michael Miller from Bronx Community College, and Steven Ovadia from LaGuardia Community College. We are grateful to the Institute of Museum and Library Services for providing support to make this project possible.

Over the coming months, we will be analyzing findings from the interviews conducted at each of the colleges and issuing a public report on student perspectives, practices, and needs. I am extremely grateful to the students I interviewed for being so open about their definitions of success as well as the personal and academic challenges they face in achieving that success, and look forward to sharing these findings this summer.

Bronx Community College

Following the analysis of these interviews, we will be convening the college project teams and advisors to discuss what the library can do, in light of these findings, to best support student needs. In the fall, we will be testing demand for various library service offerings via survey at each of the colleges. When the project is completed later in 2019, in addition to publishing reports of aggregate survey findings, the research dataset and survey instrument will be released under open licences with the intention that other institutions may both benefit from and contribute to the initiative. Additionally, each partner college involved in this project will receive individual reports on their local survey findings and will develop their own action plans based on the findings.

We look forward to sharing more about the findings from and our progress on this project as our work proceeds over the next year.

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services RE-96-17-0113-17.

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