Campus Updates

[alana]

Please share any campus updates using this thread! Thank you!

[Susan Perry]

Hi all,
Some personnel (and personal!) news from OLIS.

Effective 1/16/25, I'm transitioning to half-time with SUNY Library Services.
Or, as I like to call it, semi-retirement 🙂

FYI -- Susan Perry

[jenndevito]

The new AI Innovation Institute Seed Fund Program has approved a grant proposal submitted by Shyam Sharma, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric, Rose Tirotta-Esposito, Director of CELT, and Christine Fena, Undergraduate Success Librarian. Titled “Fostering Writing-to-Learn Skills with Critical AI Literacy: A Faculty Development and Student Support Program,” this $43K grant project will help interested faculty across campus to update their writing-to-learn assignments, instruction, and assessment toward mitigating AI’s adverse impacts and leveraging its potential. The team will work with partners across campus to design and deliver instructional modules and other learning experiences for both faculty and students throughout 2025, with the goal of developing a more critical understanding of AI technologies and how they might help or hurt the learning that takes place through written assignments.

[cfishner]

We are busy prepping for the spring semester, visiting with faculty and trying to remind them of all of the valuable ways we can collaborate with them to serve our students.

Personnel update: Rebecca Snyder has recently joined our staff as a Student Success Librarian.

We are also excited to share that our Interim Provost, Dr. David Brower, was officially named Provost in December. We are pleased to continue working with him on our initiatives.

Delhi is the host of the 2025 Annual conference, and we are busy working with the Conference Planning committee to ensure a well-organized and fun event for all attendees. We look forward to seeing everyone here at our beautiful campus in June.

Respectfully,
Carrie F. (delegate)

[mbeechey]

Hi all,

The library has completed the final round of interviews for our FYE Librarian position and we hope to make an offer in the coming days. There were many great candidates and it will be difficult to make a final decision.

Our longtime (30 years @ MCC!) Collection Development Librarian, Rick Squires, is retiring at the end of next week.  We celebrated Rick and said adieu with a cookie party last month.

We've given updates over the past year related to our new furniture.  All items have now been delivered and we are working on getting everything placed where students can best make use of it. Students are loving the updated look and are taking advantage of the comfort within the building. Our longer term plan is to price out how much each study room will cost to update and work on including those in the budget for upcoming years.

Have a great spring semester, everyone!

[kstanwicks]

Personnel
- Adrienne Emery joined the University Libraries as the Education Curriculum Coordinator, she will be supporting the new education and YA literature collections that we acquired from the College of St. Rose.
- Angela Hackstadt was just appointed Head of Collection Development and Strategy, she had been serving as Interim Coordinator of Collection Development.
- Jack Kenney returned to the Libraries as our temporary Reference and Research Assistant.
- Emily Kilcer, our Scholarly Communicating Librarian, recently left the University Libraries, returning to Harvard
- We are currently recruiting for a Head of Access Services, and will be commencing searches for 5 additional librarians.

We hosted the University's Health and Wellness Fair in the Science Library in November. We had a great turnout of faculty, staff, and students interacting with campus offices and local health and wellness organizations.

Reference librarians hosted a series of reference pop-ups at the end of the fall semester, luring students with snacks and coffee. Students took advantage of the extra in-person research assistance, and we will be offering similar pop-ups on a regular basis throughout the spring semester.

[Chrissy O'Grady]

New Paltz

We had a great end of semester de-stress event with button making and breakfast foods. It's always a student and staff favorite.

Madeline Veitch, Collection Development and Zine Librarian, just returned from a 6-month sabbatical. Kristy Lee, Head of Library Technology, is now on her 6-month sabbatical.

We are hiring a Late-Night Desk Supervisor (Library Assistant 1). Applications closed in late December and hopefully we can fill this critical role.

I will be going on parental leave starting March until mid/late summer. We are in the process of hiring a visiting librarian to act as the First-Year Experience Librarian while I'm on leave. I'll also see if any of my colleagues are interested in covering my delegate duties while I'm away.

Other than that we are looking forward to the spring semester!