In this installment of College Fluency Conversations, we interview Julie McDaniel, Student Success Librarian at Sinclair Community College. McDaniel has been influential at Sinclair in advancing a holistic vision of student success, seeing her network of campus connections as an extension of library resources and spending as much time outside the library as she does within it. For this reason, her approach to learning interweaves closely with the principles guiding our College Fluency research. We are thrilled to present our interview with McDaniel in a two-part format, in which she shares her own professional journey and the meticulous shaping of her position into what can undoubtedly be considered a model for Student Success librarianship. Part I of this interview can be found here.
Craig Nielsen: On the topic of people-to-people relationships, many of our interviewees across our different case study colleges brought up the issue of high staff turnover and understaffing, particularly since the pandemic, and how this has made cross-departmental collaboration challenging. Considering that’s unlikely to change in the near future, are there any particular strategies that you found to be useful in terms of designing more collaborative programs within this context?
Julie McDaniel: On the understaffing side, when we’re doing collaborations, I try to be the person who’s willing to do anything. We actually have something we call Pop-In Bingo that we host with our Student & Community Engagement department, and I’m willing to be the person who’s popping the popcorn. I have also been the bingo caller. There are times when Student & Community Engagement hasn’t been able to send as many staff as they would have liked, so being that extra person helps; otherwise, we would probably cancel the event. So, I’m willing to say librarians do more than books and magazines. And to a certain extent, when I send journal articles to people, that’s also trying to help them stay connected with information without having to take time away from their position. For example, I send a lot of stuff to our Chaplain about faith among college students so he’s able to keep helping college students, even if he might be understaffed or under-resourced.
In some cases, I wonder if our processes are too complex or require too much staff time. For example, if you want to start a club, you have to have a petition from a certain number of students, and you have to have an advisor, and you have to have a constitution; there are lots of steps. But from our students’ perspective, they think, “It’s just five of us who want to get together, and for whatever reason somebody mentioned ‘club,’ so we thought we would pursue this process.” I’m starting to wonder if we should back away from all of our processes, which probably had a place in the 1980s and the 1990s, and think in terms of “just do it and see what happens.” At the moment, I’m describing this idea in my head as “micro-programming.” Don’t plan for five years or five semesters. Just let it happen. Especially at a community college–our students aren’t here that long.
On the turnover side: sometimes, I just show up with momentum and say, “We’ve been doing this. And so you, new person, come along. I know how Pop-In Bingo works. You bring your popcorn machine from somewhere in your office. You have all these Bingo pieces and cards and chips and stuff. This is how we advertise it. And tada, new person, now we’re doing Pop-In Bingo and your boss is going to be excited that you’ve managed to keep that program running.” I also try to keep track of new employees. We have a list of the new employees each month. So, after they’ve been on the job about six months, if they’ve replaced people I previously worked with, I’m reaching out to them and saying, “Hey, I’m Julie from the library, in case we haven’t met yet. I’d really like to talk to you and find out how the job’s going. If there are particular ways you think I can help, I’d be happy to tell you how I think the library can, based on some of the things that we did before.”
As I mentioned earlier, I try to never say there’s a department I couldn’t work with, or that we might not work with. As new employees come into departments that I haven’t previously been able to make any connections with, I also reach out to those folks and say, “Hey, I’m Julie from the library, and you’ve probably heard my name because I’m pretty connected on campus. I’d be interested in talking to you.” And even before six months, as I hear about new employees, I typically add them to that weekly email of the events that are going on. In my opinion, the newer you are, the more likely you are willing to come to some of those programs and start making those connections, because the place is new, and you don’t know so many people.
With the emails about articles that have been published, I just assume that the new person has similar interests to the previous person. So, if you’re a new person in Counseling, you just get added to the list of people I know in Counseling that I send articles to.
I think it was Dallas who mentioned that some of this has to come from the top; he was talking about a Vice President of Academics and the Vice President of Student Affairs working together, and then both of them saying that this is important. We have an interesting six month experiment going on right now at Sinclair, because our Provost left, and to appoint an interim Provost, they appointed our Vice President of Student Affairs. So, we have one person doing both jobs. Now, I know there are some schools where that’s the norm; at Sinclair that has not been the norm. So, it has been interesting to watch how that’s changing the environment a little bit. On the faculty side, now, I feel like I hear more about Student Affairs. Because the Vice President of Student Affairs is also the Provost, he’s getting his Student Affairs message out. But I’m not hearing as much from Student Affairs folks about them getting an increased understanding of the faculty role on campus. So, to Dallas’s point, it seems like it is somewhat helpful when there is more support for it at the top.
Craig Nielsen: You previously described some of your library work as a “case management” role, where a student may come to you with a non-academic request, and because you were able to help that student, they later come back with an academic request, such as a research question. Can you talk more about building trust with students through non-academic assistance, and to what extent this happens inside the library versus other spaces on campus?
Julie McDaniel: I think it does happen more in our Librarian-on-Location spots. I feel like by the time a student has gotten to the library, they’ve winnowed out everything else and are at the point of “I have a library question.” But when I see them out in their own environment–whether that’s students in our International Education office or our Student Support Services office–at that point, partly because I’m in their space, I think they are a little bit more willing to have those conversations. They haven’t already done the mental, “I’m in the library. I do library things in the library.” But by being able to have those conversations with students about, “Where is the registrar’s office and what does that mean?” Or, “Why would I go see my academic advisor?” “Well, let me give you three great reasons right here.” I can start to build those relationships, and then the students come back to the library.
It was pretty crazy, and I’m not sure why it happened, but last week I had students waiting to talk to me in the library–backed up, back to back. I kept trying to say, “You know, there are other librarians here, and they could help you.” And they responded with, “No, I’ll wait for you.” What they were asking me were quote unquote, “legitimate” reference questions, but all based on having met them at other places on campus at other times. They said, “Yeah, I know, I want to come back and have you help me.”
I was in a webinar earlier this week, and somebody made the comment that students need to see us as someone who cares and will help beyond the library, so that they will ask us for help. I’m thinking with a holistic vision–and I think we need to do this everywhere in our lives–of seeing people as a whole person and not a transaction. When you go to the grocery store, their attitude is, “Yep, go ahead and buy some groceries and give us some money and go on your way.” But how could that experience be different if they were thinking about you as a whole person? Yes, we could slice these students and say, all they are is an English major, and so I’m the English librarian, and that’s all I have to worry about. But I’m hoping we’re taking a bigger view: as Dallas mentioned, a 360-degree view, which says there are all these other ways that we could be helping students. Many of those ways are things that our campus is already doing: a food pantry, a social worker, accessibility counseling, all the different clubs. We already have a 360-degree view from the campus perspective, so how can the library make sure we’re helping students connect in all those ways? That’s how I see our non-academic assistance.
Craig Nielsen: Despite colleges’ increasing emphasis on non-academic aspects of student life, we find that Student Success Librarian positions are still predominantly focused on academic and curricular support. Looking ahead, how might we advocate for a more holistic vision of student success?
Julie McDaniel: When you think about job descriptions, I think it has to be at the Library Director level. If the Library Director can see the vision of the library as part of this bigger “wellness wheel” concept, then maybe we would start to see Student Success Librarian job descriptions that look beyond curriculum and academics. One of the things that I had to advocate for when I first started at Sinclair was that it was okay for the library to be outside of its “lane.” Because a lot of people want to say, “Nope, here’s this library box, and you need to stay over there with your books and your databases and not let it be a more holistic response.”
Just in looking over time at what I was seeing advertised, the way Sinclair perceives my position is unique. We describe it as helping students anytime they’re outside of class–that’s my role. So, it’s Athletics, it’s Academic Advisors, it’s Financial Aid. It’s about trying to think of the student as a whole, and not just saying, “All I can do is library help, and once you get past that piece of this pie, I can’t help you.” Which partly goes back to how I always am going to connect someone to a person, probably before I’m going to connect them to an academic source.
In a webinar I attended recently, somebody said, “Students don’t need to know where you work, just that you can help.” If everybody on a college campus would adopt that perspective, I think we would go leaps and bounds. It wouldn’t just be the library that would improve; it would be the whole campus that could improve. Because as soon as you put on your “I work in the Bursar’s Office” hat and think, “I couldn’t possibly know anything about the Food Pantry, or any other department,” that’s when our students hit walls. And we need to be all about smoothing out those walls, and taking out any bumps and dead ends that might appear, for whatever reason.
jean amaral: It’s one thing if somebody perceives you as a librarian out of your lane, and they work someplace else. But I feel like we see less of that: people outside the library saying, “You’re out of your lane.” They’re just happy to see you, because you’re helping, right? But because libraries are so understaffed and under-resourced, and because change is hard, I think there may be more resistance inside the library to taking the view and having the philosophy and vision of librarianship to encompass holistic needs and information about those non-curricular needs. So, if you were to make the argument within librarianship for being in this position and serving those needs, what might you say?
Julie McDaniel: I would go back to the idea that we are here to help in any way possible, and that we limit ourselves–and ultimately, our students–if we say that the only way we can help you is some traditional library resource. All of society is connected now, because of all of the technology, so to continue to hold on to one particular way of having information is not going to work. We’re going to be passed by, and there won’t even be a lane that we should have stayed in. Our institutions are only going to be successful if our students are successful. So, we need to look at them as whole people who have lots of responsibilities, especially in the community college. Our students aren’t just at a residential campus and only have to focus on that for four years. By the time you add in life and potentially being a parent, or taking care of a parent, and a full time job, and everything else that goes on, the library shouldn’t make life harder. By looking at all of those things and understanding all the services our campuses are providing so we can make those connections, I think we can help improve students’ lives, and ultimately, improve our campuses.
