 Hello, this is Kim Doherty, I am speaking today with Karen Mente, who I'm happy to say is a San Jose State iSchool alumni, so of course that as we all know is Karen's major claim to fame. But in addition to that, Karen has had a fascinating career. She's doing really, really cool things right now that I think you're going to find very interesting. And so for today's career podcast, we're going to ask Karen a whole bunch of questions and gather information from Karen that may help you as you think about some of the decisions that you're making while you're in grad school and as you think about your career going forward. Karen's official title is Distance Education Librarian for Zovio, which is an online college, which means all of Karen's work is virtual with her students. So in that role she has an opportunity to both have a huge positive impact on the students she works with and also to learn about and sometimes even probably create new ways of delivering online academic student support. So with that introduction, I would like to now introduce you to Karen Mente, who's graciously agreed to let me ask her lots of questions on your behalf. So Karen, welcome to the iSchool Career Podcast. Thank you so much, Kim. It's great to be here. Thank you. So I'm just going to lead off here with our first question, which is about your job as an online academic librarian. So I would say you're an academic librarian, but in a very unusual environment relative to what most of our students think of as being an academic librarian. So can you tell us about your job? Sure. I'd be happy to. So as you said, I'm a distance education librarian for the company Zovio, which is an online learning technology company. So I actually serve one of their clients, Ashford University, which is a completely online institution. And as a learning technology company, Zovio goes in and helps organizations go online to serve learners better, to do a better job of reaching students where they are online. So as a librarian, completely online librarian for Ashford University, it's very unique, as you said, because it's non-traditional at all. It's completely remote. I actually work completely remotely from home. And it's an institution with accelerated courses. So our courses might be five-week courses or six-week courses. And we offer undergrad programs, master's programs, and even doctoral programs as well. So I serve all different types of students. Our students, for the most part, because it is non-traditional and completely asynchronous, just like the iSchool program as well. So a lot of our students, you know, they're working adults. They have full-time jobs. They have kids to take care of. And really, a four-year traditional program is not right for them. A lot of our students, too, are very, they might be first-generation college students. They might be English language learners and things like that. So it's been a great position just to learn about the different ways diverse learners learn. And as a librarian, I serve the students, of course. I answer reference calls and emails online from students. I also serve the faculty as a liaison. I'm the liaison to the business school and the College of Liberal Arts. And that's been great experience collaborating with our wonderful faculty. We create online learning tools and tutorials. Learning to address the information literacy skills of our learners, and really, we customize them to fit our different courses and our students. And it's nice because it's completely scalable since it's all online. You know, we can expand it to try to serve as many learners as possible. A question about working as the faculty liaison with the B.School and the College of Liberal Arts, do you function, at least in some instances, as an embedded librarian? As far as embedded in the specific courses? In the courses. And I'll back that up and realize I probably should clarify that. So in some instances, and this is for the students, if you think about an academic library, you are thinking about someone sitting at a reference desk answering questions, coaching students doing information literacy, workshops, those kinds of things. But if you also are an embedded librarian, that entails actually being included as sort of a working, an operational member, a partner in a specific course. You are working with the students around that specific course with that specific faculty member. So does that happen to you in your role? Sort of. It's interesting. So we have a big hand in course development. We're part of a course development team, actually, which I think a lot of academic librarians don't get that level of involvement in course development. They might be asked to submit some recommended resources or something like that, but we're really involved every step of the way, which is nice. We can really scaffold research assignments for our courses and things like that. And in doing that, we embed our learning objects and, you know, we might embed different expectations for the students to use the library or one of our library supports. We do have a 24-7 chat support service that we provide for students. So that's a way that even though I'm not, it's not me myself who's embedded in the courses. A lot of our courses, actually a few of our most popular courses, the beginner sort of general information literacy courses, require students to use our chat service, our chat library service. And that goes a long way just in exposing students to the support that they have with the library and also removing some of the stigma involved. I think a lot of students are afraid to ask for help or they feel like, you know, if they were a better student, they wouldn't need to reach out to the library. And so just making it standard that every student is going to ask for the support, it makes a huge difference going forward in understanding that we're here to help them. That is such a great idea because I think that to an extent much greater than most of us who come out of the LIS field realize, an awful lot of people are really intimidated by libraries. And especially if you, to your point about some of the students that you're working with, are like first generation college students or ESL speakers or whatever, if you are not familiar with using a library and knowing that it is a supportive, welcoming resource, then it's very easy to be intimidated by it and feel anxious around that and say, I just, I wouldn't go there. Right. But making it mandatory gives you an opportunity to totally turn that around. That's a great idea. Oh, thanks. I wish I could take credit for it, but it was a team decision from our library team. We're all about just making, giving as much support to students as possible. And along with library anxiety, I think a lot of students, especially on an online program, can experience techno stress as well. Oh, yeah. It's just a different thing to go. Yeah. We all recognize that one. Right. Exactly. So it's nice to, you know, because it's a lot to be thrown into a quick five week course and you have to get over that hurdle of learning the technology as well. So it definitely just is a way for people to start out on an even playing field with support, library support available to them. That that's really terrific. And are you finding that most of your students that you are working with for Ashford are from the same geographic location or are they all over the country? They are all over the country and I mean all over the country. We get students, you know, in remote Alaska even, all over the world too. We serve a lot of, a lot of our students are in the military and I've helped students working on their PhD from a cargo ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean, you know, that sounds like so much fun actually. If you're going to be an academic librarian having that kind of diversity, not only in your activities, but also in the individuals that you're working with. Yeah. It sounds so great. It's very cool. And, you know, as long as then, you know, there's the technology piece of it too and sort of the, the headaches of just being completely virtual because it is sometimes hard, you know, they're on a completely different time zone or if they're on a, a battleship, they might not have the best Wi-Fi connection or something like that. So you really need to be able to be flexible and, you know, meet the students where they are and so that, it definitely makes it an interesting job for sure. Oh, that's so cool. And so another question then that's related to what you're doing professionally. Am I correct in thinking that until recently you were also working as a public library, reference librarian and then can you tell us about that and sort of the difference between the two in terms of what you have enjoyed and what most speaks to you? Sure. I would love to. I was a public reference librarian for the last four years and I just recently phased out that position to focus on my full-time academic library position. I began my career in public libraries and worked in public libraries all while attending the iSchool. And I started as a library page in a public library and I worked my way up while going to school to an adult services librarian in the Bay Area. But when I moved to San Diego, I had a very long job search looking for a public library job, which anyone who's been hired for a public library job probably understands it's a slow, it can be a very slow process. You have to be patient and, you know, you might need to take jobs that are sort of out of your maybe geographical area. You know, I was seeing job opportunities that would mean an hour commute for me or something like that. So I decided to kind of cast a wider net and just take a stab at getting a job in an academic library position. So and it was very sort of out of my comfort zone. I'm not the type of person to normally apply for a job that I don't meet every single requirement for. And I took a leap of faith and just tried it out. And it worked out definitely in my favor because I found a company in Zovia that was willing to hire somebody that didn't meet every requirement. You know, I was able to show them through, you know, my experience working with adult learners in a public library environment that I had the skills necessary to serve their students and their faculty. And I would say, you know, having seen both public libraries and academic libraries, there are definite pros for each and cons for each. The academic librarianship, I will say if you have a family, as I do, I have a three year old, it's a better schedule, you know, more consistent with public libraries. I always worked either nights or weekends every, every week. That's just sort of the nature of public libraries, because you have to be accessible to people when when they're not at work or, you know, at more hours of the day, there's also less of the, I would call it human drama factor at academic libraries, you know, especially being an adult services librarian. I, you know, was often, you know, I'd serve the reference desk and I definitely, you know, make reading recommendations and help people find resources most of the time. But at least every day there was some sort of behavioral issue that I would need to attend to. I often had to call the police because, you know, patrons weren't getting along or we had some issues with substance abuse in the library or, you know, just those sorts of everyday human dramas that happen in a public library because it really is one of the few remaining spaces that people who maybe don't have the same access to services, you know, mental health services, or even just another place to go, you know, the homeless population or transient population. It's one of the last places that is free for people to spend time in and be safe and feel safe in. So I don't have to deal with that anymore as an academic librarian. And you know what, some days I do miss kind of having that one-on-one relationship with people from all different walks of life, which is one of the good things about public libraries being that last sort of democratic institution. And one of the things that Karen and I had just briefly chatted about before we started our podcast was that this is one of the really cool things about having LAS skills is that you can always go back and forth. None of these are mutually exclusive. If Karen, 10 years from now, thought, you know, I really miss that one-on-one engagement, she then could shift her career in that direction. Absolutely. So I just think that lack of having to make a choice that excludes other choices is one of our coolest attributes in this field. Definitely. And you know, I think that was one of the attractive things when I was applying for this academic job is I did have all this experience, you know, doing something different. And the company that I work for really values innovative thinking and, you know, sort of different approaches to the problems of academic librarianship. And so having someone, especially these days, you know, a big buzzword is like inclusion and diversity and equity. And so coming from public libraries, which I feel like have always been, you know, a bastion for those kinds of ideals, I feel like I was, I had some of those skills and already that perspective to bring to the table. It was already a mindset that you were able to share. That's great. Yeah. Okay. So next question, when you were going through the iSchool program, did you know all along what type of work you wanted to do professionally? And whether the answer to that question is yes or no, how did that influence the courses you chose to take in the program? So I guess a broader question would be, as you were thinking through which courses to take at any given semester, what was influencing your decisions about what to take? That's a good question. Yeah. It's so hard to know when you're going through school what you should be taking and what you should be focusing on and working towards, because really you just have no idea, you know, till you get out there. And that's kind of the crux of it is so much of what you learn in libraries is just sort of on the job training and just gaining that experience of working with your clients or your public or your students. But there definitely are courses that I took while still keeping my options open. I should say, since I was working in public libraries at the time, that was kind of what my focus was on going through school. You know, I chose a lot of courses that would help me prepare for working with public libraries like reference and information that that course was excellent. And I recommend that for anyone who plans to serve any sort of population, because so much of what you do is just pinpointing those information needs and learning how to do that reference interview in any environment. That's true. But I also wanted to keep my options open going through school. And I think that's important just to, unless you're just really gung-ho and you know exactly what you want to do, which great. Good for you. I wish I'd been that certain. But you know, I definitely took some courses just because they sounded interesting. I took instructional design, which, you know, at the time I didn't think I'd be an academic librarian, but I am so glad now that I took that course. I took a cataloging course that, you know, even working in a public library, so much of it is copy cataloging. And I didn't know that that would come in handy, but it has. Just understanding, you know, the process of cataloging I think helps. And I took a grant writing course, which just sounded fun and interesting. And I think I'm so glad that I took that, because that's another one of those just transferable skills that no matter what you do, you know, just being able to understand the grant writing process, working in, you know, working in whether you're working in a museum or a library or wherever, you'll have a leg up on other folks who have never been exposed to that process. That makes a lot of sense. And I would like to sort of echo Karen's comments about the reference interview. My career, my LIS career, has taken me in the direction of working with clients and doing multiple content development startups and projects and that sort of thing. And then I have several other friends who are independent information professionals. And literally, no matter what direction you go with your information skills, in order to use them effectively, it starts with that reference interview, whether it's with a client or your boss or whoever, knowing how to figure out what's the question behind the question. You're so right. What are they actually trying to get to? That is simply, there's no way to overestimate how important that skill is. And the other thing that jumped out at me about what you were talking about with the courses that you've taken is that when you go through grad school and you graduate, that first job is just your first job. And you have no way of anticipating all of the different opportunities that are going to come sort of rolling down through your career at you. And there's almost no course that you can take in grad school that sooner or later you're not going to be really, really glad you have that background. So those are all great recommendations. Good. OK, so let's see. We've sort of related to that same question. You've worked in public libraries. You're now working in an academic setting. Are there career skills or expertise or characteristics or attributes that you feel are really important for students who are graduating to keep in mind, to become good at, to practice, to model? What should they keep in mind in terms of what hiring managers are likely to be looking for? Sure, yeah, definitely. I would say one of the biggest things is teamwork and collaboration. And especially those two big things in a digital environment, I think, are going to be big needs for new graduates in information services. And the good news is, I know this was true. This occurred to me about halfway through the program that by getting your degree completely online, you're already honing these skills by default. You already have a leg up on the competition when you graduate. When I would find myself, while still in school, maybe collaborating on a conference presentation with two other librarians, and all of us were in different cities. And we never had to meet face to face. We did all the planning and writing and editing online. And it's something that we were all really good at already and comfortable with because of all that group work that I dreaded in my online classes. So that really paid off. And I think, especially now in the environment where I work and where it's all online, and it's wonderful. I love working remotely, but it is a lot harder than it sounds. I think it takes a lot of practice to be effective at proactively communicating and collaborating across different platforms of technology and being flexible with your schedules and just finding ways to solve problems and leverage that technology and get beyond the limitations of physical space and comfortable in that digital space. Right. I think that's a great observation about taking online courses because when you are thrown into that environment and you have to learn it to survive, you're also practicing it all the time. And so when you do that, it becomes a language that you speak. It's not foreign. It's not frightening. It's not intimidating. And you've seen it screw up. You know, you seem to think of, oh, yeah, you know, this happens and here's the solutions we have for that or here's a workaround. And to your point, that's a huge, huge sort of competitive advantage. If you are going into any organization that's going to use technology on these days, that's pretty much every single one. I had to laugh when you mentioned group projects because one of the faculty members, he's adjunct faculty member in the iSchool, some of you may know Scott Brown, is a friend of mine. And we were sort of commiserating about something one day and he looked at me and he said, Kim, you know what they say? I said, what? He said, life is a group project. True. Yep, he's right. Whether you like it or not, yeah, you got to do that group work. That's exactly it. So all of you who are going through the iSchool can say, wow, I'm way ahead of the curve here. Exactly, exactly. And to that same point, I would also add, designing materials, anything, making them accessible for people. I think that's also a huge skill because so much of the work that we do is online. The technology is there now to really serve more people equally. So that's one thing, one of my focuses recently has been on just learning the tools of accessibility because whether you're designing a program flyer for your public library program or designing a learning object for a student, a tutorial, you need to be mindful of accessibility and how the user is gonna use it and making sure a screen reader can read it and making sure that it's compatible for whether a student's accessing it on a laptop or their iPhone and just thinking about those different things are, I think, really important skills to have because accessibility's come so long in the last 10 years and it's something that will affect all of us probably in our lifetime. We might not, personally, I turn on captions when I watch anything on TV just because it's a better experience for me. And we all probably know someone in our lives either now or at some point who will rely on more, having more accessible information. That's a great point, Karen, and it really resonates with me because one of the projects that I worked on was creating a website for people with physical disabilities including site impairment, hearing impairment, physical disabilities where they were unable to use a keyboard in the way most of us would use them. And it was long enough ago that people were just starting to realize, oh, we have 55 million people in the United States who have some sort of disability but this is just the tip of the iceberg because there are going to be more and more people who have a need for what we were at that point calling universal design. And they were just starting to realize that not only did this from a totally profit-driven standpoint, if whatever you're offering is universally accessible, your market opens up. More people can take advantage of what it is that you're offering. But also, this is the kind of society, an inclusive society we wanna be working in. So people then started pushing to make it illegal to put materials online that weren't available and accessible to everyone. And although I heard a lot of complaining about that from other groups, I thought, this is perfect. This is a way of addressing this reality and opening up education to be available equally for everyone. So I think your point about accessibility is really, really huge. I think it's going to become a bigger and bigger issue in even public libraries where they're looking at programming for people who have specific issues, the impairments that they're dealing with, how does the library help around that? So really cool point. So switching gears for just a second here, you talked about sort of growing into your job at the public library, but how about your job with Zovio? How did you get that job? Well, a huge piece of that had to do with a professional organization that I belong to. And I highly encourage anyone, no matter where they are in their career, whether they're a student or they've been a librarian for 10 years or they're thinking about becoming a librarian or working in a library. I joined, so I'm a member of several organizations, but for my career at Zovio, it's sort of a funny story. I had just moved to San Diego and I am and was at the time a member of the California Library Association and serving on their membership committee, which I highly recommend. If you get involved with a public organization, volunteer for a committee for that organization, because that's the best way to kind of make it work for you and get to know people and network and just get involved. It really doesn't take much time. But so as a, it was sort of a little selfish on my point, I needed a job and as the membership committee member, I decided I'd host a meetup for any librarians in the area and just make networking that much easier for myself. So help out the organization, help out myself too. It's a win-win. So I hosted a little meetup and it was, we probably had about 10 people come and it was a great way for me to meet some faces in different libraries in San Diego, my new city. And one of the people who came, funnily enough, was a hiring manager for a job that I had just applied for at Zovio. At the time the company was called Bridgepoint, but she walked in and I introduced myself and she gave me her business card and I said, huh, I just applied for a job in your library. And you would really like to hire me. Right. And basically the interview started then. But it was so great. And just that simply my name, my resume became, went from just being one name on a stack of other names to someone that she knew and could recognize. And I could already start telling her about how excited I was about the opportunity for that position. So it, yeah, I recommend getting involved in those. And, you know, I hate to hear it too. I'm not, so many of us are not really extroverts just by default, but, you know, networking goes such a long way. And it's really, it's not that hard to just, you know, ask people questions and get them talking about themselves and, you know, tell them what you're passionate about and what excites you. And it really makes a big difference, I think, when you're looking for a job. I would agree completely. I think that for every one moment where you've built a new relationship with someone that's stronger and more useful for you than sending out 400 resumes. That you don't. Also, you made what I consider to be a really, really good point for those of us who are introverts. It's, I used to join organizations and then I would go to their meetings and I would stand in the back of the room for like 15 minutes. And then I'd say, okay, I've been here long enough and this is where we're going to start leaving now. What I finally learned to do was exactly what you said, which is volunteer. Because if you join a professional association and you just reach out to the person, either the board or the person who's in charge of volunteers. And say, hi, I've just joined the organization. Where do you want to put me to work? First of all, everyone will love you. So, everybody will know your name immediately. And then when you're volunteering with people, it's a natural interaction and engagement to talk to them. And it's not like you're trying to break into a click of people that you don't know how to talk to. It's all of a sudden, there's a reason for you guys to be talking to each other. And going out and having coffee and brainstorming about the next program. So I think that's really, really wonderful advice. And I love your idea about meetups. You're the second person I've talked to that meetups are the way to go. They're fun. If you doesn't want to just a social time to other people in their field and just. Absolutely. Cut loose a little bit, so. So last question, what do you wish you'd known in grad school? So, you know, now that you are a woman of the world, you have a wonderful career, what do you wish you'd known in grad school? Well, let's see. I wish that I'd understood a little earlier on kind of what we were talking about. How going to school online wasn't itself already preparing for my career. You know, I definitely dragged my feet a bit in my first year of grad school. I thought going to school online was so challenging. I was working full time. You know, I really hated the group work and I was just going through the motions and not very good at managing my time. So I guess I had to get serious about just being more disciplined, taking breaks when I needed to, making those connections with people. I wish I'd gotten more involved already in some professional organizations and things like that and using the supports that are available to students, like, you know, Facebook groups and, you know, reaching out to my instructors more and, you know, building some relationships with them. And I guess to what you were talking about that a first job is really just a first job. I wish I hadn't worried so much about whether I was, you know, pigeonholing myself into public librarianship because there really are just so many opportunities to learn and grow your career outside of school. You know, you don't have to make all the decisions and don't put that added pressure on yourself while you're getting your degree to have it all figured out by the time you graduate. That's great. Yeah, it's sort of like, it's so you don't need to have that deer in the headlights as much as you want your business. It's gonna work out, trust us. Yeah, that happens anyway. Well, Karen, thank you so, so much for taking the time to speak with us today. This has been great. And I hope that all of you have sort of taken away from the wisdom that Karen has shared with us today that you are in a great program. It is gonna work out great. And you can relax a little bit. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Lights up and with that, goodbye everyone and thank you again, Karen. Thank you, Karen, it was such a pleasure.