 We've done that now the other year, and this year, this is so weird. I'm not involved in the work that's happening. I'm upset. It's okay, it's okay. It's okay, it's okay. That's all. Ultimately, I think it'll go over now. Other than that, I've been in Australia for three years. I've been enjoying it. I've been enjoying it. I have a few minutes early but people seem to be quiet. We can start earlier. Since everybody is so quiet, thank you everybody for coming. It's great to see a full room. I am Francesca Marini from Texas A&M University. I'm Associate Dean for Special Collections in the Libraries and Director of the Cushing Library, which is Special Collections, Rare Books and Archives. I'm very happy to moderate this panel with our wonderful speakers on the Diversity Alliance Residency Program. At Texas A&M, we're just starting now. We have our first residence starting in June, so I'm very excited to hear other points of views. We're trying to give different perspectives from setting up the program, the challenges, coordinating the program, the experience of the residence, and then the ACRL experience of pioneering everything. The Alliance started officially launched in 2016, so it's still relatively new. Already 36 institutions have joined and there are more joining, so it's thriving and we're very happy about that. We're going to have first Dean Tyler Walters from the University Libraries at Virginia Tech, and he's going to speak about establishing the Diversity Alliance. Then we will have Leo Agnew, Director of Human Resources and Diversity Programs at the University of Iowa. He'll speak about the residence coordinator experience. Then we have Laurie Ostatler, Assistant Director and Assistant University Librarian at West Virginia University Libraries and West Virginia and Regional History Center. She'll talk about setting up the program and the successes and challenges. Then we're going to hear from two former residents, Ashley Coran, who's now Special Collections Librarian for Teaching and Learning in the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Maryland, and Charles Ear, Research and Instruction Services at Iowa State University. We're very excited about having the actual former resident speak, and then Mary Ellen Davis, Executive Director of ACRL is going to conclude and talk about the ACRL perspective and mission. If you have the package for the conference, the full bios are there, so I'm not going to read everything in detail and leave you space to speak. Sorry I'm a little anxious about speaking in public, so occasionally I kind of choke up. Thank you, everybody. Big round of applause to our speakers and a little bit of applause. Good morning, everybody. You're about to get the unauthorized pre-ACRL days version of Behind the Scenes at the Diversity Alliance and what was going on. This will be the prettiest slide you see after this. Not so pretty, but informative. It's something you can take away later. So I wanted to just kind of quickly give you a timeline at the beginning here. I'm going to talk a little bit about what happened and I'll fill in some gaps as I go along. We really started in 2014 discussing this and who is the we. This is really the brainchild of John Cawthorne, who is the Dean of Libraries at that time at West Virginia University. He's now at Wayne State. John's early experience in his own career was he was a resident librarian in a program I'll say many years ago, I'm going to date him at Ohio State University. So I think he's told us he's always had that in his mind and wanted to build something along those lines but here we were in 2014 and he wanted to get a hold of some colleagues and talk about how do we do a residency program for underrepresented populations today? What did we learn from past residency programs? How do we go forward? So the other folks are John Kulshaw at Iowa, Nancy Davenport at American University and myself and quick maybe a little funny aside is we probably were in our third or fourth meeting forming this group and I think Nancy looked at John Cawthorne and said John how did you pick the three of us to work with you on this? And he smiled a little big and said I called 20 of my friends and you were the only three who said yes. So we laughed pretty hard thought well that was a very scientific method but I think that we were proud of the fact that here's our friend John calling us saying hey I got this idea I really need you to get on board are you interested? I think it was an honor to get the call and to be working on it. So some of us gathered August of 2014 at West Virginia U and started talking about these things we did meet with the provost office and got some advice and input there so a lot of planning and discussion and most of my talk is going to be about what we spent time really meeting and talking about what are these qualities or characteristics we want in this program so that was a lot of the 2014 early 15 talk but pretty quickly we moved to job descriptions and searching for resident librarians that began late summer or early fall in 15 and we coordinated those we made sure language and our job descriptions were coordinated in that sense and we went forward but it wasn't that long after that that we had about we were probably I would say three or four months into this and we had maybe 20, close to 20 libraries we're expressing interest to John Cothorn about tell me more about this diversity alliance and how do I get into it well that's what we called Mary Ellen so we'll let her fill it in from there but you know we're very very thankful to the ACRL for advancing this program so some of the main events where we developed an annual institute which was multi-day you know four days at our organizations and the first one was summer of 15 at West Virginia then April of 16 in Iowa May of 17 we split it between Virginia Tech and then put everybody in bus and cars and went up to DC for American University and in those institutes we spent a lot of time with other officials from the university we had VPs for research we had provosts we had one president coming remark other deans so it was a really excellent opportunity for our residents going forward so the real core of it program characteristics so as you know I mean this is a common residency program that you see and we talked a lot about where would these people come from we wanted to see the base of our profession our subfield in terms of academic and research libraries obviously be more inclusive be more diverse and that was the idea what do we do how do we do this how do we attract people so of course we thought about there's going to be recent graduates from LAS schools but we also thought you know there's a whole lot of librarians out there who are not in academia public, special, school, etc. that may want to make that shift but don't know how don't know the culture, don't know the institutional setting and that perhaps this kind of program would be of help to them so we kind of had our minds on those two kinds of groups of folks going forward and I say the first item we talked a lot about was how this needed to be very resident librarian centered we wanted to focus on the resident we noted that you know not all programs are perfect our program is not perfect and what happens sometimes in these programs is you know a library department latches on to a resident librarian and say I've got my pet projects I need you to do this it happens sometimes it's good but not always we want to be very focused on this is about the development and support and maturation of the resident librarian and one way we fixed that was to say when you come in you're not going to be in one department you're going to start somewhere but you're going to have multiple appointments in your three-year period so we tried to avoid that you know kind of getting sucked up into one department we wanted to focus on again how does this person integrate into academic librarianship understand the college university setting encourage him or her to seek their interests and going forward and especially to focus a little bit on what's it like to produce your own research and scholarship because if you're going to be in this setting there's a good likelihood that you're going to need to do that you either be highly encouraged or required to do it so I think one of the unique things was there are a lot of good very good residence programs they're very institutionally based in one setting but we talked about you know we didn't really want that we thought okay this is you know we started this is 2014-15 and we realized there's this thing called the World Wide Web where people can talk to one another between institutions but it's amazing how face to face actually fosters that going forward so we talked about projects and assignments which we kind of encourage projects to go on but we saw these annual institutes as a way for all of us to bond especially the residents together we used webinars to get people to meet over certain topics and talk and discuss so we were looking for ways to connect our residents across the four institutions we wanted a longer residency there are plenty of residencies that are one or two years long and again there's certainly some effectiveness that goes on there but we noted especially from University of Iowa that had a residency program established already that a two year program what happens a lot of times is that residents looking for a job after the first 12 months so it ends up being and why not you know they have 24 month job they need a job so we thought that was a bit problematic or just not as good as we wanted it to be so this person has one year of experience with you so we really wanted to make for at least the four of us starting out we wanted this to be a three year program now as we've gone for with ACRL we've our languages we highly encourage the three years but we really require a base of two the point is the more time in the residency program the more this person is going to develop and grow and be supported so as I said three years well this is say going to the principles now that are kind of really established by ACRL so you'll see some of the talking points that I've had some of the characteristics I've been discussing in our early conversations and how they've translated into kind of the official printed principles of the diversity alliance as an ACRL program so the two to three year period designing local experiences rotation through more units than just one active memberships acting as a resource for other alliance members as they come about I believe Mary Ann will tell us but I believe it's 34 36 36 going on 37 so this is you know this is phenomenal we wanted to treat the resident not differently in terms of we saw these as entry level opportunities so we didn't want to under pay or under support this position that was a commitment we made to ourselves that have translated into the principles so I'm going to stop there we can take questions later but these are some of my contact points I'm always happy to talk more about this later on as we go forward but thank you for your time so I assume I get the extra time and hi I'm Leo at the University of Iowa Libraries residency coordinator I'm here to talk about the learning points that I have gained as coordinator of the residency program those include adapt modify and clarify just a little bit about our program we now have a three year program it targets members of historically underrepresented groups to three year appointment and residents are not automatically they're not eligible for placement but they can't apply for a job that they find something of interest so we intend for them to go elsewhere go to your place when we're done in terms of adapt what I've learned is the need to adapt between cohorts which means assessment initially our program was two year program and the residents were assigned only to our research library instruction and about five years ago with a cohort we offered our departments to write a proposal of interest and we ended up having four different units express an interest of which we hired two in place two so we expanded it between cohorts the current cohort which we hired in 2015 we changed to a three year program for the logistics that were mentioned earlier it was just practical for us to keep them two years instead of one it gave us more time to use their skills and abilities and we found from the assessment it was less stress on residents because then they instead are looking for jobs after 12 months they could wait so it's practical in our end and seem to be a benefit for the residents on their end with each assessment each cohort assess and change as necessary in terms of modifying with our current cohort we modified it midterm it was a three year program year one was intended to be and turned out to be a particular position in a particular department year two was supposed to be fourth rotation year three was going to be immersion back into a department that was going to be a launching pad for their professional job in talking with residents in talking with department heads in talking with their AULs we got away from the fourth rotation we ended up determining for this cohort it would not have been added value of forcing them at their home to go work in a place for three or four months just because we said they needed to what we did then is that we said okay year two we will help you respond to collaborative projects with other departments if you want to go work part time in another department we'll make that happen they all wanted to stay in their home base some wanted to work in another department some wanted to work on projects so we modified it midterm another modification we made midterm initially I was not only the resident coordinator but their administrative supervisor what a scary thought that was and then their department heads were their functional supervisors as it turns out that didn't work very well especially in the area of our residents understanding the difference between functional and administrative supervisor and who to ask for what time off, travel so we said let's eliminate that stress made the department heads the administrative supervisors I still retain program director and it worked fine it also meant three less performance evaluations that I had to do silver lining then that's adapt modify and then clarify I learned the hard way you have to be painfully clear to your staff and the search committee particularly underrepresented groups with our current cohort when you get the search committee I was clear that we met women and minorities I had a committee member resign because we did not include LGBTQ you have to be clear on what you mean when you get the search team started when you do the recruitment when you do the selection you have to be clear and that starts at the top what does the dean want how does he or she say it so that I at the residency coordinator can execute it so if I had not sent an encrypted document you would be seeing what is called it I was residency program three year outline but I do have 40 copies I didn't expect so many copies I have 40 I have my business card for me to send you a copy basically what it is it's a distillation of the job ad which as you know in job ads are so verbose it's hard sometimes for residents to pick out what are the core issues what's the purpose what are the outcomes what are the objectives so I put together an advisory what I call an informal advisory team that was another modification people who are not on the search committee not department heads but were recent hires who volunteered to be an informal mentoring group I called them the A team the advisory team and they were part of the search process so they provided the residents an opportunity to ask about the community then they met with the residents as they needed to once they were hired continued for that transition from geographic point A to geographic point B and they still serve as advisors to me one of their members took the task of taking the job ad and distilled it into a much cleaner outline that we can now give to residents a link to the next job ad so what it includes are statements of purpose providing immersion provide mentorship opportunity to focus on interest professional engagement it includes active participation in the university library committees first hand experience with research and scholarship and so forth deliverables year one meaningful work experience within one of several library departments exposure to library practices and academic librarianship external professional development that's year one year two option to rotate through departments option to collaborate with other departments projects that are tailored to his or her professional interest and a project that leads to publication poster whatever it might be something that gets them out in the library community looks good on a resume year three simulated responsibilities in an identified area of specialization the outcomes are listed here to demonstrate skills at professional level develop a professional network for your next career opportunity so those are things that just happened in the last two and a half years to make our program better just recently I sent our residents another online assessment what was their experience like what could we do better I've not yet had a chance to assess the feedback but that's part of the ongoing assessment one of the challenges was to provide assurance of anonymity and so I did not send out the survey I did not receive the results nor did anyone in the library we were lucky to have a department on campus that does surveys so I reached out to the director and said would you help he said yes so he sent the survey he's doing the assessment he's doing the report and that information was provided in the survey announcement that a neutral third party looking at the data identifying anything that could be identified then we'll get the report part of residency program here how am I doing on time you're almost out but you're okay I think that's it I'll see if there are any questions at the end hello thank you for giving a moment to get the technology straight I'm Lori Hosteltler from West Virginia University Libraries and we began a new residency program in 2015 under the leadership of Dean John Coughborn as Tyler mentioned at the same time we were starting this new residency program we were also involved in the creation of the diversity alliance it was a lot of work and we've learned a lot in the process so in 2015 we had three resident librarians who were recruited for our three year program and now in what would be near the end of their three year term they've all moved on and we're beginning the search for a new resident librarian so my presentation highlights the areas for consideration from my perspective as the residency program implementation chair at WVU and also come in part from a facilitated assessment of our program that took place in the fall of 2017 so my presentation is more like a lot of pretty pictures of West Virginia and an outline to keep me on track so program structure or features there's a lot of diversity in programs and as Tyler mentioned we settled on a three year program and to be in the diversity alliance you have to have a two or three year program but these are some of my thoughts about getting started in just a few of the areas to take a look at so just basic program structure in addition to the length you can think about whether it's a dedicated program so someone comes in as their research services resident librarian where they come in with no connection to a specific department and there's lots of variations from what I can tell that's great and there's no one magic formula so the first thing I want to mention would be onboarding this is something that we realized in retrospect was less than ideal for our residents it sets the tone for the entire experience though we provided an orientation when our residents came on but onboarding as a concept is much larger and involves really providing them with information about making this big move to a new place and what kinds of housing exists what kind of transportation exists you know giving them that kind of support and that's something that we would typically look to HR to provide and I think at WVU HR is starting to develop more resources for us but if it's not there that's definitely something to keep in mind as you're bringing in new faculty and it's not just for our resident librarians this really is applicable for all new professionals coming into an organization and that's the same thing I'm going to say for mentorship programs we did include formal mentorship as a feature of our residency program but it's something that we started but I think kind of fizzled out and I think it's an important aspect for all again for all new professionals and so now WVU libraries has instituted a mentoring program for all new incoming librarians and this may be standard procedure at lots of institutions but at ours it was not so the next feature would be something that Leo talked about at Iowa as well and that's the idea of rotations and so this seems to be a pretty standard feature of most residency programs when we were starting out actually in 2014 planning we surveyed the landscape of what was out there most included them what we learned after the fact was that trying to have seven rotation areas that lasted five weeks each was too much and really was and those were predetermined we decided these are the areas this is the the order in which you will rotate through the areas and we just found that that really was not effective for a resident so we're moving into a new hiring cycle this time around we're trying four rotational areas that the residents will select from a group of eight possibilities they'll meet with the department heads in those areas prior to making their selections and so we're and also getting the supervisors involved much earlier in the process giving them some ownership of what the rotation through their area will be in fact they have to create proposals that the resident librarian will review before meeting with them and making their selections that was really is a change for us and this was an area that we hope will be more successful the timing of it we're doing it in our first year Leo's program was attempting to do that in the second year before we got started or as we got started with our work trying to look at what didn't work previously I surveyed through the ACRL diversity alliance listserv and received responses from about eight different institutions about how they that had residency programs about their rotations and some folks are doing it simultaneously so they rotate for part of their assignment and they're also working in a specific area at the same time so their assignment is split the way our program was set up you did rotations in the first year and then in the second and third year you got to choose where you wanted to spend those final two years my next point is assessment that Leo mentioned as well we did not do enough assessment throughout the program we had some assessment built into the rotations which was sort of a closed evaluation and that was not helpful we had difficulty getting department heads to actually do those evaluations and then the results weren't really shared with the residents so next time around it's going to be a collaborative facilitated discussion between the residents and department heads and folks in the resident implementation committee to talk through what went well and what didn't and we're hopeful that that's more successful and then we're still working on the ways that we want to assess in the second and third year because the residents will be supervised by the department heads in those areas but we still have a residency program and I think what kind of happened the last time is that once they moved into their department it's like we fizzled out with our part of it so we don't want to do this next time around I just want to quickly mention that we included scholarship, scholarly activity from the very beginning but I think in our mindsets going into it this was something that the residents would do in their later years but it turns out we had really engaged residents who started right off the bat and so we just wanted to make sure that the expectations are shared and that the support is given for that requirement this is okay everything I just talked about was the easy stuff and this is the hard part and this is the part that even our keynote speaker alluded to this morning and that's the systemic change and I can say from experience it's really important to try to prepare your staff the faculty and the library staff for a residency program and make sure they understand the reason why we're doing it but also I feel that inclusion training, cultural competency all of that kind of training should be a part of our regular professional development opportunities we're not there yet we're working on it we have some new things coming up this year that will hopefully help with some facilitated training that's going to happen to people all across the library so you will then bring that back to the library but this is the hard part organizational buy and changing the culture and my last point which also Leo sort of mentioned to in his adapt and modify and that's be flexible and as you assess and as you look at your program and as your residents come to you be ready to change of course if needed and this is probably the advice that I wish someone had given me in 2015 as we started the program was to understand that it's not finite it's a work in progress so that's all I have and thank you all so much you're like right in my view Felissa I'll be staring at you for six minutes I hope that's okay good morning I'm Ashley up until last year I was the resident librarian at West Virginia University I gave a similar talk about my experiences at ACR last year and when I was asked to do it again I was so excited because I thought that I could save myself some time to use the exact same script unfortunately I couldn't because it's super dry so when I thought about what to address this morning I thought about some of my successes as a resident which include being a 2016 IFLA fellow winning almost $2,000 in scholarships to attend conferences co-coordinating WVU libraries first open access week embedding library instruction to first year seminars co-designing and teaching a three credit course on film and media literacy being cited in the ARL diversity spec kit and serving as an academic coach to sophomores thank you sometimes you got flexed I also thought about the groups of students that I had the pleasure of working with including student veterans commuters and first year students I could go more into detail but I wanted to address something that was way more impactful particularly for me being a resident and focusing particularly on library administration allowed me to see the library as an ecosystem full of intersecting parts at WVU we were encouraged to not just learn new things and pick up new skills but to also model new modes of behavior and practice to build and strengthen this ecosystem not only am I a former resident but for the last two years I've been an active member of the residency interest group and serve as the representative on the diversity alliance task force these experiences have affected not just how I feel about residencies and national service but also my thoughts on diversity programs which tend to demonstrate the complexities of trying to fix systemic issues there are a number of reasons why I wanted to participate in residency program at Simmons I managed our job line and saw a number of residency programs I thought were interesting why? because they seem like a good entry way into academic librarianship after graduating from my LAS program I wanted a job where I could feel where I could explore different areas of librarianship before joining the program I spent a year working as a reference librarian and wanted to learn more about information literacy I knew that residency program would afford me that opportunity and like many other residents while I enjoyed my library science program I felt that there were other areas to explore particularly like outreach and collection development I also felt that there are areas to improve within my own professional practice I believe that residency programs can create well-rounded professionals after starting my residency and meeting other residents in the alliance I realized the structure for each residency was unique at WVU as Lori pointed out we had seven rotations over the course of ten months in two different library branches they included archives, access services metadata, teaching and learning scholarly communication, acquisitions and leadership each rotation was different in scope and the projects were vastly different we were able to develop projects of our own but for the most part they were predetermined my first year was spent going through the rotations and becoming oriented for the library system for the second year of my residency I decided to focus on leadership there are two big reasons one, I'm always interested in the career trajectories of leaders and I knew that I would learn a lot working from John Cothorn and Karen Degas and two, I knew that the idea of me a resident working in the space would challenge my own views of what leadership is and what a leader looks like I was also interested in learning how library initiatives are selected, developed and sustained for over a year I worked under the director of strategic initiatives in the dean's office to help develop and support our projects in the library tied to retention efforts on campus during these two years I also presented at conferences engaged in scholarship and taught for credit classes the deans had the residents work closely with the then senior training and development specialist Stephanie Masters Stephanie led us through strength space training and made it very clear that while we were residents we were also change agents my experience as a resident taught me quite a bit about the complexities of organizational change and the importance of creating a work environment where people feel empowered and are encouraged to see opportunity within uncertainty there were several challenges during my journey some of which already may be familiar to most of you but they include the feeling of isolation that comes with working and living in a place that was not necessarily racially diverse and very hard to travel in and out of dealing with an academic appointment that did not match the level of my professional output the burnout that comes with being a change agent and then what is typical for most residents managing paternalistic attitudes any new program was going to habits kinks spent a whole lot of time advocating for my needs and ideas but luckily our support team trusted my judgment and were always open to hearing us out you were always treated like colleagues and they were very adamant that the experience was about us the best part of my experience in addition to now having a really spiffy CV was all the amazing people I've got to meet over the last three years from deans to LAS students to library staff to my former resident in crime I now have an awesome network of folks that I can turn to for pretty much anything it is this network that has helped me transition into my current position which is very similar to my old job in many ways there are so many benefits to participating in a residency program but my three biggest takeaways for those interested in participating or starting a new program are one I learned how to be a more effective and apathetic colleague two I cultivated my project management skills and three I built a strong community of both peer and former mentors to conclude I wanted to share a few pieces of advice from an article that I co-wrote with another resident for collaborative librarianship one be prepared to assess your program before during and after implementation as Lori pointed out two provide and encourage robust ongoing diversity and inclusion training for program admins and coordinators and three always create time for reflection thank you my name is Charles yeah I work at Iowa State University library in research and instruction department now I always like starting my story how it all started back so many years in my home country of Kenya I happened to have had a very elderly Catholic missionary priest who always told me why it was very important to make libraries my friend I was like how does a building become your friend and he told me always remember that many years down the road I found myself in the United States I lived in Jacksonville North Carolina and my first job was to work at an apartment complex doing maintenance work part of my routine every morning before I started my real job was to go around the complex picking later from the compound but one day a very young little African American boy approached me he was about 7 or 8 years old and he surprised me by telling me that when I grow up I would like to become like you and that got me scratching my head you come like me picking later it kind of disturbed me a little bit and then I asked him why did you tell me that what he told me I would like to share but it was very heart wrenching first forward I found myself Columbia in Missouri I decided to relocate there because it was a college town I wanted to better myself and then I found myself attending a career fair and at the career fair I talked to a professor who happened to be working at the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri this professor sold me into librarianship I didn't know what it was all about because besides what my old Catholic priest used to tell me I thought it was just about books but anyway from the shock we had with this professor I decided to go through the emotions of application, did my GRE and landed a position at grad school when I was about to graduate I started looking very closely at job descriptions and I asked myself is this something I am really going to be able to do because I had zero experience in this profession and then soon after I graduated I couldn't believe what I saw an advertisement for a residency program I always had about residencies in other fields or practicum or internships but not residencies so this was the first time I was seeing this and I was like wait a minute this is something I might want to try and I put in my application and believe you me I couldn't believe that I got that position at the University of Iowa what I remember to date is that that was a very powerful launching pad I got I got it and held it with both of my hands I went there with zero experience in this profession all I started from was just what I had from library school so the residency program I found myself in was courtesy of the diversity alliance the first group of four institutions that started it that's Virginia Tech University of Iowa and American University because of that I can't believe that less than three years today I'm standing before you to say that it has helped me go this far the individual and collective support we received both from our individual institutions and collectively is something that I'll always hold very dear it give me a very wide perspective and understanding of what academic librarianship is all about one thing about our residency program was that it was very effectively programmed and one of the key things that I noticed that made it very successful for me especially was the kind of institutes that we had and what we took from each of those institutes every successive year for example our first institute was at the University of West Virginia where we underwent an orientation into the residency program and we also had the opportunity to bond as a cohort and also to network with other participants who are there giving the opportunity to kind of assess our unique individual strengths and to be able to see how best we could build on those to help us go forward our next institute was at my host institution that's the University of Iowa and here the institute retarded to us the importance of research and professional service and the final one was last year in May and it was co-hosted by Virginia Tech and American University what I liked about the last institute was the opportunity it gave us to prepare for our launching into the into the profession we had an opportunity to engage in a mock interview which mimics the actual job interview usually made by actual candidates and after that we received feedback the library that we were at West Virginia all staff were asked to come and listen to our presentations and give us their feedback we were assigned various mentors who aligned with our career interests who kind of helped us look through our resumes and stuff like that and that was really helpful and back host institution one thing I liked about it despite what Leo said earlier it was initially structured in a way that we were supposed to be rotating but me when I went to library school I always wanted to become a reference librarian some of the options you were given like special collection reservation and conservation I had no clue what those things were I knew they do a lot of cool stuff but I was like my half is so limited and I would be better placed gaining experience in what I really wanted to do and when we discussed that I was led to continue gaining the kind of experience I thought would be more helpful to me generally the congenital environment at the library really helped me everybody would be like Charles are you getting what you really wanted to get out of this I would be like if you need anything please come I will help you there are certain things that might seem even starting a chart reference something I have never done in my life you shadow somebody and the next thing you are by yourself and the next thing you have a question you can't answer you go consult and everybody they are willing to help things like navigating the IRB process for example things I have never done myself before I would even communicate with an associate dean a very elaborate explanation how to go through the process so these are things that I take very very very very clearly my professional development was supported just like any other librarian for example I participated in ACRL teaching technology mushroom track last year that was all courtesy of my home institution and the mentorship was just superb I had a colleague who was always willing to go teach a class with me whenever he wasn't there I would go teach that class he had a credit course he was teaching so those kind of things and eventually when I was now starting to look out into the job market these are people who are always willing to look at my application tell me Charles maybe you may want to change this part this way and all that kind of thing so in conclusion I would only say that this residency program gave me a big big head start without it I don't I can't imagine where I would have been it boosted my confidence level a lot because through it there are things that initially I would have freaked about but today I think I can confront with more confidence I'm very happy to hear that the ACRL eventually took the coordinating role for the diversity alliance and the membership has now grown from 236 I think that's really really encouraging I believe a lot more people will benefit out of this and maybe at some point when I meet another 7 year old kid who tells me that he wants to be like me I might more affirmatively nod and say yes I think you're thinking right thank you very much thank you I had to check my watch it's now officially noon so I can say good afternoon you know before I start I want to say that listening to Ashley and Charles really inspires me and excites me about why ACRL got into this program and I just hope that we can continue to do more together so I know you've heard a lot already about the diversity alliance I'm just curious how many of you had heard about the ACRL diversity alliance before you heard about this conference did anybody heard about it? Oh alright the marketing is working that's great how many of you in this audience are working at institutions that are already members of the diversity alliance excellent excellent my comrades are here so that's lovely and how many of you are interested in joining the diversity alliance very good we hope that by the end of the session you'll have the information you need so that you can go forward and join so how did we get into into this for those of you that don't know this is John Cawthorne and John Coolshaw my apologies to Tyler and to Nancy Davenport I didn't have a fun picture with them too but I was at I think a CNI meeting in December of 2015 and was approached by several of these folks and they're like Mary Ellen we got an idea we want to talk to you about this and I was very interested of course one of ACRL's core values is diversity and equity and inclusion and I think one of the things they said was you know we've got this program we've got it up and running but we want to scale it and we're four deans we're busy we don't have time to scale this up to include as many institutions as we would like to participate and I was also very glad to hear it may have been Tyler that you said this and I don't think we need to create another 501 C3 for people to to belong to and I'm like yes why not work with what we already have it made my little heart hitter patter so that was great so we kind of talked it through I attended the University of Iowa Institute in the spring of 2016 I had some informal conversations with the ACRL board of directors about whether they'd be interested in something like this they were all very positive and excited to see what we could come up with and when I was out in Iowa the four founding deans and I met really tried to flesh out what would this look like I mean one of the things I think they felt was that trying to have each institution host a multi-day institute for the residents was a big lift that was more than probably most institutions would have the time or resources to support so what else could we do with that kind of thing so we you know kind of fleshed out the ideas for the program that spring we brought it to the ACRL board in June and by September of 2016 I was very proud to have launched the ACRL diversity program complete with logo and everything and I would say that for associations that's working at light speed so I was very excited that we could do it that quickly so as Tyler mentioned you know we kept with a purpose the of the program and we really hope that by working together and thinking more broadly the ACRL diversity alliance institutions will help diversify and thereby enrich the entire profession we all know that we want to be in institutions where the people that are working with the students reflect the student body that is there and we have a long way to go and what we're hoping is that this program will help with that now Tyler's already kind of gone over quickly the commitment so just to review a little bit you know one of the questions that we often get is well we're interested in being a part of the diversity alliance but we don't have a residency program yet that's alright you can still join because then you get access to the institutions that have one and you can learn from them about how did they set it up, how did they convince the provost or the library director or dean for money so if you're interested and you can commit to your working toward establishing a residency we would love you to be a member because that is another important commitment that we ask the institutions to make that you will serve as a resource that you will as diversity coordinators connect with the other institutions that might have questions and share those ideas that you will commit to professional development and I think Leo said flexibility was one of the things that was really important and adaptability and I heard both Leo and Laurie talk about the rotation is a good idea didn't always work so be prepared to do something else and I think that being part of the diversity alliance community will give you some of those resources that will help you think through what will work best and then of course providing a salary that would be equal to an entry level position we ask that you pay a small annual fee to be a member of the diversity alliance to help defray the cost of the program and that you recommit each year to the principal so we will actually ask the dean or the director to each year sign a commitment statement to these principles because we recognize that the focus of an institution can wax and wane depending on who is in leadership and we want to make sure that the institution remains committed that the leadership is committed and that the residents have the support they need to be in the program now what some of the people said to me so what do I get out of it, why should I join what are the benefits of being part of the several diversity alliance well first I think it's almost a personal thing I think this is a very important initiative for the profession and it gives you an opportunity to participate in this effort to really improve the pipeline of diverse individuals who will compete for academic and research library jobs as I mentioned you get access to the other alliance institutions and their coordinators insights you get access to their job postings their residency rotation schedules if they have one we have created an electronic discussion list for all of the diversity alliance coordinators where they can ask each other's questions and share ideas and I believe there are some members that are working on a live guide to try and pull all those sorts of things together in an easy accessible place we also give you access to the ACL residency interest group and Ashley and I were just chatting because Ashley as she mentioned has been active in the residency interest group and we're trying to make sure that we can make distinct residency interest group can do by connecting those individual residents and what the diversity alliance can do by more focusing on the institutions and the coordinators and the programs that they are developing we give you a badge wouldn't you like to have that digital badge for your website too it will change the year every year that you recommit and send you a new one and we have heard anecdotally and I know Nancy Davenport one of the founding members talks about the attention that she got from her provost and the difference that being a member of the diversity alliance made to the pool of people that she could recruit to her institution so we're hoping that by adding language to your job ad that you are a member of the ACL diversity alliance and by using this digital badge that that will show that you are creating a welcoming environment in which those people might want to apply you've heard several times the numbers right before I left for another institution to join so too late to get on this list but I think we're about to finalize the University of Texas at Austin becoming our 37th member and we've had some inquiries so I hope that others will continue and some institutions are using the diversity alliance as a way to highlight and recognize other people so the University of Delaware named their residency program after someone that was important to that institution that I thought was kind of a cool idea so what's next well, we are offering a pre-conference for residents and others that might be interested at the ACL 2019 conference in Cleveland and Margo Conegan our professional development manager is here so she and I would be happy to talk to you all about the Cleveland conference if you would like but that will be in April 2019 Gerald Holmes is here Gerald Wave UNC Greensboro applied to IMLS the Institute for Museum and Library Services and got a grant to host two more institutes for diversity alliance members so they are working on the planning and Margo is going to be working with the planning groups so we can put together two more institutes to complement what is going on at the ACL conference ACL created a diversity alliance task force to kind of oversee this program in its development stages and chatting with the task force of which the four founding deans are members as well as we added some additional people they felt that going to an annual or by annual institute was going to be a more effective way to work a more reasonable way to work resources being what they are and to try and provide two or three institutes a year at each of the participating members but then you have people like Gerald and UNC Greensboro team that thought well maybe we get some money and do something so we're open and we're very much in the growth process so if you have ideas we certainly are interested in what might work well for you what else are we doing well we will reach out to all of the residents in the diversity alliance and invite them to apply for scholarships we've already budgeted and have commitments for over $100,000 in scholarships to the ACL conference in 2019 some of those will be for library school students some will be for diversity alliances some will be for spectrum scholars which is the ALA program to get underrepresented groups into graduate schools of library and information science even with our scholarship program we try to have our ear to the ground and listen to what members need so our scholarship program has always been aimed for those from professionally underrepresented groups but after running it for a few years we heard from mid-career people and said you're just focusing on students and entry level what about us so we added five more scholarships for mid-career people trying to respond to that need we're considering whether the deans and directors of the diversity alliance institutions would like to have their own list to talk about issues that are different maybe than what the on the ground coordinators are trying to do so if there's interest we will create that I am working on a job description I'd be interested in just an informal poll here one of the ideas I've had I put money in the budget if the if the board will approve the budget in June and I know I have several board members in the room including John Lainer chair of budget and finance so if they look favorably upon this idea I will be creating a diversity alliance residency program at the Acerol offices in Chicago so I just would be curious how many think it would someone getting out of graduate school would like to work at the national association as opposed to starting out the library do you think there would be any interest in that show your hands yeah okay I wasn't sure because it's not we don't do you know hands on library work we do a different kind of work but we can offer them exposure and networks to a whole nation of active committed librarians that are passionate about the profession what else are we doing this diversity alliance I want to put in context of a broader initiative at the Acerol board meeting at the midwinter annual midwinter meeting of ALA in January no February I guess it was this year I lose track we moved it the board voted to approve a brand new strategic initiative on equity diversity and inclusion they're defining exactly what that means but what they wanted to do was do more than just add a goal to a strategic plan they said this is so important we don't want a goal that we're going to check off in a few years and say we've done it we want to infuse the entire organization with this idea of EDI so we have a board working group that has been working with some of our leaders to put together sort of a list of suggested programs that we might undertake that will best suit the profession in that we're looking to create more professional development I think we'll be issuing a call for curriculum developers to come up with a road show type of thing on EDI so that we can send some presenters out to your communities to do some EDI work so we're kind of just starting on the development of that idea and the conversations here and conversations I had with Leo and the other big 10 HR library directors a year or so ago we recognize that part of the issue is pipeline what the big 10 HR folks were telling me is like we're all competing for the same people you know where we put an ad out and there's only so many people getting out of library school and we're trying to get them or once they're out of the residency we're trying to get them so we're looking at ideas what could we do with high school students how could we get them excited about careers in libraries or academic libraries the public library association got a grant from IMLS to bring 50 high school students to work in the summer in public libraries maybe there's something around that that we could do so I think the board and I are very open and interested in things that we can do to grow the diversity lines to grow EDI initiatives that will support the profession and I look forward to talking to you more about that while we're here I didn't have a slide with my contact information but there's some postcards out on the tables and I think there's more at the registration desk so please feel free to email us check out the website and be glad to answer any questions that you have when we're done thank you thank you everybody this was very very useful and informative I'm the diversity residence coordinator at Texas A&M so also gave me extra tips so we have about 15 minutes for questions so we have mics out so please ask questions can you hear me when you were speaking about feeling isolated in those positions and whether or not you had you had a cohort you had at least one other person there I think and I don't know if you mentioned that you did as well and how important that was and if you were if we're working towards some of these positions but can only get one do you have any recommendations for how to address the isolation issue so I was really lucky in the fact that the resident that ended up staying and I ended up really close and so it was really great from the beginning that we sort of had really great synergy we were able to sort of complement one another I know that this time around you're having one resident and I think a big part of I mean one their experience will be different because we know more they understand more they understand how to better support that person second time around and I think a big part of it like Lori sort of talked about is that it's not just about moving to a new institution is moving to a new place and so helping that person sort of orient not just to the library but like the campus the space, the town and I think it also depends on the type of person that you hire I think that's one of the biggest issues with these programs is like what kind of resident do you want do you want someone who's super green who might need a different kind of support than someone you know like me who was you know a little bit older and had experience in libraries and didn't need necessarily my hand to be held right and so that's something to also think about when you do have one resident is what kind of resident do you want to have in your program can I just add to Ashley's comments so this time around we can only hire one resident librarian and so we are reaching out to other schools that have residency programs that are within our local region just to see what ways we can have our residents work together and you know sort of have informal relationships so in addition to providing support internally we are also looking at the institutions around us and making some connections for our residents one more thing one of the great things that happened to you is that I actually met a lot of black faculty on campus outside of the library so meeting other black faculty or even like Ph.D. students was really helpful each institution has their own sort of social network and I think really tapping into that before the resident gets there and making sure that they have that information is really important yeah personally what I noticed was that I think it all boils down to an individual sometimes somebody has just that personality to be able to reach out and some people are just not that gifted that way so I noticed that some of my colleagues who do a lot better you could find them socializing a lot more but that doesn't mean that those who didn't felt isolated they also just had their own ways of socializing and feeling accommodated and all that so I think it all boils down to the kind of person himself or herself and I just want to add while it's not the same as having three residents in the same room or at the same library I do think that's the role the residency interest group can play it's amazing what we can do with video chats now and zoom and things like that and so the leaders of that group have just been phenomenal about looking for opportunities to bring people together we can have informal meetups at the conferences so that there are other people that they can connect with and we're hoping that by having some of these institutes at least annually that gives them another chance to come face to face and have more of a cohort this is another question for Ashley because I notice that you aren't undergraduate of Bates and so I wanted to ask you two questions one was there something during your undergraduate experience that encouraged you to become a librarian and secondly because you have had an experience with a small liberal arts college but are now working at large universities for those of us that are at liberal arts colleges could you make some suggestions on how we could develop a residency program that would be inviting for people to understand how a liberal arts college is different from larger institutions thank you awesome where are you coming from I'm at McAlister College right across the river so I teach for a living and I believe in transparency in the classroom and I'm very honest with my students that I did not go to the library at all in college that was not a thing that I did it wasn't until I derived a thesis that I actually started going to the library but what I do think you know having a liberal arts background is the idea that librarianships you have to know everything you have to be able to sort of pick up a book or google anything in about ten minutes right like that's what librarianship is and I think having a liberal arts education sort of helped prepare me for that right and be able to sort of tap into any area any discipline at any given time because you never know what people are going to ask you and I think in terms of having programs at liberal arts colleges I think that's a fantastic idea I think you know I work at a really huge university and while that is awesome I feel so overwhelmed sometimes with the amount of people and things and paperwork that I have to sort of be aware of and I think maybe having our residency in a really small space might actually be really fantastic for someone that's sort of especially if it's like they're entryway into academic librarianship they can actually be really great sort of have that really intimate small space and I think also with liberal arts colleges you guys are doing a little bit of everything right because you don't have enough staff most of the time so I think it would be a really good opportunity for them to sort of tap into different areas and sort of be almost forced to do that so Hi I'm Melissa Mitchell from the University of Virginia and we are getting our two residents July 1st and we got them and if the program is a success is because we went out looking and asking questions we drove Lori crazy with emails Ashley talked to our committee that hooked them together and she and Chanel did a piece on how not to do a residency which has been very very helpful for us where is Chanel by the way having a time of her life in Las Vegas okay good to know Leo I want to say thank you so much for Carmelita Pickett who is starting EVA soon with respect to the residency program one of the things that we really cared about at EVA because August 11th and 12th we didn't know if we would get anybody we luckily got 70 applicants and we chose two but one of the things that we really worried about is because there are so many different programs how is it that how do we balance it so that we had a very early cutoff date because EVA does really early cutoff dates of December 15th and we wanted to figure out a way so that the residents because we're looking at a pretty small group of people how do we make it equitable for them so that if you know I'm competing with Lori on top on your Harvard so I mean how do we make it so that people you know so we actually talked about a national match day for our residencies and I don't know if that would work or not but it was something that really does concern us and so that's a question for ACRL actually and we put it to Howard Prager too so and the last thing was with respect to high school internships we're doing our second one at UVA last year we brought in one student five students for six weeks one day a week and it drove everybody nuts so this year we had 65 or actually we had 65 applicants we chose six of them and they were there for one week one day you know rotating through we're paying them 11.54 an hour which is pretty good for a 16 or a 17 year old but the next thing is I was at a conference actually here last month where somebody said well why are you bringing them to you why don't you go out to them and talk to them about how cool librarianship is so we're working on that for the fall and I'm going to New Orleans for NCORE and talk about two college students about what a cool field librarianship is and hopefully we can start the waters and Ashley I want to call you out for an odd mission UVA and your career path I'm sorry I think there was a question for ACRL so let me first start by at the pre-conference yesterday one of the things that we surfaced was that there's so many cool things going on that it's hard to keep track of them nationally like there's pockets of this excellence and pockets of really exciting things so I definitely want to keep talking to you about the high school idea because I think nationally that could do a lot for recruiting people from underrepresented groups to the profession in terms of what the ACRL diversity alliance can and can't do we have had some questions about well so are you going to find us our resident like you know for $500 a year no I'm not staffed to do that I'm open to suggestions if you can think about a way a national match day I'm not that familiar with how the NFL does it all right so you know we can learn one of the challenges that I have seen is that every state has different requirements every institution has different requirements so trying to see if there's a way we can cut through all that nationally I don't know whether that will be the best investment I'm not saying no I'm just saying I don't know how to do it right now but if people have ideas I'd be glad to listen to them and see what we could come up with and whether it's an affordable you know the best use of the resources second the national match day is an intriguing idea including the ability to match versus a required search but it's an intriguing idea I want to say congratulations on landing Carmelita you're also getting my daughter this fall MFA program and poetry and creative writing so be prepared what I want to say though as far as adapting something you mentioned applications five years ago when we advertised for our cohort we advertised everywhere and we're blessed with 192 applications that we had to go through we adapted with our most recent cohort and only publicized and diversity related outlets and ended up with under a hundred somewhere about 80 applications so administratively it saved us time and we think though my intuition is that the percentage of candidates were more diverse but I don't have the data because as you know self-identification is voluntary but that was a change we made to target recruitment so to say time and hopefully have a more diverse pool Hi, good afternoon, my name's Nika Thoss I'm the coordinator of our residency program at American University one of the founding members I've had three things I wanted to mention Americans residents don't have a rotation we're a pretty small organization about 20-25 librarians and our immediate need was having librarians come in to teach for us so our residents actually do a significant amount of teaching that's our primary responsibility and as we hire residents we hire for their potential and willingness and interest in information literacy the other thing was I recently created a document most of our residents are three years we do have a resident who's a two-year residency program and after working with my first resident in the process of hiring our third resident who's coming in in June I created a benchmark list of where my colleagues should be in their residency program so a three-month mark six-month mark, 12 to 18 months and a two-year mark of things that either I should address as their employer or that they need to reach was having a significant interest in developing research and service areas I'm happy to share that document I also wanted to mention Dr. Jason Alston he wrote a dissertation on residencies and if you're on the listserv I can resend the executive summary that he offered us recently finally our university librarian Nancy Davenport promotes our diversity alliance to the provost and he's actually given us public accolades for this diversity alliance so much so that the school of public affairs looked at the program and has created a Ph.D. version for their school Gerald Holmes University of North Carolina at Greensboro definitely we're excited about our grant and Dean Martin Halbert joined us in July of 2017 and I think when he interviewed as I was on the search committee of course I asked about equity diversity inclusion he knew about the residency program and basically my nervousness is will it continue while you're here as Dean so I think once he got hired he had this dream and when he called me in and said Gerald I'd like to apply for this grant what do you think I was like wow if anything I'm just happy about having a residency here at UNC at Greensboro but definitely we put this together and I'm proud to say we've been funded also this is a two-year continuing education project grant so basically we're going to have an advisory committee and Jason Austin which he was our first resident will be on that advisory committee and basically you're welcome to read a lot of the things that we probably his experience and how it could have been better but definitely it's wonderful that actually Jason got his doctorate and our second resident, Leticia Velez got her doctorate and she's actually a lecturer for the library school at UNC at Greensboro she's also going to be in this committee along with the former dean of North Carolina Central Library School Irene Owens so definitely in addition to the institutes we're going to have two webinars and we're also going to start a eOpen Access Journal we're going to definitely be looking for opportunities to learn and work on a lot of the things you heard today and definitely the mentoring the assessment, they're right up there atop. We are right now in the process of hiring our sixth resident and definitely when you hire you don't know what they may be thinking about doing and true working on PhDs was not in my mind but definitely we left it open and we shared our profession we went to conferences and we left them do what they wanted to do so I'm really excited to see everybody in the room and even thinking about residency programs I'm very excited that I have the dean who wants to do this as a vision and so I just wish the best for everyone Mark do you want to say something? Just a look, is this a logistics thing as you walk out of the doors you will see a kind of elaborate setup I'm not sure how they're going to fit 200 people getting food at the same time but they say that they've done this before but the plates are on the opposite side of the table so double sides plates on the opposite side and then of course the seating with cutlery and everything is where we served breakfast so enjoy your lunch and we'll see you in the afternoon, thank you