Purdue Libraries faculty and staff work closely with subject faculty to support student learning and advance information literacy. Here is some information on their instructional work from the past year:
Purdue Libraries faculty and staff work closely with subject faculty to support student learning and advance information literacy. Here is some information on their instructional work from the past year:
Rebecca Richardson and Vice Provost Frank Dooley with Award winners
Purdue Libraries gave out $50 awards for best poster abstracts in five categories to students at the Undergraduate Research and Poster Symposium held on Tuesday, April 11, 2017. The student winners of the awards were: Tianlong Sun, & NamAnh Nguyen (innovative technology/entrepreneurship/design), Manjie Fu (physical sciences), Helena Lysandrou (life sciences), Gayatri Mazgaonkar (social sciences/humanities), and Neal Patel (mathematical/computational sciences). Information Literacy Specialist, Clarence Maybee, coordinated the judging of the abstracts, which was conducted by several Libraries faculty, including Michael Flierl, Heather Howard, Sarah Huber, Nastasha Johnson, Hal Kirkwood, Judy Nixon, Margaret Phillips and Wei Zakharov. At the April 11th Symposium in the North and South Ballrooms of the Purdue Memorial Union, Rebecca Richardson, Assistant Dean for Collections and Access, announced the award winners.
Clarence Maybee, the Libraries’ Information Literacy Specialist, and Chantal Levesque Bristol, Director of Purdue’s Center for Instructional Excellence, travelled over spring break to Lima, Peru to help a new technology university develop a program similar to Purdue’s Instruction Matters: 
Purdue Academic Course Transformation (IMPACT). The institution, Universidad de Ingeniería y Technología (UTEC), was opened in 2011 and enrolls about 1200 students. Elizabeth Barajas, Global Programs Coordinator for the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, arranged the visit. Across the week, Maybee, Levesque Bristol and Barajas met with several instructors and worked closely with staff developing a new teaching support center at UTEC. Using Purdue’s IMPACT program as a model, the new teaching center will work with instructors to create active, student-centered learning environments in UTEC courses.
On April 6th, Instruction Matter s: Purdue’s Academic Course Transformation (IMPACT) program hosted the 2017 IMPACT Symposium, featuring Purdue alumna and Kellogg W. Hunt Professor of English and Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University, Dr. Kathleen Blake Yancey. 
The Symposium included two workshops on writing for learning. Dr. Yancey spoke about importance of incorporating writing into all academic disciplines, in order to support knowledge transfer to future academic and professional contexts. She also offered concrete examples and suggestions for Purdue faculty and instructors interested in adding writing assignments tailored to their courses and disciplines.
Before the morning session’s workshop on informal writing assignments, Dr. Yancey and the attendees asked questions of a panel five Purdue undergraduate students (Josey Cline and Lexi Eiler from Wildlife, Danny Zuercher from Landscape Architecture, Kenny Nguyen from Neurophysiology, and Sahej Bains from Biology). The students described their experiences with academic writing, including what motivates them to complete writing tasks, and what they believe is critical to help other students recognize the value of writing in their academic areas. In the afternoon session, participants designed writing assignments that feature the writing genres specific to their academic disciplines. Following the day’s workshops, attendees joined Dr. Yancey at the Gerald D. and Edna E. Mann Hall for a reception.
The Symposium was hosted by Purdue’s IMPACT program, a Big Moves initiative that helps instructors redesign their courses to be more student-centered. The planning committee was comprised of Dan Guberman (Chair) and Laura Fritz from the Center for Instructional Excellence, Clarence Maybee and Rachel Fundator from the Purdue Libraries, and Sheree Buikema from Instructional Technology at Purdue.
