Connecting Information Literacy Efforts to Student Retention

Experts say that student retention in academe is the continued enrollment of a student from the first year to the second year, and on to graduation. In this class, we discuss the difference a librarian makes as teacher of information literacy, study skills, time management, and academic writing, and in mentoring and supporting students from first year to graduation.

Existing campus programs may be made up of a retention or enrollment office, career services, and a tutoring center, for example. In these cases, librarians need a seat at that table. In other situations, librarians have an opportunity to create an innovative grass-roots program. Either way, the bottom line for librarians is that student retention is measurable, improves, and the institution thereby graduates informationally literate leaders of the future. Librarians have a place in this entire process.

By the end of this course the participate will be able to:

1. Conduct and study best practice research
2. Create a proposal to campus administration to create a grass-roots program, or to become embedded into an existing retention program.
3. Create and customize institutional information literacy programs designed to help increase student retention
4. Develop communities across the campus in support of retention activities
5. Learn to present your ideas based on research and review a real-life case study, conducted by the instructor pre-and post-Covid.

The time commitment for this four-week asynchronous course is 15 hours total.

The instructor, Debra Lucas-Alfieri, Retired with Distinction from her positioin as the Head of Reference, Interlibrary Loan, Public Services, and Information Analysis and Instruction, at D'Youvile University in Buffalo, NY. Debra has been teaching online library science classes, seminars, and webinars for over a decade, working with national organizations. She has presented web-based symposiums for organizations in Florida and Montreal. Debra has vast experience and knowledge of the history of libraries, and its' mission, her research and philosophies are highly regarded, studied, and cited across the world. Through teaching and writing, she has impacted students and scholars across the globe.

Before she Retired with Distinction from D'Youville University, she was appointed Faculty Senate Parliamentarian and served from 2018 until she retired in 2022. During her tenure, she was awarded a Sabbatical and Faculty Research Grant in 2014, a Faculty Fellowship Award in 2015-2016, and a promotion to Full-Librarian Academic Rank in 2016. her retirement created the synergy to collaborate with countless librarians who will then drive our profession and institution of libraries successfuly and strategically into the future.