Barnard Library Academic & Informational Services
Executive Director, Digital Commons, Interim BLAIS Dean, Associate Dean BLAIS, Manager of Instructional Media and Academic Technology Services (IMATS)
Barnard Library is dedicated to intellectual discovery and cross-disciplinary collaboration. We seek to bring together people, ideas, collections and technologies, forming a space and community that serves as a catalyst for knowledge creation and investigation. We provide a wide range of research and scholarly services and programming to create a unique and connected undergraduate library.
From 2011 to 2017 I worked in many different roles at Barnard College, all with a focus on developing an institutional vision to improve teaching and learning school-wide. In my first few years there, we created an Instructional Media and Technology Services Department that worked with faculty to integrate innovative teaching methods into their classes. We created a hub of innovation for the students as well, putting them in charge of the equipment room, teaching production skills, and providing peer-to-peer teaching. As the Associate Dean Barnard Library, I worked with librarians, faculty, and creative technologists to develop new ways to teach information literacy to students. As the Interim Dean of the BLAIS, I was on the Senior Leadership team for the development of the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning, which houses the Library, an Empirical Reasoning Center, Media Center, IMATS, Digital Humanities Center, Movement Lab, Computational Science Center, classrooms, and group study spaces. I later became the Executive Director of all of those spaces. Below are a few highlights of the work that was done in collaboration with students and faculty during that time.
Innovative Lecture / Content Delivery Examples
This was a passion project, a collaboration between Laurie Postlewaite, a French Instructor, Catherin Turrosi of the NY Baroche Ballet Company, IMATS, and Barnard Dance Department. An idea that started out as a glorified PowerPoint became a video lecture that has been used and seen by thousands of students and scholars.
Instead of using valuable classroom time on lectures, we developed a series of lightboard lectures and more traditional recorded lectures with a few faculty members in order to pilot a flipped classroom model for their large lecture classes. The students would watch the lecture prior to coming to class and then would spend class time doing problem sets, asking questions, and working in groups.
Student Assignments
The addition of Barnard’s Foundations Curriculum: Modes of Thinking implemented in 2016 challenged faculty to develop new ideas on how to teach their subject matter and integrate additional modes of thinking into their work. These projects were created from a Biology Class, Architecture Class, and German Language Class, and Dance Class.
Barnard 125 - Augmented Reality Project
Deutsch 3012 Telenovela
Biology - Animal Study
Design = Time
2016 Highlight Reel
Student Run Production Suite
We created a student run production suite as a vibrant hub for media production, creativity, and technology exploration. Student workers in the equipment room that loaned AV and production equipment to Columbia and Barnard students were trained on how to record and edit events and narrative movies,and facilitated workshops for students on how to use specific technologies.