TEACH FOR KNOWLEDGE, MENTOR FOR SUCCESS

Preparing Students to Enter the Workforce

Nedelina Tchangalova and Francy Stilwell

Engineering & Physical Sciences Library, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, U.S.A.

Keywords: Honors programs, Collaboration, Emerging technologies, Library instruction, Subject guides, Mentoring.

Abstract: The future well-being of any society arguably depends on the full knowledge potential students are able to

transfer from academia to the workplace upon graduation. There are different mechanisms to transfer this

knowledge, and at the University of Maryland, efforts are concentrated on establishing honors programs.

These programs prepare students for the acquisition of lifelong skills such as research skills, team work and

leadership skills by using emerging technologies in teaching and mentoring students through their course of

study. The Gemstone program is one of the five honors programs on campus and its goal is “to give our

students transferable skills that will be valuable for wherever life leads them.” This paper presents how

campus collaboration may help with building the foundation of this academic knowledge and with

transferring it later to the workplace.

1 INTRODUCTION

One of the goals of honors programs at the

University of Maryland (UMD) is to prepare

students to enter the workforce with confidence by

developing a foundation of knowledge for career

success. The Gemstone program is one of the five

honors programs on campus that involves students in

acquiring lifelong skills and expanding their

knowledge potential. The first Gemstone class

entered UMD in the fall of 1996 and finished the

program in May of 2000. In this multidisciplinary

four-year research program, under the guidance of

faculty mentors and Gemstone staff, students work

in teams on significant research projects, exploring

the interdependence of science and technology with

society. These students are digital natives, highly

motivated and highly competitive; they are used to

competing against their peers, even to the point of

strain. They appreciate being challenged and do not

feel it is a burden. Even more than just graduating

and getting a diploma, these students want to obtain

life-long skills from their college coursework. Below

are selected testimonials encapsulating what students

have learned throughout their research process:

 The Gemstone Team “Genes to Fuels,” which won

the Library Award for Undergraduate Research

(2011) this year from the UM Libraries, wrote in

their application essay: “During the course of our

research process, we picked up on some important

lessons. We now have a sense of how quickly

emergent scientific fields update and expand their

knowledge. Like any other skill, researching

literature needs practice to master, and we feel this

project has given us plenty” (Gemstone Team

“Genes to Fuels” 2011, p.2).

 Gemstone Team “Dietary Information and

Evaluation Technologies” (DIET), another team

competing for the same award learned that “the best

way to further our learning is to utilize all available

resources, and seek guidance with experts whenever

possible. The ability to find scholarly support for an

idea in a library is a key skill for any graduate school

or job, and the skills we have been developing will

surely help us in the future. Additionally, the critical

analysis skills we have learned crosses over into

other areas of life, not just for library research”

(DIET 2011, p.2).

 Gemstone Team “Food Deserts” feels “more

confident, adept and efficient in our research

methods” (Gemstone Team “Food Deserts” 2011,

p.2).

2 BACKGROUND

The University of Maryland, College Park, is a ma-

Stilwell F. and Tchangalova N. (2011).

TEACH FOR KNOWLEDGE, MENTOR FOR SUCCESSPreparing Students to Enter the Workforce.

In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Innovative Developments in ICT, pages 82-86

DOI: 10.5220/0004472100820086

 SciTePress

major public research university located on 1,250

acres of land in close proximity to Washington, D.C.

UMD has 38 faculty members appointed to the

National Academy of Sciences, the National

Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of

Medicine. Also, it has four current Nobel laureates

in physics and economics. In the Fall of 2010, the

total enrolment of students was 37,641 (UM

Newsdesk n.d.). Within this academic institution, the

Gemstone program provides a flexible environment

for learning and conducting research while offering

a rigorous curriculum to the selected students

(Gemstone 2010). Each Gemstone team is assigned

a team librarian to assist and guide them in their

quest for information related to their research

projects.

It is a well-known fact that companies today are

willing to invest huge sums of money and time to

encourage collaboration (Naimark 2004). Today, the

sharing of ideas and information is considered to be

more participatory and productive than lonely work

in an office or in-class assignments. To meet these

industry expectations and to prepare students to

transfer seamlessly from academia to the corporate

world, faculty mentors, Gemstone staff, and

librarians provide an environment for students to

work together in teams, either with others in the

same building or same city, or even over long

distances.

3 TEACHING

We find Gemstone students are interested in

developing lifelong learning skills that will help

them succeed. The same ambition that motivates

these students academically is likely to bring them

into the challenging world of corporate industry. It is

important to adopt positive assumptions about their

skills and create a mentoring environment that feeds

their academic appetites, along with offering them

opportunities for problem-solving and applying their

skills.

3.1 Faculty Members

Faculty members challenge and support the students

in the development of research, teamwork,

communication and leadership skills. To facilitate

communication between team members, faculty

professors use the Enterprise Learning Management

System (ELMS), which is an online environment

that supports teaching and learning at the University

of Maryland (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Enterprise Learning Management System.

This system provides course materials, serves as

a tool for exchanging ideas via a discussion board,

and offers space for managing the students’ grades.

Gemstone students are encouraged to explore other

technologies to help facilitate the exchange of ideas,

collect information for their projects, write their

theses, and record all their activities. For example,

the Gemstone Team “Genes to Fuels” created a web

site to publicize their research process and findings

(Gemstone “Team Genes to Fuels” 2009). To

promote e-learning and teaching in a virtual

classroom, some professors use the Wimba platform

to communicate with their students without needing

to be physically present in the classroom (Wimba

2009). Even more than this, the teaching faculty use

the Wimba classroom as a virtual space to offer

office hours for their students seeking help with their

research.

In their fourth year, each team of students present

their research, in the form of a thesis, to experts in

the field. At the end of the program, students

participate in a citation ceremony and enter the

workplace with confidence and a great sense of

accomplishment.

Finally, their research projects are archived in the

Digital Repository at the University of Maryland

(DRUM), thus making them accessible to future

generations of researchers (Figure 2) (DRUM 2010).

Figure 2: Digital Repository at the University of

Maryland.

3.2 Librarians

The University of Maryland Libraries strive to

provide quality orientations and literacy sessions to

the students of the Gemstone program. Librarians

volunteer to mentor one team or several teams at

once. The librarians’ vision for the students is to

TEACH FOR KNOWLEDGE, MENTOR FOR SUCCESS - Preparing Students to Enter the Workforce

become adept at determining the authority and

accuracy of information, and analyzing and

evaluating that information to synthesize new

knowledge from multiple resources. Subject

librarians model and teach these skills and strategies

collaboratively with faculty instructors. They help

students to formulate appropriate research questions,

organize the search for data, analyze and evaluate

the data found, and communicate the results. In this

way students develop the skills and strategies needed

to become independent, lifelong learners and to

transfer this knowledge from academia to the

workplace.

A variety of technological tools and services are

used extensively during teaching to enhance the

students learning experiences:

 Clickers and Laser Pointers. Librarians have

begun to use classroom technology that allows

students to respond and interact via small, hand-

held, remote keypads, called "clickers." These

classroom response systems enable subject librarians

to collect student responses to a posted question,

usually a multiple choice question. The answers are

immediately collected and displayed on a classroom

projection screen where both the students and the

librarian can see and discuss them. Other low-cost

innovative tools used by librarians at the

Engineering & Physical Sciences Library (EPSL),

are the laser pointers (Zdravkovska 2010). These

devices “encourage interactivity and foster a sense

of enjoyment as a result of the involvement and

activity.” The use of these classroom teaching tools

makes the library instruction session more

interesting and fun for the students by engaging

them in thinking about and initiating further

discussions.

 Digital Reference. Outside of the classroom,

librarians usually offer a “one-shot” library

instruction at the beginning of the team’s program.

Following this training, students seeking help are

able to reach out to their librarians via chat or e-

mail. Most librarians can be contacted via a chat

window using the Meebo application or by using the

chat service AskUsNow available 24 hours a day, 7

days a week.

 Subject Guides. Students rely on finding

information using commonly used search engines

like Google, Yahoo, etc. But an efficient way to

introduce Gemstone students to scholarly

publications within the library collections is to

develop subject-specific guides using the

CampusGuide platform. (Springshare 2011). Library

subject guides, sometimes called research guides or

pathfinders, are usually annotated bibliographies of

books, reference materials, websites, databases, and

journals within a specific discipline (Figure 3).

Library resources that are selected and organized at

the coursework level and in syllabi are more useful

for students because these resources meet their

specific research and information needs. (Adebonojo

2010, Hintz 2010).

4 MENTORING

From the perspectives of the mentor and the mentee,

both feel that building the mentoring relationship

with the Gemstone teams plays an important role in

the students’ professional growth. The benefits of

such a mentoring relationship include socialization

into the academic environment which can then segue

to the corporate or academic workplace upon

graduation. The mentoring relationship also helps

students with the difficulties of decision-making

throughout the research process and with the

development of close collaborative relationships.

Mentoring is a vital cog in the machinery of the

Gemstone educational program, and faculty

instructors, Gemstone staff and librarians take this

relationship seriously. Every player in this

relationship is rewarded for a job well done using

different technologies.

Faculty members are proud of creating

collaborative networks within an institution,

disseminating their expertise and skills to the

Gemstone teams, and building the next generation of

scholars. They set an example for the students who

can then bring what they have learned into the

workplace. Instructors are acknowledged in the final

theses that students archive into DRUM.

Our librarians gain a sense of personal

satisfaction from seeing the team’s final theses,

especially noting their use of library resources and

scholarly works in their references.

Finally, the students make headlines because of

the mentoring program; the many successful grants

awarded to these students speak well of their

academic achievement (Figure 4) (Gemstone 2010).

Since the establishment of the Gemstone

program, teams have received more than 30 grants

from different institutions in the United States. The

grant providing organizations range from small non-

profits to multinational corporations and the total

awarded thus far is approximately more than one

million US dollars according to the data provided in

an e-mail communication with Dr. Rebecca Thomas,

Associate Director of the Gemstone Program, on

May 11, 2011. In addition, they have received extra

INNOV 2011 - Second International Conference on Innovative Developments in ICT

Figure 3: Example of a subject guide created for a Gemstone team which include information resources.

funding from the Gemstone program and various

tangible donations, such as: mobile devices from

Microsoft Inc., portable breath testers and PDAs

from the Pacific Institute for Research and

Evaluation (PIRE), and fire alarm control

equipment. The teams have also benefited from

complimentary services like free lab space and have

received training from professional staff working in

the corporate world.

Figure 4: Grant awarded to a Gemstone team.

5 CONCLUSIONS

There is a lot of pressure to improve university

teaching and more and more faculty members are

determined to better their own teaching practices

through the use of technology. We are eager to move

out of the established comfort zone of long-held

beliefs and established teaching practices to try

something innovative and different. We are

motivated by the successes of our students and their

thirst for knowledge; therefore, we aim to get away

from the traditional “chalk and talk” mentality to

help them enter seamlessly into the workforce. Our

students pursue their career goals in various

companies, including Google, IBM, Intel, and

Microsoft to name a few (Gemstone 2010).

TEACH FOR KNOWLEDGE, MENTOR FOR SUCCESS - Preparing Students to Enter the Workforce

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank Dr. Rebecca Thomas, Associate

Director of the Gemstone Program, for her

continued support of the UM Libraries and for her

dedication in building a collaboration between

Gemstone staff, instructors, mentors, students and

librarians.

Thanks are also due to our library colleague, Bob

Kackley, who tirelessly mentors new librarians and

library graduate students, while simultaneously

getting them involved with the Gemstone program.

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