Librarians’ Contribution to Sense of Belonging for Undergraduate Honors Students

Abstract

Extensive interdisciplinary research has confirmed that feeling a sense of belonging on their college campus is a strong indicator of engagement, persistence, and retention for undergraduate students. A prominent method to increase sense of belonging is through high-impact practices, active learning practices that promote deep learning, such as participation in living-learning communities, student-led research, internships, and writing-intensive seminars (Kuh, 2008). Although the literature has discussed how academic libraries as institutions have helped contribute to a sense of belonging on campus for undergraduate students and how academic libraries support high-impact practices, there is little literature focused on the librarian as an individual and their contributions. This gap in the literature interested the presenters, who became curious in examining how librarians as individuals contributed to a sense of belonging for undergraduate students participating in high-impact practices. The UMD Libraries and Gemstone Honors Program partnership emerged as a natural space to examine this idea. The Gemstone Honors Program is an example of a high-impact practice with its status as a living-learning community focused on student-led undergraduate research. The Gemstone Honors Program has published about their experiences as a high-impact practice and how Gemstone contributes to a sense of belonging for their students (Bowers, et al, 2020). As part of the partnership, UMD Librarians serve as librarian mentors for Gemstone teams, providing teams with individualized support as teams navigate the research and scholarly dissemination process. Using 10 years of student-submitted responses from the University Libraries Award for Outstanding Gemstone Team applications, the presenters have found positive evidence to indicate that librarians as individuals are contributing to a sense of belonging for undergraduate students. This presentation will cover information about high-impact practices and their contributions to sense of belonging, the presenters’ exploratory study and findings, and future research in this area.