Information competencies and student athletes.

Abstract

Librarians at Penn State identified student athletes as an underserved population and developed a pilot program designed to address the bibliographic needs of this peripatetic group. By using various formats and media librarians were able to deliver their program to a traditionally hard-to-reach population.

Introduction and Background

Penn State's venerable football coach Joe Paterno set the standard for student athletics many years ago, in the process establishing a legacy for academic success that is at least as important as his football program. Since 1987, the Morgan Academic Support Center for Student Athletes at the University Park campus has assisted student athletes with their scholarly endeavors by providing an infrastructure for a totally self-contained academic program throughout their first year and continued learning support the remainder of their time at Penn State. Our eighty-three per cent graduation rate for student athletes is among the highest for public institutions and indicates a strong program. This may be even more notable in light of the large scale of the University and of its sports activities [1] Because of the success Penn State athletes have had, the Penn State program has become a nationally recognized and emulated model for collegiate athletics. It is, however, a closely guarded program, designed not only to support but also to protect student athletes from intrusions, including those generated by rogue librarians and the designs they may have on this group of students.

While most Division I schools have educational mentoring programs for student athletes, academics do not appear to be as high on the priority list of most college and university sports programs as they are at Penn State. Graduation rates are important statistics but are not necessarily indices of academic success or barometers for the true literacy levels. NCAA's web pages suggest only a minor question or two prospective students might want to ask about academics at schools they are considering (http://www.ncaa.org/), and they lack any reference at all to libraries, reading, or information literacy in the advice offered student athletes. A surprising number of college and university main pages do not have links to their libraries either, so perhaps the NCAA shouldn't be expected to point out that a great library could conceivably be a major factor in choosing a school. In a bid to change perceptions and strategies, to make sure that student athletes are provided opportunities to become information competent, and coincidentally to encourage the use of our libraries' vast resources as a recruiting tool, over the past year four of us at the Penn State University Libraries piloted an outreach program for student athletes. This paper will describe that experience, the lessons we learned, and our plans for the future.

Targeting the Unwary

We do have a robust clientele, but we, like many of our colleagues at other institutions, also spend a remarkable amount of time in outreach activities designed to pull potential patrons into our vortex, especially unwary new students. Identifying and targeting groups of potential patrons seems to be a national phenomenon because doing so helps librarians cope with large numbers of people by subdividing them and focusing services that will be of interest to specific audiences. At our school there are outreach programs targeting an array of identified groups--adult learners, World Campus folks, international students, academic advancement students, and many others. Each of the librarians in our subject libraries works with researchers in his/her area. This is a more or less efficient panoply of outreach and marketing activities. Penn State also has a stated commitment to principles of information literacy programming. Yet, for many years, our student athletes have not been invited into the fold, for a number of reasons. In many ways our campus' student athletes are remote from and almost insulated from other students, especially in their first year, as they have their own resources, their own closed education program operated by their own academic center. On a campus of 42,000 students it is easy to overlook eight hundred or so intercollegiate athletes. Our goal was to rectify this situation.

Our small group consists of three librarians and one staff assistant. We are each, in our own ways, relentless proselytizers for the glories of libraries and literacy and proclaimers of the continuum of library service that provides support for information competence throughout one's lifetime. As colleagues we share an interest in reaching students with whom we might not normally interact. Over the course of several months we banded together for informal discussion about why we so seldom saw student athletes in the library and how we could get them there. Even though our interests and disciplines usually keep us on separate, parallel paths, this problem pulled us together and provided a platform for discussion, which led to action. Our commitment to outreach would not let us ignore this situation. We decided to pursue the student athlete population.

Literature Review

First, we investigated to find out what happens in the rest of the world. Valdosta State has a library outreach program for student athletes that addresses information literacy concerns and concentrates on introductory sessions. [2] Michigan State's program has been successfully integrated into student-athlete support services and seems to be a thriving enterprise. [3] Library tours are given to Kutztown's student athletes. [4] The University of Texas at Austin actually mentions the library on its "Academic Excellence and the University of Texas page touting sports at that campus (http://www.texassports.com/mainpages/001_structure/stuserv.html). [5] Librarians at the University of Wisconsin-Madison address the peripatetic nature of most student athletes by providing e-mail reference service. [6] Attention has been paid to student athletes as a special group of students requiring special services. There are a number of other interesting articles and web sites, several of which describe various campus collaborations between academics and student athletes, but nothing out there sparked ideas. Most of the schools that have programs are much smaller than Penn State and therefore their scenarios do not translate to a large campus. Others have been in place for several years and do not address startup issues. Our program would have to be from scratch, with a pilot plan that would give us flexibility and allow us to modify elements as we move through time and experience.

The Pilot Program

After research our next task was to identify who these Penn State student athletes are so we could know exactly what we would be dealing with. We learned that approximately eight hundred young people participate in intercollegiate sports at the University Park campus. These students have their own formal support system for academics, including required academic courses, required study halls and on-the-road support. During their first year at Penn State most of their courses are integrated, comprehensive and self-contained, and they take into account the fact that student athletes can frequently be considered distance learners as they typically travel a great deal and connect to the University via various means. At the request of the Morgan Center, we did not offer virtual tours or tutorials beyond those on our Web page. The point was to get these students into the facility at least once. For the most part, these students do not need to venture beyond the support center. For all practical purposes, over two hundred freshmen a year are therefore not included in the library's extensive outreach programs for incoming students. How could we reach them? Would anyone care if we did? Would anyone notice?

Initial forays into the Morgan Center's academic structure were not encouraging. The Academic Center did not have positive memories of past interactions with the library. In addition, the Center's staff members were already overwhelmed by trying to coordinate their academic and athletic programs and were wary of yet another drain on their time and energy. These were the first barriers that we needed to penetrate. A frontal assault seemed to be the most direct course of action, so we contacted the Academic Center's management to plead our case in person. We convinced them that the current climate in the library is very different from that of even a few years ago, and that we had an honest desire to work with what we saw as an overlooked group of students. We were also mindful that we needed to convince them that together we could craft a program that would be beneficial to the students, not intrusive to the staff of the Center, and conducive to changes that inevitably would need to be made as we progressed.

Several difficulties immediately raised their heads. The Morgan Center folks are comfortable with the status quo. They were also reluctant to give up any control as that might complicate their already hectic schedule. Their students, faculty, and staff are programmed down to the minute, with very little room for additional activities. Physical constraints were important, as well. The Center maintains three study halls in three buildings quite distant from each other on this large campus, so logistics can be problematic. Temporal constraints are equally daunting. Classes, practices, study hall, and road trips mean that student athletes' time is closely regimented. They also mean that for all practical purposes, these students must be treated as distance learners because most of the time they are not available to us; they are students for whom the library and its resources are remote, whether they be on the road to participate in their sports activities or tied into their Center facilities. On our side of the fence we had the usual--a huge facility, a huge collection, and a huge number of databases and other information sources to present and a limited time in which to do so.

With all this in mind we four put together a proposal for a pilot program to introduce our freshman student athletes to the Libraries' resources and concepts of information literacy. We met with the Morgan Center staff and suggested that we conduct orientation sessions for all first year students, dividing them into small groups and scheduling them as part of their required study hall hours. These sessions would be held in hands-on technology classrooms within the library and would include a short tour of key service areas. Subsequently, we four would be available to students for individual research consultation via phone, e-mail, instant messenger, and in person. We stressed the fact that our intention is to help them and their charges, not add more burdens or trivial pursuits to their work, and this was pivotal to their accepting our proposal. We also hosted a library tour and orientation for our collaborators. We have found that enlisting other staff and faculty is easier if we can impress them with the wealth of resources available to everyone at Penn State, resources many people just do not know about.

Our next steps were to draft a project proposal, plan orientation times and content, and create a special web page for our potential new patrons. This last led to our coming up with a catchy name for the program, something to identify it, add a touch of levity, let our students know they are important to us, provide an umbrella for the project, and serve as an evolving information site, with a few currently useful links for good measure to get us going. Thus was born SAIL: Student Athletes in Libraries (http://www.libraries.psu.edu/gateway/sail/index.htm). We decided that the key feature to introduce in the students' orientation session was the Libraries Information Access System (LIAS), the entire suite of online products and services supported by the University Libraries. The sessions would be grounded by information competence standards, with frequent referrals made to them. [7] An assessment instrument will be added to the program during the next academic year to determine the effectiveness of the instructional session.

We decided to hold six in-person orientation sessions during the fall semester pilot project period. This allowed us to work with groups of a manageable size. Sessions were scheduled during athletes' evening study hall times. This had the combined benefit of allowing us to use library classroom space during less busy hours and not interfering with the students' already rigid schedules. The Morgan Center informed students that attendance at a session was mandatory, required them to sign attendance sheets, and allowed students to count the library session toward attendance at a required study hall. Each librarian directed two sessions, while the other librarians and the staff assistant served as "floaters" to provide individual assistance and troubleshooting to those needing extra help. To engage their interest, we used sample topics such as "sports therapy" and "steroids in sports." We also offered attendance and attention incentives in the form of candy, a major form of contraband normally forbidden in our institution. Most importantly, we tried to connect with the students, to demonstrate to them that we are actual human beings with actual interest in their academics and in providing a very human interface between them and all that library stuff.

We held these sessions during fall semester 2002 in a large lab that permits hands-on classes. The student athletes were remarkably receptive to our outreach efforts. They were polite, friendly, and attentive during orientation sessions, and interacted with questions and comments of their own. After those initial in-person sessions, we were available to attend the various study halls for individual or small group consultation. We also provided specific subject support for the freshman English composition element, traditionally an access point for librarians eager to infiltrate the ranks of new students.

Lessons Learned

Predictably, we knew we could not physically attend every study hall session simply because we are only four people, so we wisely decided, shortly into the program, to attend study halls on a need basis, dependent on student input or special requests for one-on-one help. We learned that working with student athletes is a two-way street: we learned a great deal from our students while teaching them information skills. We also learned some new things that we had not predicted: that the "dumb jock" stereotype does not play out; our student athletes are just as smart as the "regular" student population. Indeed, most of them are quite bright. We learned that attending competitions in which "our" students participate is lots of fun, provides the opportunity for us to learn about sports we knew little about prior to this experience, and is a source for bonding between librarians and students. They find it entertaining that we attend their sports events. We have also learned a great deal about the special world of student athletes and the institutions and scaffolding that supports it.

Into the Future

Our plans for our next batch of freshmen move operations beyond the intercollegiate student athlete program to add students involved in club sports, which will target another several hundred people. These students are not in as ordered a situation although their time and energies are deeply committed to their sports. We will expand and enhance our orientation segment to make it more engaging. Student athletes will also be encouraged to attend the Libraries' Open House program in September to which everyone on campus is invited.

In addition to targeting another group of elusive students, we plan to make more use of virtual librarianship. Our web page will be modified and updated. We plan to add mini-lessons in a just-in-time format, using Viewlets software, to our array of instructional pages. Virtual office hours are another piece we plan to try as well as continuation of mentoring via instant messenger. This program also impacts collection development, and this will also be explored. We also plan to work more closely with Morgan Center instructors and build a strong collaboration with them so that research can be built into their curricula, thereby becoming a familiar and ordinary component. We remain quite committed to this venture. Over the course of four years we will have the opportunity to meet and greet most of the student athletes on our campus and extend to them a warm welcome to the world of information competence and life-long learning as expressed in our wonder-filled libraries. We cannot imagine a more exciting program!

Notes

[1] "Student-athletes top of the list for Division I-A public grad rate." Penn State Intercom (October 10, 2002). Available from http://www.psu.edu/ur/archives/intercom_2002/Oct10/graduate.html; accessed 5/17/2003.

[2] Maureen Puffer-Rothenberg and Susan E. Thomas, "Providing library outreach to student athletes at Valdosta State University." Reference librarian 67-68 (1999): 131.

[3] Michael Lorenzen and Nancy Lucas, "Introducing first-year student-athletes to the library: the Michigan State University experience." Available from http://www.lib.msu.edu/lorenzel/studentathlete.html; accessed 7/18/2002.

[4] "Academics and athletics at KU.'" Available from http://www.kutztown.edu/activities/athletics/academic.html; accessed 1/2/2003.

[5] "Academic excellence and the University of Texas." Available from http://www.texassports.com/mainpages/001_structure/stuserv.html; accessed 1/2/2003.

[6] Melba Jesudason, "Outreach to student-athletes through e-mail reference service." Reference services review 28.3 (2000): 262.

[7] Association of College and Research Libraries Standards Committee and Board of Directors of the American Library Association, "Information literacy competency standards for higher education." Available from http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/ACRL/Standards and Guidelines/Information_Lite racy_Competency_Standards_for_Higher Education.htm; accessed 5/19/2003.

Ashley Robinson, The Pennsylvania State University Daniel C. Mack, The Pennsylvania State University

Robinson, Gateway Librarian, coordinates first-year and outreach programs. She served in K-12 schools, public libraries, and military base libraries before coming to Penn State. Her interests include information competence and lifelong learning. Mack is responsible for library collections and services in the humanities. His interests include collection assessment and library outreach.