Director, Community Building Candidate:
Candidate's Statement: As the premier organization focused on instruction and pedagogy in LIS, ALISE has an opportunity and perhaps even an obligation to engage LIS faculty in conversations and action to continuously improve our curricula and teaching practices. As noted in the Strategic Plan, in order to do so, the organization must promote innovative pedagogy, increase its membership, and build collaborations and partnerships to advocate on educational issues. If elected Director of Community Building, I would plan to build on my existing work in the areas of LIS pedagogy and education and leverage my connections to help achieve these goals. Currently, I already engage other faculty and practitioners around these topics through my role as co-host of the LIS Pedagogy Chat, a community of practice that meets throughout the semester to discuss topics of interest to LIS instructors; I am serving a second term as the ALISE representative to the ALA Committee on Education which recently revised the ALA Core Competences; and I am a member of IFLA's Section on Education and Training. Further, I am actively involved in accreditation, having served on several External Review Panels and currently chairing an ERP. I also regularly collaborate with other faculty members and practitioners in the field on scholarship and practice. I believe that I could leverage these connections and service roles to help build community within ALISE, especially around issues of pedagogy and education, and to reach out to new potential members. Biography: Laura Saunders is a Professor and Associate Dean at Simmons University School of Library and Information Science. Her teaching and research focus on the areas of information literacy including mis- and disinformation, reference services, and academic libraries. She also teaches a course on intellectual freedom and censorship. Her most recent books include the upcoming Reference and Information Services: An Introduction, 7th edition, co-edited with Melissa Wong and the open access textbook Instruction in Libraries and Information Settings: An Introduction, co-authored with Melissa Wong. Her articles have appeared in a variety of journals including College & Research Libraries, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, and Communications in Information Literacy. Laura has a PhD and a Master of Library and Information Science, both from Simmons College, and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Boston University. She is the 2019 recipient of Simmons University’s Provost Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.
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Dr. Laura Saunders