Librarians Bonnie L. Fong, Minglu Wang, Krista White, and Roberta Tipton were presented the 2017 ACRL-NJ/NJLA CUS Research Award for their article, “Assessing and Serving the Workshop Needs of Graduate Students,” (The Journal of Academic Librarianship) during the NJLA Conference in April 2017.
Each year, the Research Committee of the NJLA College and University Section (CUS) and the ACRL New Jersey Chapter selects the best published research completed by a New Jersey librarian during the past year for this honor. Fong, Wang, White, and Tipton’s journal article was one of two winners in 2017. Their research determined which workshop topics graduate students in the humanities, science, and social science disciplines are most interested in, and what their preferences are for workshop formats, times, and communication. What made their study unique was the comparison of student and graduate program director viewpoints on topic importance. In addition, they compared and contrasted Master’s and doctoral student training needs.
The John Cotton Dana Library and other Rutgers University-Newark campus units are already using the research results as they develop workshops and other services to more fully support graduate students’ research, grant, career, teaching, and technology training requirements.