Commitment to Professional Development
Commitment to Professional Development
Throughout my military, academic, and professional career I have shown a commitment to ongoing personal development. I plan to continue this after completing my MLIS degree as well. I am committed to building on my existing competencies and continuing to develop those areas, in addition to continuing to grow into new areas of interest. This statement will highlight my commitments in a variety of areas and contextualize them through the work I have previously engaged in. I plan to continue to work as an academic librarian in higher education while simultaneously pursuing a doctorate in information studies.
Disciplinary expertise
My first commitment is to maintain professional proficiencies in areas directly related to working as an academic librarian. This includes working on pedagogical, instructional, reference, and collection development aspects of academic teaching librarian positions. I am also committed to continuing to build experience in research assistance in order to best be able to provide support to faculty, staff and students.
For me, this pillar also means continuing to participate in the community of practice among peers within and outside of the institution where I am working. I have already used my experience in the MLIS program to present at conferences, to mentor undergraduate students (specifically through programs like the National McNair Scholars which aim to bring more BIPOC students into higher education). I have also served on committees in the institutions where I was a graduate assistant and where I was an intern, and I plan to continue to serve in this capacity as a professional librarian.
Innovation
I am committed to learning and contributing to the academic community through application of innovative tools for teaching and learning. Specifically, I am interested in thinking through interventions that will make teaching in the library more accessible to non-traditional students, further I am also committed to bringing the skills developed in these areas to better serve all students, staff, faculty and the community. While at UCLA, I used my time in the MLIS program to work in the Young Research Library in order to get instructional experience and to complete a digital humanities graduate certificate which I believe will help me develop engaging and interesting materials for students, and to work with different stakeholder groups like the Transfer and Veteran Student Centers. This demonstrates my desire to grow personally and to use the tools I am learning to innovate to better serve learners in the library. This is a practice I am passionate about continuing post completion of my MLIS as well.
Leadership and Progression
I am committed to contributing to all of the academic communities of which I am a part and intend to continue to seek opportunities to grow in those roles. In my short time at the Young Research Library, I started as a graduate assistant and was promoted to the Student Lead for Teaching and Learning. I was recently accepted into the PhD program in Information Studies. Both of these are opportunities I see as ways to engage in the practice of lifting others through my work and focusing on ways to be of service to my academic communities. From my time in the military, I learned about the concept of leading from the middle. In this framing, even if one is not serving explicitly in a leadership role, they are able to contribute to demonstrating leadership in a particular area of subspecialty in order to better serve the overall mission of the team in which they are a part. For me, this is an ethos that I carry with me into every aspect of my work. I do not need to be a leader in name or title but I can still support the mission in a leading way. This is a practice that I intend to continue in my future roles, and as I progress professionally, I intend to bring a practice of elevating those I work with alongside me so I can continue to strengthen whatever team I am a part of.
Justice
I am committed to a practice that is built on justice as a core principle. I have used every opportunity while at UCLA to learn and grow in the context of what it means to be engaged in justice as a framework for working as a library professional. I have attended anti-racist pedagogy trainings in the library. I have sought opportunities to learn in classrooms focused on justice principles. I have participated in student organizations which seek to empower oppressed peoples’ groups in the LIS professional world. These are commitments that I will continue to seek out going forward after completing my MLIS as well.
Impact on the field
I am committed to making an impact on the LIS field through engaging in ongoing scholarship. This last pillar is especially important to me in that I believe strongly that education, even with all of its flaws, offers the opportunity to engage the world in transformative change. The role of the library in shaping that change may be small but I think it is nevertheless important to show that it can be done. For me, I plan to continue to seek out conferences to learn from others doing work in the field, to engage in the practice of scholarship to share what I am learning, and to publish so that those who come to the field later are able to learn from and make more change in the future. In particular, I think the opportunities for engaging in a critical practice of knowledge production offers the chance for the field to rethink how it has contributed to historical inequity and create real and meaningful change for the future.
My commitment to learning and growing as a librarian is something that I will continue to develop as I progress through my career and I plan to continue to engage in a self-reflexive practice and honest evaluation of these goals going forward in order to continue to be of service to the community, the university, and to my peers.