Student Stories

Stories from and about library student employees and interns.
A group of library student employees wearing U-M Library t-shirts, smiling, and standing around the Shapiro Library sign.

Posts in Student Stories

Showing 41 - 50 of 100 items
Image of the Final Product
  • Lulu Guo
Our project is to update the existing Plain Language Medical Dictionary (PLMD) to help people with a non-medical background better understand the medical terms. The first version of this website was designed in 2011 and published in three versions: website widget, iOS mobile application, and Android mobile application. As two international students whose first language is not English, we deeply feel overwhelmed when we receive any document from the doctor. We both are Masters students from the school of Information and we’re aiming to redesign and update the new PLMD to a sustainable product with an updated user interface and user-friendly interactions. This project started at the beginning of Fall 2019 and lasted for two-semester.
Image of students participating in the write in
  • Paola Andrea Guerrero Rosada
The Latinx Student Psychological Association (LSPA) is a graduate student organization affiliated with the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. We were awarded a Library Mini Grant to support our write-ins during the Winter 2020 semester. Our write-ins have strengthened our strategies for collaboration and have resulted in a supportive relationship with library staff, and specifically with Jesus Espinoza, a relationship we hope will continue in the future.
Image of students studying and reading textbooks.
  • Laura Ann Rall
Our project focused on assessing the needs of rural students at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor campus. As two Master of Social Work students hailing from Bloomingdale (Laura) and Dowagiac (Ana), two rural towns in Southwest Michigan, we felt very connected to this project from the beginning. We distributed a Qualtrics survey titled “Rural Students Needs Assessment” to help us identify the challenges and needs of rural students at the U-M. The survey was also used as a reference to determine if people would be willing to participate in focus groups and share their experiences on campus as a rural student. The responses on the survey were then utilized as a guide to create the questions and themes introduced during the focus groups that we wanted to explore further. Our first goal was to identify the challenges and needs of this population and to identify some solutions to better assist these students. Once we obtained these findings, we sought to offer recommendations to the University of Michigan, certain departments within the institution who expressed interest in this group of students, such as the College of Literature, Science, and Arts, and with the CEW+, who had previously identified rural students as a nontraditional student identity at the Ann Arbor campus. The ultimate goal was to raise awareness about the challenges that rural students experience and to provide recommendations that could help address the current gaps.

Image showing Spanish speaking parts of the world
  • Mario Sanchez GUMIEL
My project, titled “‘What’s Your Accent?’ Collaborative Creation of an Online Library of the Spanish Language,” consists of the development of an online library of the Spanish language that can be used as a resource for students, and for professors and lecturers who teach both Spanish and Linguistics. The project is an effort to bring together a representative sample of the Spanish speakers in the university and Ann Arbor area, as well as the work of different units of the University of Michigan campus, such as the Language Resource Center or the UM Library.
  • Savina Sahgal
For our graduating seniors who are about to enter the real world, we know it can be a little scary. We’ve put together a list of some books for you to read that can provide some helpful advice. All of the listed books are accessible online!
photo that is representative of the sweat, tears, or the sea art project
  • Han Na Shin
Sweat, tears, or the sea is a photo-series that comments on the physical space of Asian Americans. I want to capture the tenderness, beauty, and portraits of the children of immigrants to create an identity of what it means for them to know that their family has chosen the path of “sweat, tears, or the sea” in America. I used a collection of 4 images per photo for the individual to be able to know that there is a commonality amongst each of the photos together and that we are all intertwined in the emotions and stories we carry as Asian Americans.
Logo for Women's Health, Incarcerated
  • Bhavana Sai Garapati
Although the United States only has about 5% of the world’s population, it holds about 25% of the world’s prison population. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the U.S. currently has about 2.3 million people in a variety of confinement facilities like federal and state prisons, local jails, juvenile correctional facilities, immigration detention centers, military prisons, civil commitment centers, and even state psychiatric hospitals to name some. While women currently make up approximately 10% of the currently incarcerated population, it is important to understand that the rate at which women are being incarcerated has been twice as much as men since the 1980s. Statistics collected by the Sentencing Project show that since the 1980s the number of women who are incarcerated has increased by more than 750%.

We found that many of the current resources speaking about mass incarceration in America are centered on the experiences of men but not as much is said about the experiences of women and gender nonconforming individuals. We believe that when discussing criminal justice reform, it is absolutely necessary to include women and gender nonconforming individuals in the discussion because their experiences precarcerally, carcerally, and postcarcerally, are uniquely shaped by their gender. Referring back to the Sentencing Project, 80% of women in jails are also mothers, most of whom were the primary caretakers for their children before being incarcerated. When women are incarcerated, there are these unique issues such as reproductive health that affect them and their families in ways that men do not necessarily experience. With this in mind, we wanted to create a platform to inform the general public about the experiences of women in the criminal justice system and create a space for those directly and indirectly affected by the carceral state to talk about their lived experiences and areas of expertise. We wanted to place a general focus on health because we believe that our current criminal justice system is a growing public health concern and is often left out of the conversation when we, as a society, talk about access to healthcare, among other things. Millions of individuals are getting locked up everyday for substance abuse offenses when they should be getting better access to treatments and resources to help with addiction as well as other monetary and mental health related concerns. Thousands of incarcerated pregnant women face horrific conditions because they lack any kind of proper access to reproductive healthcare. All of this--and more--needs to be brought to the attention of the public.
Picture of Marisol Fila
  • Marisol Fila
The magazine O Menelick 2Ato is an independent editorial initiative - with a journalistic bias – that aims to reflect on and enhance the cultural and artistic production of the black diaspora in the Americas, with special emphasis on Brazil.

O Menelick 2Ato , created in 2010 in the city of São Paulo, has more than 20 printed editions published, and it’s always distributed for free throughout Brazil. More than 40 thousand copies of the magazine have been distributed over the 10 years of the project's existence. In spite of bringing together collaborators from the most diverse areas of artistic and cultural production - both Brazilians and foreigners - who understand the magazine as a space to share their perspectives and foster their ideas, creativity and concerns regarding the 21st century Brazilian black community, the magazine is closely linked to the history of the black press in Brazil. This connection begins with its title: O Menelick 2Ato honors one of the most important periodicals in the Paulista press, the newspaper O Menelick (1915).

I got to know Nabor Jr and Luciane Ramos Silva, the two editors of the magazine, during a research trip in São Paulo in 2018. Besides their work as editors of the magazine, Luciane Ramos Silva is an anthropologist, choreographer and dancer and Nabor Jr works as a journalist and independent photographer, while also being a staff member of the Museum Afro Brazil, one of the most important museums on African diaspora in the Americas. We have been working together on different projects since 2018, and in March 2019 Luciane Ramos Silva visited U-M to offer a series of workshops and talks on black press in Brazil. Aiming to build on this collaborative partnership, we started working on a special edition of their last issue in English. Until now, the magazine has been published only in Portuguese so having a first edition in English would help to reach new audiences as well as to bring awareness of different experiences of the black diaspora in the Americas.



Group picture
  • Julia Yee
The Pre-Medical Club’s (PMC) Alternative Spring Break (ASB) is a health-oriented service and educational trip for students at the University of Michigan. Since its beginning in the early 2000s, PMC has worked with the Community Service Alliance (CSA) in the Dominican Republic to organize and plan the spring breaks each year. CSA is a multi-faceted organization which strives to empower communities through health initiatives, educational and youth programs, and a focus on supporting female community members. We have continued to partner with CSA throughout the years because of the positive effects we observe in the communities and because of the level of involvement they permit students to have.

Although CSA has many projects in multiple areas throughout the Dominican Republic, our group has chosen to orient our spring breaks around their health initiatives and educational programs. Additionally, the past four years we have been in the same province: Hato Mayor. Each year, the details of the project change, however the objectives remain the same. Following the goals of CSA, we hope to empower and build up communities in terms of health to a point where they can continue health practices safely and independently after we and CSA leave.

Our spring break this year focused on two main projects: water filter installation and bathroom construction. Before embarking on our journey, CSA provided us with the schedule and project goals. We aimed to install eight water filters and construct two bathrooms in two separate communities during our five days of work. Along with the manual work, we also allotted two afternoons of the trip to speak with school children about hand-washing and general hygiene tips. On the schedule were other events where we could learn more about the Dominican Republic and its health system and culture. These events included a tour of a cacao farm, dance lessons from a local dance group, and a visit to a local health clinic for a presentation and a Q&A session.
headshot of Logan Burley
  • Logan Burley
Gender is a powerful social category that individuals constantly use to make sense of both themselves and those around them. The Western world splits people into two categories: woman and man. These two gender categories can be used to visually sort almost all things. Individuals constantly attribute masculinity of femininity not only to people, but to animals and objects, too. With this in mind, my thesis hoped to examine how individuals interpret the gender cues that others present, particularly those present in the face. Individuals who identify outside of the man-woman dichotomy are gaining increased visibility. The core question is how has the increasing visibility of the nonbinary community begun to change how people conceptualize gender, particularly in how they perceive the gender of others?