Student Stories

This project, supported by the Library Engagement Fellows Program, asked itself: what are the needs and opportunities within graduate curricula in the humanities and social sciences for co-curricular digital scholarship education that could be offered by the University Michigan library? This project defines digital scholarship as “Scholarship enabled by and shared through digital media and tools, that is able to ask new questions through digital methods.” While there have been various past and current efforts related to digital scholarship (programming as well as initiatives to improve resources currently offered), this research project sought insight from graduate students in particular. Insight gathered from this project would provide the library with information on what graduate students need as well as possible changes that could be made to satisfy these needs.

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.

STEM Society is a student organization that aims to expose K-12 students in lower socioeconomic areas to inquiry-based learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We hope to displace common stereotypes that students may have about accessibility to STEM education and careers, as well as increase their awareness about the diverse opportunities available in these fields. In addition, we strive to provide our organization members with a chance to advance their interests in teaching and sharing their passion for STEM. Through presenting STEM in an engaging and interactive manner, we hope to broaden students’ knowledge, challenge any beliefs they may have about the inaccessibility of STEM, and spark excitement and passion for pursuing a STEM education. We also hope to promote diversity and inclusion in the STEM fields by reaching out to groups that have historically been underrepresented in higher education or STEM careers and showing them that if they have a passion for STEM and motivation to pursue it, that they belong in these fields as much as anybody else.

The goal of #MenToo is to investigate the influence of masculinity and gender breakdown of the work environment on the psychological outcomes of men who experience sexual harassment at Michigan Medicine. Three waves of data have been collected for the Michigan Medicine #MedToo project; and this current project focuses on the third and final wave, which concentrates on people at lower positions of power (e.g. low socio-economic status). I argue that these individuals are often understudied in research (e.g. security, social workers, environmental service/janitorial service) and are the most vulnerable. The importance of this project is to solely focus on men and how masculinity plays a role in their experiences of sexual harassment (more specifically gender harassment, since it is the more prominent form of harassment men experience). Sexual harassment in general is hard to detect if we ask direct questions such as “have you been harassed?”, this is also the case when studying negative psychological outcomes (e.g. depression). Therefore, I used the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ) which relies on behaviors specific to sexual harassment rather than one sole inquiry of sexual harassment. We additionally, measured masculinity in three different forms including masculinity norms within workplace, gender breakdown, and gendered personality traits. Men are held to the expectation that they must not show weakness, hence, rarely do they report sexual harassment. This project hopes to shed light on men who experience sexual harassment and the outcomes that come with it.

Michigan Active Citizens Alternative Spring Break is a program through the Ginsberg Center here on campus that provides opportunities for students to engage in meaningful service as they enter into a community over spring break. In our specific topic and site, we will be exploring Youth Disabilities in Burton, TX, through Camp For All, a barrier-free camp for youth around the country.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.