Listen: Libraries as Keys to Access and Thriving in College

Many college libraries have undergone transformation in recent years to serve as hubs for student success, offering a central location for students to hang out, work with peers and connect to support resources like tutoring. This reimagination of the library often comes with a physical reconfiguration, relocation of offices and expanded services, all in hopes of supporting access and student success.

In this episode of Voices of Student Success, host Ashley Mowreader spoke with Katie Clark, higher education market manager for KI and a former campus administrator, about the evolution of the campus library and what it means for students and practitioners. Later, hear from Marquette University’s John Su, vice provost for academic affairs and student success, and Lemonis Center director Marilyn Jones, to discuss how Marquette remodeled the Memorial Library to better support students.

An edited version of the podcast appears below.

Inside Higher Ed: Today we’re talking about libraries, and I know KI has done a lot of research around the evolution of the library and sort of what it looks like now. I wonder if you can kick off the conversation just with that overview. What have you learned, and what’s the discussion that’s happening right now?

Katie Clark/KI

Katie Clark: Absolutely. We took on a research expedition, as we called it, to look into what is the future library on a college campus? What does that look like? What does it mean out in the world? We partnered with Studio Finn, who did research, both ethnographic, secondary and just piles and piles of interviews and walkabouts on college campuses, some experiential journey mapping.

What we really learned is that the library is just as important as a classroom on a college campus, that it is essential to the operations. While it may be changing and shifting as the world shifts, as technology comes in and shakes up the library like a snow globe, and librarians and administrators are figuring out what to do next, that it’s still essential, and that it is a centerpiece of the student experience across the country.

Inside Higher Ed: I think, when most people think about a library, they’re thinking Reading Rainbow. They’re thinking the book corner and the stacks and the quiet sections and things like that. But that’s really not the case on college campuses. What did you learn about just the ecosystem of libraries that now exist?

Clark: I would say gone are the days of silence being the thing you think of in a library space; there’s a lot less shushing going on.

Inside Higher Ed: Maybe for the better.

Clark: Yeah, I would think so. You can bring your coffee into the library. You can have a snack in there, which I think—

Inside Higher Ed: That’s revolutionary.

Clark: Huge!

Essentially, what we’re seeing is that a library is a temple of knowledge. That is the phrase that we latched on to. It is a reverent place for learning and for studying that students still see it as, “I’m gonna go to library to study.” They’re still packed. They’re still full of folks from all across the community. And it’s a resource that is used by not just the students, but by faculty [and] by community members.

When we think about town and gown relationships, access to the library is still a big part of that. But as technology has come in, as we’ve seen a lot more focus on digital literacy, on the ways in which we’re using the internet in really substantial ways—there’s not a card catalog anymore, right? It’s all online. You don’t have to have your dime to make a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is something I did when I was little.

But what we’re really looking at is, is the library serving as a place for learning, for study, but also a place for students to show off what they’re learning? You think about anyone who’s written a thesis, it gets bound and is shelved in the library. So it’s also a really great example of a place that has always been updating itself. It has always been thinking about what’s coming and what’s happening next.

We’ve seen that physical footprint shifting. I think that’s the biggest part of the changes. We’re seeing a lot of institutions take books off campus into large warehouses that are off-site. Students and faculty members can still access that information in the same way—you’d request a specific book, [and] it would come to you. Maybe it would take a day or two, and that means that there are less stacks than there used to be, and there’s new things moving in.

The new things moving in are broad and wide in terms of what’s there. But think about the Teaching and Learning Commons, maybe where faculty or are coming together to discuss pedagogy. Think about tutoring centers, writing centers, student success centers, maker spaces. The list really goes on and on, depending on the type of institution and what they’re able to do, but it has created far more of a hub of campus.

So I think about a library as a community space in the same way that I think about it campus center, a student union, a dining hall. It is a central communal space for the institution and for the members of the institution.

Inside Higher Ed: In my work in student success, we’re seeing libraries become part of that knitted intersection of student success services, whether that’s being physically moved into the library or the library is assisting with that work. I wonder if you can talk about that intersection with all those academic and service supports.

Clark: I think the biggest question that I always think about with student access is, do students know what the resources are, and do they know that they can ask for something, anything, and then if they know they can ask for it, will they ask for it? Because sometimes asking for help is a really hard thing to do. At my former institution, we use the phrase “Asking for help is a sign of strength,” and I think that it was something that we introduced from the first thing that happened at orientation, forward.

When I think about access, what I’m really thinking about is, do students feel comfortable walking into this space? Do they feel like they’re supposed to be there? Do they feel a sense of belonging? And do they know that they can come in and use all of those resources?

For me, sometimes it’s even less about what resources are in there, but how do we open the door so that everybody knows they can walk through that door? I think student success offices being part of the library footprint, I think is a really interesting sort of structural idea as you’re taking an office that might be in a corner of another building that you have to really think about going to, you have to know where it is. A lot of students have to go to the library during orientation to learn how to use it, and then pointing out all those other resources, I think, can be really helpful.

With so much working against students right now, when I think about their mental health, when I think about impostor syndrome and stereotype threat and the chaos of social media, I really like those other support offices living in one of those hubs. So if they can’t be in the student union right next to the post office, where students might pick up their physical mail, the opportunity to have them in the library, I think, is a really positive and affirming location.

Professionals can see students coming and going all the time. They can encourage them, “if you’re going to come by over here in the student success center, make sure you check out this other thing that’s happening in the library,” or “make sure you go upstairs and take a look at that podcasting studio or the maker space, if you’re interested in thinking about these other things,” and I really like that as a centerpiece for the library.

Inside Higher Ed: I always think of libraries as intimidating, like the “temple of knowledge” idea is something that I think is both really powerful, because it’s true, but it can also be very scary.

My parents are University of Washington alums, and Suzzallo Library is like, Hogwarts. It’s super big and gothic and beautiful, but it feels like, if you drop something, somebody’s gonna come around and escort you out of the library.

So when it comes to the physical space and how we’re using the library, how can we make sure that students feel like this is their space, and that “temple” is somewhere where they can go and visit and be a part of?

Clark: The reverence that you want in a library of like, “oh, this is a space I’ve walked into. It feels collegiate.” I think we can all think about the college tour that takes you to that library. Harvard has a great example. Johns Hopkins has this very similar to what you described, this sort of like, Hogwarts—am I in Cambridge? Like, what’s happening? Can I touch a book in here, or do I need white gloves?

For institutions, balancing this value of tradition, the value of having that reverent signature space—what we call a signature space, is you walk in and “That is the university of fill in the blank.” There are logos, there are color patterns, there are ways that you just know that you’re part of that institution. And balancing that with innovation and with the changing dynamics of what’s happening.

When we’re thinking about library design and balancing that value of tradition, maybe an architectural statement that makes you feel a certain way when you’re in there, we’re talking also about, how does this feel like a community space? What is the entrance and vestibule that that welcomes me in? Do I feel like there’s a coziness factor, like a comfortability to this?

One of the things we see a lot is an inclusion of biophilic design, which is bringing the outside in. Bringing nature into the library. I think there’s a lot of libraries that don’t have the greatest light and acoustics. I think of the dungeon stacks vibe—super dark, in the basement, in the stacks. And some students also really want that vibe when they’re studying. It’s also balancing out this new bright, airy, brand-new building with, “sometimes it is helpful for me to go and really focus and sit in my carrel and have these sort of blinders around me, because I’ve got 17 devices on the table that are pinging at me all the time.”

It’s really designing for a complicated everyone.

One of the things that we talk a lot about in our research is me-versus-we spaces. In a moment where I really want to see students getting out of their residence halls, out of a closed-door space, I want them to come to the library. To study, to be around other people, just to get out, right, just to be out and about around other people.

So we have to design for every kind of study type, too. So if somebody wants that silent space that, “I can’t have any distractions at all,” I mean, there should be a quiet room in the library.

A lot of places are moving towards “this is the quiet floor” or “this is a specific area where you really can’t talk.” Think about the quiet car on an Amtrak train. You don’t talk loudly on the cellphone or people will give you dagger eyes. It’s sort of like that.

There’s other, more collaborative spaces. Think about a conference room table that’s in maybe a glass-walled room where students could work on a group project together. They could spread out on a big table. You might have a teaching assistant hosting their own sort of tutoring or office hours, but you can see into it, you can see other students studying or working together.

You have this idea of the me-and-we spaces, a place where I can go and be quiet, or I can be around other people. Because I think what we found too, is that students want to be around others to help them study. I feel this way, right? If I’m around other people who are focused, I’ll focus a little bit better than if I’m alone and distracted by myself.

We also think about a phrase that’s come up a lot is “together alone or alone together.” So even if you’re going to be alone, even if you’re going to have your earbuds in and focus on your own work, you’re around other people who are doing that. When we’re thinking about library design, we’re designing for every different type of experience.

The other thing that’s come up that I think is really interesting is the idea of generational design—thinking about the multiple ages that are going to be coming in and using that library space, and making sure that you’re thinking about a real spectrum from your 18-year-old, first-year student to your faculty member who’s been on that campus for decades, and ensuring that there’s equal access to information for all types of learning and all types of familiarity with technology and comfortability with technology.

We saw in a lot of our research, too, that is even more important when you’re looking at a community library where you do have, you mentioned earlier the Reading Rainbow fun nook, where you can come in and a librarian reads a couple books for young ones. But there are so many other things that a library provides that we have to really think about that general operational use. I think that’s really important on a college campus, too, especially as we’re seeing the ages of students who are enrolling is a much broader number than we saw in years past.

Inside Higher Ed: You can think about the intergenerational just as students and faculty, but also I’m thinking students and their kids; parenting students are a growing number, and two-year colleges are more likely to serve intergenerational constituents.

We talked a little bit about technology and the ways that it’s been integrated into the library, but you also alluded to some of the ways that technology is changing the spaces that we’re using in the library, like podcast studios or 3-D printing. I wonder if you can talk about how tech is both innovating but also driving innovation within the library.

Clark: I think the beautiful thing that we’ve come to learn about technology—and we saw certainly reflected in this research—is that it will continue to change. So more than anything, we have to prepare library spaces as they’re being designed to be open to that change.

An easy example of this for people to see and understand is the plugs that we use. I have an iPhone, and I can sometimes use a USB. For some phones, you need the C-plug. There’s all these different things, and in the course of a couple years, if we’ve built into furniture a particular style of plug, it could be obsolete within mere moments of install.

So some of what we think about when we’re talking about innovation within the technology sphere is to is to create something that’s going to last a long time, understanding how things are going to change. Because right now, maker spaces are everywhere. We love a maker space. We love a place for students to go and get messy, to build, to make. But I don’t know what’s going to be popular and really exciting in 15 years, and libraries don’t get to redesign themselves every two years. It really happens every 15, 20, maybe longer, depending on the institution. They may get to update a certain part. But it’s a little bit of a slow-moving ship here.

We, most importantly, want to make sure that what we’re doing—in power delivery, in making sure that Wi-Fi is moving through big, thick walls of these older buildings—is really meeting everyone for what they need, and that the technological infrastructure is set up to shift and change. Which is a hard way to design, right, to prepare; build something now and prepare for it to change pretty quickly. But I think if we don’t do that, we’re setting ourselves up for failure.

I think librarians are sort of the epitome of lifelong learners. If I think about the role and job that they have, they are constantly learning about what is new and trying to help their students and their colleagues also learn those things, too. So it’s a beautiful marriage, I would say, between a space that is now really inviting a lot of different and new things, opportunities, centers, resources, with a community of professionals that has been really good at keeping up and being part of that.

Marquette University

John Su: The Lemonis Center for Student Success, the genesis actually emerged out of our conversations with students. It was a really wonderful series. We had focus groups. We had some intercept interviews in the library, as a space where students just love being; it’s our campus community center. And we really heard from them. They said, there are a remarkable array of services and supports all across campus for every need they could imagine, practically, but the onus of navigating those experience, those services, was on the student.

The vision for the Lemonis Center for Student Success, then, was to try and reverse that dynamic. How could we create a space of academic belonging, where we would have the right supports, the right environment that students would already want to be there before a moment emerged for a kind of a help-seeking behavior, and then it would already be there for them. They find the place of belonging. We bring the support to them.

Marquette University

Marilyn Jones: My current role really is getting this space up and running. I can tell you, we are buzzing. Students have found us, and they’re here for different reasons, right, for services. We have centralized important services here at the Lemonis Center, but we also provide programming and we create community and connections to mentors. Really, we’re all about engagement and a culture of mentorship. We offer spaces that bring people together and support student growth.

Inside Higher Ed: John, you can talk a little bit about the decision to put it in the Memorial Library, specifically? Because I know a lot of campuses have considered renovating their libraries to rethink computer lab spaces that might not be as useful to students now that they all have laptops and cellphones and things like that. So when you and the campus were looking at, where can we put this center, and how can we imagine this better for students, why the library?

Su: The library, our Raynor Library, is the heart of our campus. When we were doing our focus group interviews, one of the things we had was we had students put up little dots across campus, a heat map of where they want to be, and the library was it. It was the logical place to meet students where they were at.

In addition, we have this really remarkable dean of the library, Tara Baillargeon, who had a vision for the library already as saying she really wanted that library to be the front porch for our university, that kind of gathering space. So it just became really intuitive when we heard the voices of our students, the vision of our dean and the thoughtfulness of our provost and president saying, “Let’s bring these together and locate it there, right in the library.”

Inside Higher Ed: Marilyn, you can talk to the functional elements of it—who’s all located in the library now, and how does it work?

Jones: I’m glad that John mentioned that the location piece, because we are strategically located at the heart of the institution. The goal with that was to make it easy for students to run into us, to find us.

In terms of the resources that we provide at the Lemonis Center, I want to start with that the new Ask Me desk that we have. This is right when students come in, there is this desk that welcomes everyone who comes to the space. And it really is there to allow students to ask all kinds of questions. It’s a place that normalizes, I would even say it celebrates and invites students to embrace the importance of asking questions and seeking help.

It’s fully staffed by over 25 students who have been highly trained. We have graduate and undergraduate students, and you have to think about that. That is really a student success initiative. Students are there sharing their expertise and knowledge, but also interacting with others. That’s one of the important pieces of the center.

This is also the space where students can go and sign up for some of the services that are taking place. We house the Academic Resource Center, and we also house the Career Center in this space. We provide academic coaching, tutoring. We have over 300 tutoring sessions led by students happening on a weekly basis. We also have career exploration and education, as John mentioned, to provide that type of career and professional formation.

But there’s so much more to the center. We have a commuter lounge. We have four phone booths where students can take a break and join a call. And we have a very, very popular photo booth that makes it easy for students to get professional headshots. And lots of collaborative spaces that are technology-enhanced so students there can meet with people across campus virtually. They can have virtual interviews. Those rooms are used for so many different things, including taking exams and when they need a space.

But we can say it’s really a convenient space where students just come in and work together and meet their mentors and have the opportunity to grow with others.

Inside Higher Ed: It’s like a Disneyland of student success—everything’s there and a lot of fun.

Su: If we can copyright what you just said, a Disneyland of Student Success—

Inside Higher Ed: I’ll sell it to you later.

Su: We want the Lemonis Center to be the happiest place on earth.

Inside Higher Ed: One of the issues in higher ed, we have all these amazing resources for students, but they don’t always utilize them, either, because they don’t know that they exist, or they can feel like that space is intimidating. How is access at the center of the center, and the ways that students can interact, both with staff and its resources?

Jones: We talk about this a lot. We are surrounding students with resources, whether they know it or not, but it’s very intentional on our part.

John and I call this the art of reimagining student success into a large, physical space, starting with our partnerships. For example, with staff and faculty, we have been very successful in connecting with faculty members. They come to the space and they help us introduce students to the resources. So it feels like, “That’s great. My professor’s there, my mentor’s there, someone I know across campus is there. I should be there as well.”

We have also been very intentional in, for example, having some of those high-DFW courses take place in the Lemonis Center. When students come out [of class], they get to see one of those tutoring sessions that are taking place, and they know that’s part of what it looks like to be successful in college. We are helping them see that tutoring, for example, doesn’t come from a place of deficit or something that they need to do, but it’s what successful students do.

That intentionality in our location, in the who’s at the center and what’s happening at the center, all of that, I think, really helps increase the barriers to access. And as I mentioned, our Ask Me desk students, there are ambassadors. They share opportunities with others, and they make it sound fun and less scary, and that other peers should explore those opportunities.

Su: I think when you’re talking about the art of student success, it’s really finding ways to integrate technology and mentorship. Because we know there’s a subset of students who will engage in help-seeking behaviors, but we also know it’s often the case that students who most may need support may not be in that right space at that moment of stress to seek it out. So how do we better integrate technology and mentorship?

One of the things we’ve been trying to do is connect the Lemonis Center to all the other areas on campus through our own My Success CRM that we’re building right now and developing early alerts to identify students who may be at a lower level of academic engagement, helping to let their advisers have that information so that the adviser can reach out and say, “Hey, how’s it going? Tell me what’s going on [with] your semester?” And then that way, that personal invitation to seek out the Lemonis Center, seek out other supports, so that every student feels there’s someone who is saying, “Your success matters to me.”

Inside Higher Ed: I also wanted to ask about technology in general in the center. What other ways are you integrating technology into the physical space, or the ways that students interact with the center?

Jones: The integration of technology has been central in the work that we’re doing.

One of the highlights for us is those cross-collaborative learning spaces that are enhanced with technology. Students just bring their computers, the screen is there, the monitor, the cameras, and they have connection to adapters, we provide everything. Even if a student is struggling to maybe have a working device or their computer is acting up, they can quickly go to Raynor, just across the bridge, right—because we’re connected by a bridge—and borrow a computer there. Or they’re having issues with technology, the tech squad is there. So we’re really leveraging the resources that we have across the two areas, the Raynor Library and the Lemonis Center.

But just the fact that students can collaborate, I see them as I walk through some of those interview suites or the tutoring rooms. I see students joining virtually while the other two or three group members are there and they’re all connecting. I also know that, with so many things going on, students might get sick, and they don’t have to miss a tutoring session, because now they can join virtually, because tutoring is happening in one of those phases.

Now, the Ask Me desk, I think that’s where we see a lot of that technology in helping us understand, OK, what are the needs of our students? We are documenting questions. We’re able to keep track of the patterns. We’re able to then have broad conversations across campus about what we’re seeing. We see cycles. At the beginning of the semesters, [the problems are] my classes, technology … in some cases, how do I get access to this textbook? All those things.

Right now, with midterms done and advising taking place, we see some of those questions about career and not knowing what they’re planning to do after they graduate, or if they have to consider transferring from one major to another, we can keep track of those questions.

By having this referral system in place, we can see if students are getting the support and connecting with the people that that they need to connect with. It really helps us connect in a very caring manner. And like John said, students know that we care about them and that someone is here to make sure that at any step in the process, someone’s going to reach out and say, “Hey, we mentioned this. Were you able to follow up on that? Do you have any other questions?”

Inside Higher Ed: You alluded to this with the physical bridge between the library and the success center, but it’s a fun dynamic between the two buildings, the more traditional library, and then this new hub for student resources and belonging. What does that partnership look like, and how do you collaborate with the library?

Su: It’s the beauty that that we are located right in the library. The stacks surround the Lemonis Center for Student Success, and we are connected by one of the most popular places on campus, the bridge, where students study, they have coffee. They’re engaged with the library resources. You know, Tara Baillargeon was a member of our student success coordinating committee that led to the development and implementation of the center, and we have ongoing meetings of various directors with the library and support centers to really ensure that that collaboration continues.

Jones: We get together almost on a weekly basis with the different teams who are at the Lemonis Center and Raynor, because we are in constant conversations about how to better support students. If students are in our space, we also want to make sure they understand their other services happening in this complex. Our librarians are amazing.

We are always planning different activities. We go back to that idea of belonging and opportunities to create those we have partner up with events where we come together and celebrate, for example, different holidays. We’re in the bridge, and we’re having events, and we’re passing out goodies to the students, and they see that we work together to support them.

We are planning a really fun event that involves both Raynor and the Lemonis Center, and that’s the late Night Against Procrastination. And we are staying late here, supporting our students, and helping them connect with their resources and preparing for finals. So we’re excited about that.

Inside Higher Ed: The center opened its physical doors this fall. What are some of those future goals and plans now that students are engaging in the physical space?

Su: Marquette’s student success strategy really tries to build on our mission as a Catholic Jesuit institution, which has almost a 500-year tradition, really focusing on formation of the whole person. We really recognize your academic flourishing—your kind of emotional, your psychic, spiritual—they’re all intertwined and that developing all of that together in that kind of very explicit, progressive developmental mode is crucial to our students and their success.

Really, the Lemonis Center is trying to live that out. You heard Marilyn start to talk about the services that really support students, from first day to first destination, to our culture of mentorship and engagement for all students, so that, if you are at your first stages, you want that first tour. You wanna go the Ask Me desk … then … maybe one of my classes is not kind of going quite as I was hoped. I’m gonna get that tutoring. Maybe I’m starting to think about, “Oh, there’s a different kind of life pathway [or] career.” Then, as you’re starting to develop the integration of career and your major, thinking about what [were] experiential learning opportunities.

So really, I think the future of the success center is building out again, that progressive and developmental mindset for the formation of our students.

Jones: When we talk to students, it is clear that they’re not defining student success in terms of grades, but in becoming a well-rounded person. As we’re looking to the future, something that we are keeping in mind, students want to be people with and for others, like we said.

So to support that, we’re looking at different opportunities. For example, we’re thinking and being intentional in how we connect students to experiential learning. We want students to hear, both from peers, but also from faculty members and staff, about those opportunities. I know our career center, for example, is working very closely with faculty to infuse career discernment in our coursework, especially early on, like John said, in a student’s academic journey.

Now, personally, I think the center provides so many wonderful opportunities. I mean, we’ve talked about the cool places, the technology, but I know—as a first-gen, as a student of color, as an immigrant myself, who struggled with the English language—that what really impacts retention and persistence is when I soon feel like there’s a home, that your institution is a home and that someone really cares, like John said.

As we continue think to think about our goals, we are really thinking about how, even though we’re a predominantly white institution, how we support students of color, how we support commuters, first-gen students, how can students be their most authentic selves in a space like Marquette? We are looking at programming and academic opportunities that can help elevate their experiences. I talked about experiential learning—equity to in access to those opportunities are key.

So again, the Lemonis Center, amazing place, but it is really love and care for our students, and that means everyone will have access to our resources and opportunities on campus.

Listen to previous episodes of Voices of Student Success here.