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In the spring of 2016, the University of Kansas Libraries piloted Research Sprints: One Week, One Project, a program aimed at cultivating relationships with faculty through deep project-based engagement.

Three faculty members, matched with a team of library experts, worked intensively to complete a research or pedagogic project for one week in May. Critical to the program’s success was the use of project management methodologies and tools. These tools were essential to identifying task dependencies, developing workflows, and documenting work processes.

The overall success of the Sprints demonstrated to faculty that library staff can be more than one-shot consultants; faculty collaborators learned first hand that the library can be a true partner throughout the scholarly process. As an approach to user engagement, Sprints pose some considerations for library management, including the need for robust staff training in project management and teambuilding, internal resistance to utilizing project management tools, difficulty finding staff time and resources to commit for a short but high-concentrated period, and the need to align projects with staff expertise and availability.

This chapter provides an assessment of the Sprints pilot, addressing some of the implications, potential benefits, and challenges of adopting and adapting Research Sprints to support library work. It will be of interest to project managers and library staff who are considering integrating project management methods into their outreach and services, and provides examples of how project management can inform library efforts to more deeply collaborate in advancing the scholarly work of local research and teaching communities.

The role of social science in the curriculum of technical institutions of higher learning has always represented a series of tradeoff challenges and opportunities. Recently, issues to be addressed by those developing curricula for this audience have received increased attention. The difficulties that social and physical scientists have had collaborating on research projects have also been a matter of increasing attention and concern. Hence, to enrich this discussion we will offer a historical case study covering a 35-year (so far) experiment at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in which both organizational and educational issues had to be addressed as faculty members of both backgrounds worked with technical students on educational projects dealing with social issues.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) interactive qualifying project (IQP) as a unique, project‐based service‐learning opportunity that offers teams of undergraduate students the opportunity to frame and investigate complex, unscripted problems with social and technological dimensions for non‐profit organizations and government agency sponsors.

The paper discusses the relationship of the IQP to the service‐learning literature, describes the proposal and delivery phases of the IQP, and then offers two short illustrative cases.

The paper concludes that IQPs teach students how to frame and use background research to investigate unscripted, real world problems. It teaches students to think critically, to improve their presentation skills, and to become more aware of the social and cultural dimensions of technology. For faculty, IQP advising enriches their relationships with undergraduate students and can sometimes lead to co‐authored publications. For the university, the IQP program is a source of positive publicity and good will from project center communities around the world.

The findings of this study might be useful to those schools and faculty interested in starting a service‐learning project program with a technological focus.

Projects can provide a unique service‐learning experience for undergraduate students. By focusing on problems at the intersection of society and technology, the WPI IQP sensitizes engineering and science students to the human dimensions of technology. It teaches students to grapple with unscripted problems that require an extensive background research, rigorous data collection, and thoughtful analysis.

Literature indicates African American parents can feel real or perceived discrimination that strains their interactions with teachers, resulting in them feeling alienated from their children’s school.

This is an exploratory case study of two African American parents, who although guarded in their relationships with teachers, exposed their vulnerabilities to Project ESTEEM faculty as they requested support in resolving behavioral and academic challenges with their children. It is an exploratory case study in that the field notes were taken prior to defining the research question, positioning it as research that sets the stage for a future more comprehensive study. The researchers, as participant observers recorded field notes of events and interactions that occurred. The research question was, “What were the factors that influenced the relationships between the Project ESTEEM faculty and African American Parents? The subquestions were “What were the distinctions of alienation that challenged the parents’ relationships in the schools? and "How were the factors that challenged the parents’ relationships with teachers mitigated in Project ESTEEM faculty’s relationships with the parents?” A constant comparative method was used beginning with open coding, followed by identifying patterns, themes and subthemes reflecting the specific needs of the parents in relationship to the overall theme.

The stories highlight sociocultural contexts influencing the alienation of some African American parents in their children’s education through an analysis of the relationships fostered with Project ESTEEM faculty.

This case study reports the experiences of two parents from one community and school, participating in a specialized program.

The significance resides in the representation of alternate viewpoints in understanding the alienation experiences of African American parents from schools.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a unique case of a librarian–engineering faculty partnership grounded in a faculty development National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. Authors will describe processes, lessons learned, challenges and opportunities resulting from designing, implementing and evaluating a massive open online course (MOOC) focused on teaching faculty how to flip classes.

This case study presents a reflective review of the process of two unlikely collaborators who work together, write a grant, design faculty development training and develop and evaluate a MOOC. Decisions made, perspectives and lessons learned will be discussed.

The evolution of an NSF grant partnership involving an engineering faculty and librarian is presented. Larger issues, such as proactivity of librarians, non-traditional librarian roles and librarian versus academic identity, are raised and discussed.

This case study presents a unique type of librarian–faculty partnership, one where a librarian is a Co-PI on an NSF grant. Collaborator reflections on lessons learned, challenges and implications could be applicable to other digital/technology projects, online professional development initiatives and course design projects.

The purpose of this article is to describe the successful collaboration between faculty in Eastern Kentucky University Libraries and the University's Occupational Therapy Department in supporting a graduate student learning community, and the benefits of stepping outside of typical liaison activities to play an active role in this new educational paradigm.

In 2006, graduate students and faculty in Occupational Therapy at Eastern Kentucky University, with a librarian and with the support of a national professional organization, facilitated the completion of a graduate thesis through the use of a topic‐based learning community. This team completed an in‐depth, evidence‐based review of occupational therapy journal articles in the context of a regional university environment. This article focuses on the collaboration between faculty and librarian as they facilitated this new learning paradigm, the enhancement of the liaison partnership, and the results of the project especially in terms of student learning outcomes.

Collaborating with faculty to support a student learning community, and supporting students in atypical ways, contribute in valuable ways to strengthening the relationship with academic departments, increasing the perceived value of library services, and promoting student success.

Library liaison programs benefit from innovative partnerships with faculty, and from seeking opportunities to participate in new educational models.

This paper addresses the benefits of participating in student learning communities.

Campus leadership at a satellite campus of a large national university took a research approach to solve the workplace problem of increased scholarship requirements for practitioner faculty. The Community of Scholars Action Research Project was developed as a faculty engagement and professional development initiative. The goals and objectives for the action research project were to engage practitioner faculty in research and scholarship, to provide faculty development opportunities, to raise the academic profile of practitioner faculty and to identify potential impact on student outcomes. Through the processes of research, exploration, and application of leadership theoretical frameworks, the concept of a potentially new leadership profile, scholarly leader, emerged.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the library at Jinwen University of Science and Technology (JUST) in Taiwan introduced the use of a new model “Faculty member as library specialist”. This is done in an attempt to determine the value of a new approach of faculty‐librarian collaboration for promoting the library's resources and services. In addition, some ideas and suggestions are proposed regarding the issue of faculty‐librarian collaboration for library staff around the world.

After providing some background information regarding the JUST Library, the process of the project implementation and the approaches used are described in detail. In addition, the effectiveness of the project is reviewed based on the results of the interviews with some of the teaching faculty and the statistics reports of the usage of the JUST Library from 2006 to 2008. Finally, some conclusions are drawn and some suggestions are made, proposing that the library staff establish a faculty‐librarian collaborative model.

After reviewing the effectiveness of the project, it is hard to say whether or not it is the best way to promote the library's services and resources. However, the paper finds that the proposed approach provides a new idea and an example of faculty‐librarian collaboration in promoting the library's resources and services to the students.

Hopefully the model of faculty‐librarian collaboration in the JUST Library in Taiwan will provide some new ideas and inspirations that can be shared with library staff around the world.

This chapter explores the methods developed to improve STEM success for students at two public urban institutions, a project whose aim is to improve academic outcomes for undergraduate students, especially for those most vulnerable and least likely to succeed in this student population. The theory of change that underpins the project – including its activities and its evaluation plan – posits that three interlocked activities (course redesign, peer mentors and articulation) will lead to improvements in academic outcomes and ultimately contribute to the overarching goal of increasing the number of students from underserved backgrounds who graduate with baccalaureate STEM degrees. The project focusses on the first courses students take in STEM, where they are also most likely to fail. We describe the methodology developed for faculty development and the organizational structure of the peer mentoring component for these courses. Both of these components constitute safe spaces where faculty and peer mentors learn to support students using evidence-based and inclusive instructional practices. Courses redesigned by faculty were offered following a cluster-level randomized control trial design, where sections were assigned to treatment (with or without a peer) or control. These interventions have a positive impact on cumulative GPA, according to preliminary analyses. The project also has a positive effect on faculty participants and on peer mentors, both groups now better prepared to jointly deliver STEM curricula in more effective ways. Among the reasons why this works, instructor empathy surfaces as playing a leading role in academic outcomes for undergraduate students.