Pizza with the Dean

Posted February 7, 2020 by William Crouch

There was a really cool event on campus last, Pizza with the Dean. For those of you unaware, the dean of COCIS is Marie desJardines who I learned comes from a computer science background. She told us about her background in going to Harvard initially then Berkeley for her doctorate, working for a research institute and finally ending up in academia. She then told us how Simmons started to reorganize itself into the different colleges and how each program became a part of the college it is affiliated with.

Marie wanted to meet with SLIS students to gain a better understanding of what current students think of the program and how we think it might be able to be improved. Many of us suggested that we focus more on utilizing the information science aspect of the college while still maintaining a strong identity as a library school. We also discussed what makes Simmons stand apart from different library schools in that it helps students utilize the theory taught more and makes sure that students that graduate from the school are prepared to go out into the world of librarianship. Meeting with the Dean was a really cool event to see the more administrative side of things and see how the administration really wants to support the SLIS program to help us succeed not just as students but as future librarians and archivists. I’m really glad to be a part of a program where the administration really takes an interest in how the students feel about the program and constantly try to improve the school so that it looks better in the long run.

In addition to that, I was just told where my internship will be for my Intro to Archives class. I’ll be interning at the City of Boston Archives over the next few weeks. My next blog should be about starting that and what my experience is like with the internship.