CSN Libraries is excited to welcome back one of our friendly Charleston campus Reference & Instruction librarians, Ted Chodock. Ted returns to the library after being on sabbatical during the fall 2019 semester, in which he was identifying, collecting, and analyzing data and information for his PhD dissertation exploring the role of academic libraries in contributing to student sense of belonging, and how library spaces can serve as unique communities for students.

In addition to Ted’s academic endeavors, he received a 2019 Academic Library Impact Research Grant from the Association of College and Research Libraries to further explore equity issues pertaining to the challenges Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) encounter with regard to providing welcoming spaces to students from marginalized backgrounds, and especially related to library spaces.

Beyond pervasive attitudes regarding libraries as merely serving a functional role within the college environment, Ted’s emerging research is concerned with looking at opportunities for connection and community building between students, librarians, and library spaces, and exploring how this paradigm shift may have positive implications on persistence, academic completion, and lifelong self-efficacy.

When asked what driving force led him to pursue this research, Ted explained that, in his own experience as a young person navigating higher education, the library became a kind of “home away from home” – not just a building where book lending or returning transactions were made. At CSN, we hope for and encourage all of our students to engage with the library spaces, to share them with their fellow students, and to utilize them in order to support their learning and wellbeing as members of the CSN community.

Although the research in on-going, we look forward to sharing more about Ted’s study with you and the wider CSN community in the future, and, in the meantime, are very excited to have him back on campus! Welcome back, Ted!