Like most schools, Illinois Wesleyan University is under increasing pressure to showcase the specific faculty and student achievements that make them unique. Christina Isabelli, Chair of IWU’s Department of Hispanic Studies, is taking advantage of the Expert Gallery Suite to promote department expertise, highlight mentorships, and show off exceptional student work. Christina has worked alongside Stephanie Davis-Kahl, IWU’s Scholarly Communications Librarian, to ensure that the Department of Hispanic Studies’ profiles are seamlessly integrated into IWU’s website.
“Hispanic Studies is much more than teaching Spanish,” reports Christina. By making expert profiles easily accessible, “students can click into profiles and see that our faculty are publishing a wide range of research… you can see the actual work professors are doing.” Some faculty—like Christina—have a Mentorship badge on their profiles, and have examples of work from students they’ve mentored in the past. Having this information visible on the department page gives students a sense of the faculty they may work with, as well as the quality of work they’ll be expected to produce as a mentee. “It’s a pat on the professor’s back, too, to have their best student papers published online and being read by so many people.”
Christina and Stephanie shared this story, including additional benefits to both students and faculty, and other ways IWU has integrated Digital Commons @ IWU with IWU’s website in a recent webinar that you can now view here. To see more examples of embedded and integrated repositories, register here for our upcoming webinar, “New Strategies to Embed Library Initiatives into Campus Culture.”
