Research Education at Hope College

It is the College's and Library's mission that students will be information literate when they graduate from Hope. This means that students will be comfortable accessing a wide variety of information tools and resources-including ones they have never encountered before. They should be able to evaluate resources as to their appropriateness and merit, as well as to analyze, synthesize and organize the information they gather. Fundamental to the success of these goals are the cooperative planning and teaching of research sessions, the implementation of self-instructional tutorial programs, and the encouragement of individual research appointments with librarians.

Librarians are eager to work with faculty, and the many years of success of the ever-growing instructional program are testimony to the willingness of faculty and librarians to work and learn together. The most successful class sessions are team taught, with both teaching faculty and librarian participating in the instruction in a lab setting where students have hands-on opportunities to work on specific research assignments. For this to be effective, the timing of library sessions is crucial: students need to have topics-or at least preliminary topics-in order to engage in the research process when they come to the lab session.

The Research Education program at Hope College is designed to prepare students to be effective users of information in a continually changing world. In order to achieve this, the General Education requirements include two classes that are FLAGGED for research education: First Year Seminar and English 113. This means that all sections of those classes are to have research assignments and will have a librarian assigned to work with faculty on designing and implementing this component. Additionally, many other courses with research components include a session in the Library Teaching Lab or the Granberg Room with a librarian.

The following links describe the different components of the program: First Year Seminar, English 113, Subject Specific and Upper Level Classes, Schedule Instruction with a Librarian.