Written by Alexis Bhagat, University at Albany SUNY
I am the Vice President of the Information Science Student Association (ISSA) at the University at Albany. How I landed in this position is a convoluted story, which I think might be typical for the return to in-person classes after the interruption of the pandemic. I’m sharing it here on the SNAP blog to test that assumption, and to find out about other chapters of SAA and your experiences during the pandemic and with the return to in-person classes.
First, a little bit about me. I’ve just finished my third semester in my MSIS program, and I look forward to graduating soon and moving on to the next phase of my career. Currently, I work as the director of the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library in Albany, NY. Before that, I was an independent curator and artist’s assistant based in New York City. In 2013, I worked on an art exhibition called XFR STN at the New Museum, and I have wanted to study archives ever since then. I finally decided to apply to school in 2019. When students were sent home in 2020, my wife and I decided that I should wait a year so that I could stay home with our young daughter, and I began my studies in Fall 2021.
As a return-to-school student over 40, I was excited to meet other students. ISSA was not meeting, and all of my archives classes were still online, so I kind of went conference crazy my first year. I presented a poster at ARLIS, contributed a LibGuide at the Wild Energies, and registered for the SAA conference in Boston.
Taking the Plunge in Boston
Since the SAA was going to be in Boston in summer 2022, I reached out to ISSA to ask about ride sharing or room sharing. No one replied, and so with encouragement from one of my professors, I decided to restart our student chapter. I got in touch with the leaders of our student chapter from the 2019-2020 school year, when students were sent home from classes. None of them knew what happened to the Association when they left. The 2019-2020 President sent me the old Constitution, access to the Association’s social media pages, and we worked to try to recover access to the old website (which we still do not have access to!) They told me how to renew our association with our University’s Graduate Student Association (GSA).
When I tried to do that, the GSA told me that ISSA was already a Registered Graduate Student Organization with a president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. These are the minimum registration requirements. All of these officers were PhD students; this was puzzling because as our student chapter of SAA and ALA, ISSA had been primarily an organization of the MSIS students.
After a few weeks of emailing with this new board, we all figured out what happened: the “Informatics PhD Students Organization” had re-registered as the “Information Science Student Association” in 2021. I met with the new president, Jeffrey Baez, and we decided to treat this as a happy accident. We would try to serve as the graduate student organization for all the graduate students in our college– archives, libraries, data analysis, cyber security, both MS and PhD.
A New Collaboration
It’s a big tent, a tall order, and an experiment. This expanded model might serve us well, or it might not last beyond this year. The GSA president told me that most of the student organizations that represent professional MS programs have perennial struggles around continuity, and the Information Science Student was no exception. Professional students are usually only around for two years and many have full-time jobs as well. PhD student organizations have much better continuity since the students are around for 4-7 years and presidents are likely to serve their organizations for two or three years. If we can provide compelling services and programs for both constituencies, then combining with the PhD students can bring needed continuity to our organization.
Creating those services and programs for the combined organization is the challenge that we are trying to tackle. Library and Archives students tend to want job-seeking / professional development services – resume reviews, learning about professional associations, tours at prospective internship sites or employer sites. PhD students want peer support and conference support. Cybersecurity graduate students created their own student organizations, serving undergraduate and masters students. We are working on stitching together our big umbrella, starting by making our student organization the student chapter of ASIS&T as well as SAA and ALA.
We put on a bunch of social events this Fall to reach students in our diverse disciplines. We sent out surveys, and there was a big demand for social events. Only a handful of students ever came to these social events, which was disappointing. In Spring Semester, we are planning more educational events that can be streamed online. This way our online-only students and campus students can both take part, and videos will be available to watch asynchronously. We hope students will see this as an opportunity to reconnect.
Community Feedback
What is going on with your student chapter? Was your student chapter disrupted by the pandemic? Did your chapter continue to meet through 2021 or are you re-establishing your chapter after a pause? Do you have programs for campus-only students, online-only students, or both?
No one has a playbook for how to proceed in the new normal. I would love to hear about experiences at other schools.
SNAP Section 