{"id":1783,"date":"2014-06-10T18:32:24","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T22:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.acohen.com\/blog\/?p=1783"},"modified":"2023-11-10T16:31:15","modified_gmt":"2023-11-10T20:31:15","slug":"nomads-of-the-academic-library-non-traditional-learners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.acohen.com\/blog\/nomads-of-the-academic-library-non-traditional-learners\/","title":{"rendered":"Nomads of the Academic Library"},"content":{"rendered":"

At colleges across the county,\u00a0 there are many students and teachers who feel as if they are part of a nomadic tribe rather than being an integrated part of the academic community. Reflecting on the current state of higher education, this is especially true for non-traditional students<\/a> and adjunct faculty members. Like many other nomadic people, non-traditional students and adjuncts do not have a continual space to call their own and, more often than not, they have to adapt to infertile climates and move on in order to subsist.<\/p>\n

We believe it is time for the academic library to embrace non-traditional students and adjunct faculty to support collaborative work. For example, adjunct faculty are increasingly responsible for a majority of courses taught at community colleges in the United States. They teach non-traditional students who also need space to build skills for new jobs and careers. Together these groups represent a growing need for higher learning space.<\/p>\n

According to a recent report created by the Center for Community College Student Engagement<\/a>: \u201cColleges depend on part-time faculty to educate more than half of their students, yet they do not fully embrace these faculty members. Because of this disconnect, contingency can have consequences that negatively affect student engagement and learning.\u201d Indeed, the academic library provides a space for non-traditional learners, as well as adjunct faculty and researchers who can use these new types of makerspaces<\/a> for specialty knowledge building.<\/p>\n

As a crucial part of sustaining the economic stability of universities across the county, and community college libraries in particular, the nomadic existence that non-traditional students. adjuncts, and many other types of researchers, experience is problematic. We see the big issues with this current system as being primarily two-fold:<\/p>\n