2019 Institute Participants

The Research Training Institute (RTI) will be held in Chicago from July 15–19, 2019. Participants selected for the 2019 institute were chosen by a selective submission process with an emphasis on a desire to learn, enthusiasm for research, and the quality and promise of their proposed research projects.

Karin Bennedsen, AHIP,  orcid.org/0000-0003-1447-6192, is the campus reference and instruction librarian, Douglasville Site Library, Georgia Highlands College–Rome. She works with all disciplines but prefers working with the health sciences programs after having been a library specialist in a medical library for over eight years before obtaining her master of library science degree. Her research interests center around virtual librarianship: she is concerned with how to fill the information needs of students in learning management system (LMS) discussion boards on the first reply without a reference interview, as well as how to better engage students as an embedded librarian in the online course environment.

John P. Bourgeois, AHIP,  orcid.org/0000-0001-5314-6466, is a reference librarian and liaison, School of Public Health, Isché Library, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center–New Orleans (LSUHSC-NO). He began his career in public health as a research coordinator. His first library job was at a small, state university in rural Louisiana where teaching was his primary job. At LSUHSC-NO, Bourgeois still teaches as well as pursues other professional interests, like research data management and health information outreach. His research proposal combines all these fields.

Mary Pat Harnegie, AHIP,  orcid.org/0000-0003-2096-2357, library manager, South Pointe Medical Library, and medical librarian, Floyd D. Loop Alumni Library, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, graduated from Baldwin Wallace College, Berea, OH, with a bachelor’s of science in biology and political science. Her first career was managing the family insurance agency for more than thirty years. She transitioned to a librarian in 2000, with a master’s of library and information science from Kent State University and was simultaneously employed by Cleveland Public Library until 2014 and Cleveland Clinic. Harnegie served as president of the Ohio Health Science Library Association and cochair of the MLA Midwest Chapter 2018 conference. Her research interests are twofold: design of research projects and research processes that promote wellness in underserved populations.

Karen Heskett,  orcid.org/0000-0003-4501-6172, is an instruction librarian at the University of California (UC)–San Diego Library, where she is the liaison to medicine, psychiatry, and public health. Having participated in previous research projects (general undergraduate and medical student education), she would like to dedicate time to developing the skills and understanding needed to do more in educational research. Being embedded in the problem-based curriculum at the School of Medicine has been a wonderful experience working with both faculty and medical students, and has sparked her interest in trying to determine, beyond grateful anecdotal comments, whether her efforts to broaden the students’ horizons regarding clinical resources are having an impact.

Rachel Hinrichs, AHIP,  orcid.org/0000-0003-0762-744X, is the health sciences librarian, University Library, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). In her current position, she is the liaison to the School of Public Health and the health sciences, nutrition and dietetics, physician assistant, and kinesiology departments. She is also the production editor for the Evidence Based Library and Information Practice journal. Her research interests include evidence-based practice in terms of library instruction in the profession, research impact, and mobile health. She received her master’s of library and information science in 2016 from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, where she worked as a graduate assistant at the Health Sciences Library.

Hilary M. Jasmin,  orcid.org/0000-0002-5115-1365, is a research and learning services librarian, Health Sciences Library, University of Tennessee Health Science Center–Memphis. Prior to her faculty position, she worked in public libraries in various capacities while earning her master’s in information science from the University of Tennessee–Knoxville. With a bachelor’s in communication and an innate interest in human behavior, her Research Training Institute (RTI) project is on imposter phenomenon in health sciences librarians. She hopes this qualitative approach to understanding the highs and lows of professional confidence will prove useful to MLA members in all stages of career and life.

Ellen M. Justice, AHIP,  orcid.org/0000-0002-1746-5862, is a clinical and research librarian at Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC), Asheville, NC. The largest of nine NC AHECs, the MAHEC staff works to meet the health and health workforce needs of the sixteen westernmost counties. She is the liaison librarian to the psychiatry and rural family medicine residencies. The library is also part of the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill Health Sciences at the MAHEC Research & Library Science Department and collaborates on research projects. Throughout her career, she has served as a hospital and consumer health librarian. She has coauthored systematic reviews and presented or published on clinical librarian and consumer health projects. Her research interests include developing effective and engaging ways to teach and assess resident learning.

Sa’ad Laws,  orcid.org/0000-0001-9566-5459, is an eLearning and instructional design librarian, Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, Doha, Qatar. His duties include acting as the liaison to clerkship faculty and students, as well as instructing students in evidence-based medicine throughout the curriculum. His research interest includes the intersections between instructional technology and pedagogy, evidence-based medicine, and the psychosocial elements of medicine and medical education. Prior to working in Doha, Laws worked at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, as the e-reserves coordinator. He received his master’s of library and information science from San Jose State University and a master’s of arts in anthropology from George Mason University.

Andrea Lynch,  orcid.org/0000-0002-1631-7171, serves as the scholarly communication librarian and is a member of the Center for Informatics Division of Library Services Team at City of Hope in Duarte, CA. Lynch received her bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of California (UC)–Berkeley and her master’s degree from the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She began her professional career at the UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, where she was a health and life sciences librarian and outreach and communication coordinator responsible for research assistance, information literacy, and collections management, as well as coordinated exhibits, outreach events, and other activities to increase health information access. Her current research interests include identifying barriers to complying with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) public access policy.

Sandra McCarthy, orcid.org/0000-0002-0445-9068, is faculty librarian and liaison to the nursing and allied health programs, Bailey Library, Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, MI. She is the incoming chair of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) College & Junior College Libraries Section, as of July 1, 2019. Her research interests include assessment, health literacy, and community college libraries. At the Research Training Institute (RTI) training, she aspires to understand what community college health sciences librarians perceive as their skill level for each key competency identified in the MLA competencies.

Laura Menard,  orcid.org/0000-0001-7485-9190, is the assistant director for medical education and access services, Ruth Lilly Medical Library, Indiana University School of Medicine–Indianapolis. Menard’s role in the library primarily consists of developing curricular components for the evidence-based medicine (EBM) thread and training library faculty to deliver EBM instruction. Her area of research interest is assessment. Her RTI project will focus on assessing the efforts of the School of Medicine’s EBM curricular stakeholders to implement progressive, scaffolded EBM content throughout year one and year two (Y1 and Y2) of medical school.

Jolene M. Miller, AHIP,  orcid.org/0000-0003-4422-2708, is director of the Mulford Health Science Library, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH. She started her professional life as an academic librarian, before entering academic health sciences librarianship. Her early professional activity explored library support for undergraduate medical education. Her current research interest is reflective practice by health sciences librarians, both understanding how and why they invest in it. (Her related non-research interest is teaching and coaching librarians in reflective practice.) She is also interested in emotion regulation for library administrators.

Tanisha N. Mills, AHIP,  orcid.org/0000-0002-6818-6214, serves as medical librarian at Northeast Georgia Health System–Gainesville, working primarily with clinicians and other health care professionals to support scholarly activity, evidence-based practice, and graduate medical education (GME). Her career in librarianship began with academic information literacy instruction, and she has experience working remotely for oncology hospitals. Her research interest is focused on the research capacity of librarians at nonacademic hospitals serving GME programs. Mills hails from St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, where she organized the territory’s first Human Library for National Library Week 2010.

Katherine Orze,  orcid.org/0000-0001-7016-4586, is a research and education librarian at the Health Sciences Library, Loyola University of Chicago, Maywood, IL. She serves as liaison to the Stritch School of Medicine, biomedical graduate programs, and Loyola’s Center for Translational Research and Education. Orze received her master’s of library and information science from the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include evidence-based medicine (EBM) searching, methods for delivering EBM education, and scholarly publishing.

Nicole Pettenati,  orcid.org/0000-0001-6064-9846, is a research analyst at the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), Alexandria, VA, where she handles qualitative research, develops literature reviews and evidence summaries related to health department accreditation, and provides support for activities associated with the Public Health National Center for Innovations. Previously, Pettenati was a program associate at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and a National Library of Medicine Associate Fellow from 2013–2015, spending the second year of the fellowship as a hospital librarian at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ. She holds her master’s of science in library science from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Her research interests include public health and library partnerships and exploring barriers and facilitators to research for health departments.

Helenmary Sheridan,  orcid.org/0000-0002-2328-6465, is the data services librarian at the Health Sciences Library System, University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), Pittsburgh, PA. Prior to joining Pitt, she was the institutional repository manager at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign, whose iSchool she graduated from in 2015 with a specialization in data curation. In her current position, she performs outreach and cataloging for the Pitt Data Catalog, an implementation of the multi-institutional Data Catalog Collaboration Project, and offers instruction and consultation on data sharing, technical and metadata requirements for repository submission and/or design, and software annotation. Her research interests include data management practices, particularly among researchers generating image and audiovisual data, description and sharing of data-analysis code, and researcher interactions with library-designed software and technological systems.

Stephanie M. Shippey, AHIP,  orcid.org/0000-0002-5496-6914, is the associate managing director of public services, Libraries, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC)–Lubbock. She received her master’s of library science from the University of Pittsburgh. She provides training and research support to nursing, health professions, and medical faculty, students, and staff. Prior to joining TTUHSC, she worked in a one-person hospital library in Connecticut. Her professional interests include website design, emerging technologies, systematic reviews, and marketing. Her current research interest centers around the prevalence and incidence of sexual harassment and related misconduct in health sciences libraries.

Jennifer C. Westrick, AHIP,  orcid.org/0000-0002-3606-3957, is a reference librarian, Library of Rush University Medical Center, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL. She is delighted to be part of the 2019 Research Training Institute (RTI) cohort and looks forward to doing a “deep dive” into her research project. She is interested in exploring how much health sciences librarians actually know about clinical trials and how much they actually need to know about this topic, which is a good blend of her interests and experience. Currently, she works on many systematic review projects that often focus on clinical trials, and she worked in the clinical trials field many years ago. Westrick believes there is a knowledge gap and is looking forward to exploring this topic.

Robyn Woods, AHIP,  orcid.org/0000-0001-5434-451X, is the education and outreach librarian for the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, MidContinental Region, located in the Health Sciences Library at Creighton University, Omaha, NE. During her career as an elementary teacher, she began working toward her master’s of arts in library and information science from the University of South Florida and plans to continue her work toward her doctorate in educational leadership from the College of Saint Mary, with an anticipated graduation date of 2022. Her current research interests include health information literacy, effective strategies for teaching adult learners in an online environment, and outreach efforts in community health.

Ying Zhong,  orcid.org/0000-0003-3169-7069, is a natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering (NSME) and web services librarian, Walter W. Stern Library, California State University–Bakersfield (CSUB). Her job responsibilities include instruction, reference, collection development, and liaison to several departments, including nursing. For more than fifteen years, Zhong has been working closely with the nursing students and faculty at CSUB to address their information needs. Zhong received her master of science (MS) degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign in August 2005. She also holds an MS degree in agricultural economics and agribusiness from Louisiana State University. Her research interests are the economics of information, assessment of services, and health literacy.