2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Creating dynamic outreach opportunities outside of the traditional classroom space that appeal to science and engineering students can be exciting or frustrating, depending on a librarian’s personal experiences. Narrowing that focus to graduate students adds additional considerations. In this paper, we share the growth of a library outreach initiative into a holistic program designed to meet the needs of science and engineering graduate students.

Graduate students arrive on campus with a foundation of discipline-specific research knowledge, but lack familiarity with the resources available on their new campus. They also tend to lose their access to their previous campus’s resources and support networks. These students need support for the new concentrated writing and research they are expected to undertake in their graduate programs. Further, not all graduate students complete one degree and immediately move to another degree. They often bring with them life experiences and obligations that can make out-of-class outreach participation difficult. This can lead to frustration on a librarian's part from the perceived lack of participation.

The creation of graduate-specific events and targeted efforts to share important support information is key to helping students balance their personal and academic wellbeing. Allowing students the opportunity to engage with their peers beyond the classroom while offering low-stress resources increases their own belonging and science or engineering identity. Additionally, campus partnerships mean that librarians are not expected to be experts in everything. Rather they support the whole graduate student experience, not just library-specific needs. These essential partnerships also result in a division-of-labor, allowing various organizing or participating staff to collaborate on the organization and execution of such efforts.

In this paper, the authors share the elements of their multi-branched approach. We will introduce the signature graduate-specific events we have developed over the years, including a Mixer and a Writing Retreat. The core mission of this work is to increase graduate students’ sense of belonging as part of the vibrant, large campus experience. In order to make these events appealing and worthy of adding to graduate students’ tight schedules, the authors focus on the unique needs of science and engineering students to make sure activities, information, and events are relevant. After introducing and contextualizing the events, we share assessment tools and how we have used feedback to further shape outreach initiatives. Finally, we reflect on the time and effort for organizers and share recommendations to take care of your roots to ensure the long-term growth of a healthy program. The inclusion of best practices allow readers to plant their own seeds.