Being on the Engineering Libraries Division’s (ELD) conference planning committee and as the newest elected Director on the ELD Executive Board, I planned my attendance at the 2024 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) conference in Portland based off of my key learnings from 2023 in Baltimore. Knowing that I would need to adjust to the time change and prepare for my short talk on Monday, June 24th, I flew in on Friday, June 21st. As usual, ASEE resembles a marathon starting with the workshops on Sunday afternoon and ending with the ELD Extended Executive Board meeting that wrapped up at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, June 26th. With ELD conference events spanning the Oregon Convention Center and the Hyatt Regency Portland Conference Hotel, I rented a scooter to protect the yet again torn meniscus in my right knee.

This year’s conference was mostly a working conference with professional development opportunities sprinkled throughout. As the first year Director, I coordinated the ELD Welcome Reception on Monday night with Joanne Mischalak from IEEE. The absolute highlight for me occurred during the ELD Business Meeting on Tuesday, June 25th when I was awarded the ELD Early Career Award. To be recognized by my peers humbled me. My heartfelt gratitude goes to my colleagues at ZSR Library, the Engineering and Physics faculty, staff, and students, as well as my peers in ELD and in the North Carolina Libraries Association’s STEM-LINC section.

As I had already spent most of my professional development funds, I applied for and received the State Library of North Carolina’s (SLNC) professional development grant as well as $2,000 from the Provost’s Office to attend. The list of ELD events is available at https://sites.asee.org/eld/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2024/06/2024-ELD-Tri-Fold.pdf and I’ve captured highlights from a few of the events I attended below.

Sunday, June 23, 2024

Workshop: The Use of Generative AI Tools for Engineering Education Research, Engineering Teaching, and Engineering Learning

Speakers: Dr. Aditya Johri, George Mason University; Dr. Andrew Katz, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

This was the first time that I attended a non-ELD workshop from the overall ASEE program. Although the description did not match the actual content, the list of different prompting resources was enlightening and provided a multitude of different ways to approach prompt engineering.

Event: ASEE Division Mixer and Taste of the Town

The ASEE Division Mixer gives ASEE members an opportunity to find out about different divisions within ASEE. I joined the Engineering Libraries Division in 2019 and have been an active member ever since. As a result, I spent the entire time at the ELD table. I was able to catch up with Sarah Park and learn about her move from Duke to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The Taste of the Town was a little bit different in that there were food trucks where individuals lined up to sample ice cream sandwiches, falafel with beet hummus, barbeque sandwiches, and other tasty treats. I touched base with my namesake Denise Wetzel and other librarians from Penn State noshing on the tidbits from four food trucks. I fell out when I saw Stephanie Wettstein and Christine Goble a.k.a. Chris Chris that I just met at the Keen “Design Your Academic Life” workshop in Minneapolis earlier in June while rolling to grab food from another food truck.

Monday, June 24, 2024

Monday kicked off the first 12-hour day. I cracked up when I saw Josh Michaels from Elsevier. It appears that I am officially Josh’s welcome committee as I have been the first person he saw for the last two years at ASEE as he has entered the convention center. I was rolling from the first ELD technical session in the convention center to the next one at Hyatt Regency and saw Josh outside the glass doors about to enter, waited until he opened the door, raised my arms, and yelled “Joooooooosh!” We both fell out laughing hysterically for at least 5 minutes and he let me know that Louis who I met at last year’s conference would be my new Elsevier rep.

ELD Technical Session 1:

Papers presented:

  • Preparing Engineering Graduate Students to Engage in Scholarly Communications; Dianna Morganti and Mrs. Angie Dunn (Texas A&M University)
  • Surveying the Landscape: Exploring STEM Instructors’ Selection Criteria for Instructional Materials; Elizabeth Dawson (Northern Arizona University) and Ms. Susan Wainscott (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
  • Teaching Engineering Information Literacy with INCLUSIVE ADDIE; Paul McMonigle, Denise Amanda Wetzel, and Sara C. Kern (Pennsylvania State University)
  • Undergraduate Engineering Transfer Students and the One-Shot Library Resource Instruction: Using Nearpod to Promote Active Student Engagement; Beth Carpenter and Ms. Erin Rowley (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York)

Each of the presenters provided different nuggets to reimagine library instruction. However, Dianna presented on a course they developed for the multidisciplinary engineering graduate students at Texas A & M entitled “Research Lifecycle and Publication in Engineering.” In the course, students conducted research, developed a data management plan, determined which paper type was appropriate given their research, and submitted the final product/paper to a conference or journal to understand the cycle of scholarly communications in their specific area. It underscored the assumptions made about the research readiness of graduate students pursuing a Ph.D. and the need to find ways to train students at the beginning of their degree versus having students literally figuring things out as they go.

Event: ELD Lightening Talks

The ELD Lightening Talks are 3-minute talks for ELD members and 1-minute talks by vendors. It’s a great way to get a quick overview of ELD member’s research interests as well as new databases, tools, and/or services from the vendors.

Event: AI & Information Literacy Teaching Exchange

There were 10 of us presenting at the AI & Information Literacy Teaching Exchange on a variety of topics from using generative AI in a design course to my presentation on “The evolution of AI tools: Planning amidst accelerate change.” It was interesting to see different ways other engineering librarians taught about AI, used AI to develop instruction, and reviewed how AI was being integrated into key engineering databases.

Event: ELD Welcome Reception and Dinner (The Ecotrust Building)

The ELD Welcome Reception and Dinner was sponsored by IEEE and held at The Ecotrust Building across the water. After I assisted with the set-up and working the registration, I sat with engineering libraries from multiple universities. I knew to go and get the farro salad because it was one of the men that mentioned it was scrumptious and talked about the layers of flavor in it and the variety in textures. I was extremely impressed with the descriptive recommendation.

Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Event: ELD Business Meeting

It felt different at this year’s ELD Business Meeting. I realized during the meeting that I personally knew every award recipient. That had me reflecting on when I joined ELD in 2019, became active in the organization at the end of 2019 by joining the Bylaws Taskforce, and continued my involvement in some capacity each year ever since.

Panel: Opaque and Unreproducible Systematic Reviews – Oh No! How Librarians Can Support Evidence Synthesis Projects in Engineering

Panelists: Margaret Phillips, Jason B. Reed, Dave Zwicky (Purdue University), Erin M. Rowley (University at Buffalo), and Qianjin “Marina” Zhang (University of Iowa)

As Colleen, Kathy, and I are working on our own systematic review project to inform us on what systematic review services to provide, it was good to hear from other librarians on how they have conducted their own systematic reviews and what systematic review services they offer at their respective universities. When labs were closed during COVID, engineering faculty looked for other ways to continue their research at home. As a result, the number of systematic reviews in engineering and engineering adjacent have increased since 2020 and engineering librarians are entering the systematic review conversation.

ELD Technical Session 2

Papers presented:

  • A Qualitative Analysis of Library Chat Reference Transcripts: Examining Engineering Student Queries within the Information Seeking Process; Eric Prosser (Arizona State University)
  • Engineering Data Repositories and Open Science Compliance: A Guide for Engineering Faculty and Librarians; Adam Lindsley (Oregon State University), Dr. Shalini Ramachandran (Loyola Marymount University), Clara Llebot (Oregon State University), and Sheree Fu (California State University, Los Angeles)
  • Insights and Lessons Learned from Engineering OER Authors; Dr. Jacob Preston Moore (Pennsylvania State University, Mont Alto) and Dr. Daniel W Baker, PhD P.E. (Colorado State University)
  • Introducing Students to Research and Reproducibility with Open Science Tools; Dr. Chasz Griego, Cheng Zhang, Wenchao Hu, Ziyong Ma, and Andy Ouyang (Carnegie Mellon University)

NOTE TO SELF: Determine a time to deep dive into open science once the AI presentations, workshops, article, and book chapters are complete.

ELD Technical Session 3

Papers presented:

  • Constructing Consistent Comprehensive Searches in Large Engineering Databases—Tips and Recommendations for Literature Reviews; Dr. Sarah Over and C. Cozette Comer (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)
  • Engineering Research in Transition: Assessing Research Behavior while Adapting to Access Changes in Library Resources; Hannah Rempel, Adam Lindsley, and Taylor Ralph (Oregon State University)
  • Gray Goldmine: Charting the Course to Engineering Literature’s Treasures; Jamie M. Niehof, Sarah Barbrow, Paul Grochowski, and Luesoni Kuck (University of Michigan)
  • Kiva Construction: Tracking Indigenous Techniques Using Article Indexing and Classification—Research in Progress; Jeanette M. Mueller-Alexander (Arizona State University)

Jeannie’s presentation highlighted for me the need to conduct research first on changes in terminology chronologically as well as from the perspective of the BIPOC group and others where they resided when conducting DEI, culture, or LBGBTQ+ research. For example, when researching African American history, black, colored, negro, people of color, minority, and other terms would need to be incorporated in the search string to catch relevant resources.

Event: ELD Annual Banquet (Portland City Grill)

The ELD Annual Banquet was sponsored by Elsevier and held at Portland City Grill restaurant which was on the 30th floor of the US Bank Tower. I took a Lyft across the river and chatted with Silvia and Bernadette while dining in style and comfort.

Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Event: ELD Extended Executive Board Committee Meeting

Lisa officially passed the torch to Chelsea to take over as Chair for ELD. Feedback was requested from the attendees which consisted of ELD elected officials as well as the chairs of the committees on the overall conference. This year’s conference was well-planned and the rooms assigned to ELD good except for the 1st technical session. The room was too small for the number of attendees. There were individuals standing in the back of the room as well as out in the hall to listen to the four presentations. Let the countdown to the next ASEE conference in Montreal, Canada in 2025 begin!