Research Days at Rod Library: UNI Outreach to Iowa Public and Private Schools

Since 2006 the faculty librarians at Rod Library have arranged for and conducted hundreds of research day events for thousands of Iowa public and private school students. These intensive three to six hour research events include: instruction on conducting university-level research, tours of Rod Library and UNI resources, one-on-one research consultations with a faculty librarian, and for those interested in attending UNI, informational sessions with UNI professors and coaches. Thirty-two different area schools have participated in Research Days at Rod Library. Some schools such as Independence High School, Nashua-Plainfield Middle and High Schools, and Dike New Hartford Middle School have been participating for more than ten years. The International Baccalaureate Program brings Waterloo School District students to research at the Rod Library multiple times a year. This program continues to grow both in scope and number of participants. The award-winning Nashua-Plainfield Middle and High School National History Day Team has had a long and successful partnership with Rod Library. Members of the Nashua-Plainfield National History Day Team often join the team in their early middle-school years and compete through their senior year of high school. This long tenure allows these students a long period of student-student, student-teacher, and student-librarian mentorship and is undoubtedly a key component of their many successes and their recognition at both the state and national level. Research Days at Rod Library has served as a very successful outreach program to the Iowa school communities. These events allow school teachers to expand the scope of their courses and broaden the experiences of their students. The training and skills these students learn during these Research Days help prepare them for successful college careers at UNI and other campuses across Iowa. Since fall 2017, Special Collection & University Archives has hosted a number of elementary and middle school students from across the Cedar Valley in the SC&UA reading room. There, students get hands on experience with documents and items from the Rare Books Collection, the Manuscripts Collection, and University Archives, such as historic photographs, letters written during World War II, alumni scrapbooks from the 1920s, and reports and notes from civic organizations in the 1950s. In doing so, students learn how to engage with primary source materials and how to incorporate them into their research. To date, over 140 students from Iowa schools have visited SC&UA.