The library faculty and staff in the Teaching and Learning (T&L) Department in the University Library at California State University, San Marcos work collaboratively with campus partners to create learning environments and experiences that enable students to identify as student-scholars. T&L faculty and staff foster students’ habits of mind, help build their knowledge base, and add to their skill sets in order for students to become knowledge creators. 

Student-scholars are able to navigate an increasingly complex information landscape. They are information creators who seek to contribute and share knowledge among experts in a field. Upon leaving higher education, student-scholars will have an appreciation of and ability to be engaged, contributing members of their communities.

All library faculty in T&L contribute to cultivating student-scholars in their work with first-year students, students in general education courses, and students within their majors and/or graduate programs. An understanding of the differing levels of the intellectual experiences is necessary to identify and create impactful, transformative learning opportunities. In addition, T&L faculty identify, implement, and assess a variety of pedagogical approaches and high impact practices as appropriate to the instructional setting and learning outcomes. In order to do this, the T&L faculty proactively establishes and maintains strong relationships with faculty and administration.

The library is both physically and symbolically where students go to continue the research process beyond the classroom. It is often their first foray into independent research and where they go to process and contextualize their classroom or in-the-field experience. The library must be a place that facilitates and fosters knowledge creation and helps students navigate through the inherently transformative experience of higher education.

T&L is guided by the following to achieve the aforementioned aims:

•   Students’ abilities to find and use the research/professional literature cannot develop without an understanding of the
    scholarly research process, their role in the process, and the influence this process has on the world around them. 
•   As active members of a scholarly community, students are critical evaluators, users, and creators of knowledge. 
•   The academic experience can serve as a model to illustrate how to be an engaged and contributing member of one’s local, regional, and global community.