By Allison Campbell-Jensen

Undergraduate students seeking guidance during the Academic Success Fair on Sept. 30 met with staff from the Toaster, English Language Learning, the Multicultural Center for Academic Excellence, the Academic Success Center, CLA, and the University Libraries.

“I’m learning about different tools and resources,” said Joey Kottke of St. Paul, “like the Peer Research Consultants to help me with a research paper.”

“The Peer Research Consultants seem like they’d be very helpful,” said Skye Maccoon. His friend DJ Scheele agreed and added: “There’s 24/7 support, too, so you can call in the middle of the night and they’ll help you with a paper.”

Held at Northrop Plaza, students learned about a number of free academic success services available to them.

Discipline-specific libraries

The map of the Libraries was appreciated, too. Until they saw it, Katie Cave and Ayan Hassan hadn’t realized that there are discipline-specific libraries. Now they want to check them out.

“There’s a lot of different libraries I didn’t know about,” said Lamee Ibrahim. “I’ll take advantage and I’ll tell my friends about them, too. It’s hard to find a quiet place to study. In Starbucks, you can’t tell them to be quiet.”

Info for first-time voters

The students also learned about voting — voter registration and more — from Jody Kempf and Alicia Kubas of the Libraries’ Civic Engagement Committee.

Isabel Hobot has just turned 18. “This will be my first time voting,” she said. “They gave me information about the local elections and some of the activism efforts. The local elections will be important.”

Jack Willis said of Kempf and Kubas: “It seems like they can answer any question I have.”

The Academic Success Fair was another of the Libraries’ efforts powering curiosity, discovery, and connection.

—Photos by Karen Carmody-McIntosh