At the Health Sciences Education Center, you’ll find three outstanding student library employees who are willing to help with any task, big or small.

Behind the front desk in the Health Sciences Library, there’s Dheya Amer, the pre-med student who, when he’s not shadowing doctors in emergency rooms, is building a community at the library.

From there, stroll over to the HSL Makerspace and Virtual Reality Studio to find Joseph Stoll, helping students with their design projects and showing them how to use 3D printers and laser cutters.

Then down on the second floor at the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine, Dyllon Lohmann is curating pop-up exhibits and window displays, and pulling materials for researchers.

The Friends of the Libraries sponsors the outstanding library student employee award, which recognizes three students for showing continuous excellence and for making unique contributions to the Libraries. To honor their accomplishments, they’ll each receive a $500 award.

The art of helping people

It was the friendliness of HSL’s front desk employees that drew Dheya Amer to the Libraries.

Amer was homesick his freshman year. He grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, until he was 13, when his family moved to Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. After years in a hot desert, he wanted to go someplace cold for college.

But moving to Minnesota meant being separated from his immediate family by hundreds of miles of land and ocean. Studying in HSL, surrounded by other pre-med and medical school students, felt comforting.

And the front desk employees – with their warm smiles, simple good mornings, and pleasant conversations – created a calm atmosphere for students who, like Amer, weren’t always having the best time between difficult classes and commitments.

“It’s like, okay we’re all in this together. We’re all in the same boat. It’s like your home away from home,” Amer said.

Starting his sophomore year, he joined HSL as a student library assistant. Like all factotum positions, Amer does anything and everything: helping patrons access computers and printers, checking out books and reshelving them, showing people how to use the Libraries’ research tools and databases, directing them to study rooms, and more.

Amer has a natural curiosity for other people. He loves talking with patrons about their projects, why they checked out a particular book, or asking alumni about their life post-graduation. Turning HSL visitors into regulars is beyond satisfying, he said.

“Building up that community at the Health Sciences Library is definitely the best part of the job,” Amer said. “You’re always learning something new from other people because you’re always exposed to a lot of people.”

“Our student employees are frequently the only ones patrons interact with at HSL, and Amer has been one of the best representatives of HSL that we’ve had,” said Carmen Elwell, an access and information services librarian.

“He has been so personable and engaging with everyone he interacts with that there have been several instances of people coming back to our service desk because they had such a good experience with him.”

Amer is graduating with his bachelor’s in biology this year, but he hopes to eventually work in emergency medicine or a specialized field; “Ophthalmology is something I’m eyeing,” he said.

Growing up, Amer wanted to be a mechanic like his uncles. His family subtly and repeatedly nudged him to become a doctor. But like most six-year-olds, he wasn’t a fan of hospitals and clinics – except for his pediatrician.

“She was probably one of the most charismatic and tolerable people who I’ve ever met,” he said. “That ignited a little fire in me, and I just carried it on into middle school.”

In his freshman year, Amer started working as an emergency medicine scribe, shadowing doctors in the ER and documenting patient care. It’s a fast-paced job, emotionally taxing and maybe a little traumatic, but essential and rewarding. Emergency medicine quickly became his top-choice.

“I grew an unwavering appreciation for what they do and thought, ‘This is all I want to do in my life,’” Amer said. “You really appreciate the art of helping people and bringing them back to a good base so they can carry on living their lives.”

Amer wants to attend the U of M’s Medical School, since he already knows many doctors here and loves Minnesota. Plus, he’d get to stay in the community he found at the Health Sciences Library.

“Working here was one of the best decisions I could ever make in my life. I’m blessed to have this opportunity,” Amer said. “It’s the best gig I could ever get.”

Making new designs, it’s a no-brainer

In high school, reading and writing came more naturally to Joseph Stoll, but he’s always been fascinated with math and science, specifically engineering. Working in the Makerspace and VR Studio at the Libraries was the perfect opportunity to synthesize his interests.

“I’ve always just really liked creating and problem solving and designing. I also liked math and science, so the Makerspace just seemed like the no-brainer way to put that all together,” Stoll said.

Stoll is a senior mechanical engineering major and product design major from Madison, Wisconsin. He’s graduating this semester and plans to stay in Minneapolis to work in engineering consulting.

He stumbled across the Makerspace and VR Studio during his sophomore year while exploring the Health Sciences Education Center, and it immediately caught his eye. It didn’t take long for him to become a specialist there, as well as an engagement outreach and community partner.

Stoll manages the day-to-day operations of each space, maintaining and repairing all the equipment, providing hands-on training and maintaining safety standards, creating guides, and leading workshops.

“It’s been the best job I could have asked for on campus. It really allows me to pursue interests and skills I have that I can’t necessarily pursue in my coursework,” he said. “And I’ve always really enjoyed teaching people and helping people.”

Mostly Stoll is an advisor, working with students from various skill levels, helping create development plans for their projects, and guiding them through processes like CNC milling or molding and casting. And sometimes he’s there just to talk through ideas.

“I really enjoy collaborating with people. That has been the best part,” Stoll said. “It’s really cool to see what students are doing.”

Last year, a student from the Carlson School of Management came to Stoll with an idea for a cup holder for a wheelchair. She had the concept but no experience with prototyping and manufacturing. So together, they created a design.

“To work with somebody who came from a completely different background … and being able to coach and watch her learn how to use the different tools that we have to offer, that’s a pretty cool experience,” he said.

Over the past two semesters, Stoll has guided over 70 students through 3D printing and laser cutting and authored a comprehensive guide to 3D printing, which has been used in over 1,000 3D-printed projects. This has led to a 50 percent increase in 3D printer usage, said Bleau.

“Joe has been a cornerstone of our Makerspace and VR Studio,” Bleau said. “With his mechanical engineering background and passion for hands-on learning, Joe has become an invaluable resource for both patrons and colleagues.”

Stoll has also been able to work on a few personal projects, particularly one for his product design class. He’s making a STEM educational kit about hydroelectricity, as part of the Mechanical Engineering Ambassadors’ middle school outreach program.

Learning technical skills at the Makerspace and VR Studio like prototyping has “definitely” helped with projects like these and with his coursework, and improved his people skills. He’d recommend future students find a space at the Libraries.

“It’s a great mix of an environment where I can be myself and relax, but then also be super productive and help a bunch of people. It’s been a phenomenal experience,” Stoll said. “I can’t say enough good things about Steven and Jade and the rest of the full-time staff here.”

Bringing the archives to life

Dyllon Lohmann had never heard of the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine before she decided to apply there, but from the job description, it sounded perfect for her.

Lohmann, of Stewartville, Minnesota, is a history and anthropology major, with a minor in museum and curatorial studies, and music.

It’s a lot of credit hours, but she wanted to take more classes than what her history major required, so she added anthropology to the mix. And since she wants to work in a museum, the minor just made sense.

“I’m very curious about learning things, and I like the type of thinking that history calls for you to do when researching for school, or just learning for fun,” she said.

Lohmann is a junior but is graduating this upcoming fall semester, and afterwards wants to work for a public history organization like the Minnesota Historical Society and its History Day Program, anything that lets her do research and learn new things.

She’s been a student assistant at WHL since the fall semester of 2023. She helps with collection management like pulling and shelving historical materials for researchers, setting up and monitoring instructional and outreach sessions, and helping patrons with research questions. But she enjoys making online and in-person exhibits the most.

“I like extensively working on an exhibit or a pop-up event for a few months, and then finally seeing it come to life, and watching all the people enjoying it as they walk by in the hallway, or come to visit our event,” Lohmann said.

If you walked past WHL last semester, you probably saw her work on the exhibit “Tools of the Trade: Uncovering the Artifacts of the Wangensteen Vault,” which featured a selection of medical artifacts, including those used in amputations and obstetrics.

“Tools of the Trade” began as a pop-up event, and Lohmann helped convert it into a window display and then into a traveling exhibit at the Bell Museum. She also worked on WHL’s “Disembodied Reembodied” exhibit, which examined medical depictions of women’s bodies.

She’d love to curate an exhibit about WHL’s collection of maps. But mostly she just enjoys the process of making exhibits: browsing a collection, learning about its holdings and histories, seeing what themes and threads emerge, and teaching people something they didn’t know before.

“Dyllon has shown high-level operational excellence beyond what we expect from our student employees,” said Anna Opryszko, WHL’s assistant curator. “This display of project management skills and long-term vision was particularly impressive to staff at the Wangensteen.”

Outside of her normal duties, Lohmann volunteers with National History Day and on the Library Student Advisory Board. She also created reference sheets to help other student employees with pulling and shelving books, and promoted WHL’s collection and exhibits on social media.

“Since her arrival, we have brought on four additional students as assistants, and for each one Dyllon has shown a willingness to model exemplary behavior for them and to mentor them,” Opryszko said.

Lohmann spends a lot of time in class thinking about how materials in the archives could help with coursework. For her curatorial practices class last spring, she made a mock exhibit using the Wangensteen’s window exhibit set-up as her foundation.

“Being able to connect my work at the Wangensteen with other classes has been super helpful,” she said. “Working here showed me that I had a lot more to learn, and that I could do so much more before I graduate.”