The University Libraries are pleased to announce that Noel Kopriva has been appointed as Engineering Librarian and Head of Engineering Library & Technology Commons!
Noel has earned a Bachelor’s in English and two Master’s degrees in Library and Information Science and English from the University of Missouri. She has been working for the University of Missouri Libraries for over three and half years as the Librarian to Textile and Apparel Management and to the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. She previously served as the Agriculture Librarian at West Virginia University for seven years.
This past year, Noel has been serving as the Interim Head of the Engineering Library & Technology Commons and we are happy to have her continue her work in a permanent position.
The University of Missouri Libraries will never send you an email asking you to click on a link to activate your library account. Your library account is activated automatically based on your status with either the Registrar (as a student) or in myHR (as an employee).
Unfortunately, phishing scams sometimes target university email accounts with false claims and links to gather users’ account information. If you receive such a message about your library account, DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK. If you have questions about your library account, you can contact a librarian at http://libraryanswers.missouri.edu
The Division of IT provides additional information on keeping your account safe from such attacks at MakeITSafe: https://www.umsystem.edu/makeitsafe/
The key to success when looking for job opportunities is to adequately prepare. There’s no “wingin’ it” when it comes to your future career. Those individuals you may be networking with on Wednesday, February 7th at the Engineering Career Fair may very well be the people who help you toward getting your dream job.
Fortunately, Mizzou Libraries and the College of Engineering have some great resources to ace your first networking event:
“It feels cliché to say, but it’s the truth. Not only is our campus absolutely gorgeous, the people that are there make you feel as though you can succeed the moment you meet them.” As an electrical engineering student, he knew the non-traditional path to medical school he chose wouldn’t be easy, but Mizzou offered him the resources in order to follow his dream and excel right from the beginning.
These days, you can find Alex, like many engineering students, in the Engineering Library, a place he credits as being instrumental to his success as a Mizzou student. The library offers invaluable collaborative space for students studying various engineering specialties and resources on cutting edge innovation in the field.
“My favorite thing about the Engineering Library is the space it provides to engineering students near our classes, peers, and professors. Although the Lafferre renovation has provided more study rooms, they are always occupied, and often not even by engineering students. The library allows students to study individually, work on a group project, or prepare for an exam with friends. As engineering spans a wide range of topics, everyone working in the same place is helpful when there are assignments requiring the intersection of multiple engineering disciplines.”
Through his regular library use, Alex became passionate about the libraries, ultimately serving as the 2016-2017 chair of the University Libraries Student Advisory Council (ULSAC). As chair, he advocated for students’ resource needs, something he says is vital to any Mizzou student experience. Students know what they need to succeed, and ULSAC wants to make sure student voices are heard.
ULSAC visiting the Kenan Science Library at UNC-Chapel Hill. The council visited the Research Triangle to help inspire the Student Vision Report
Over the past two years, ULSAC has been hard at work collecting data from students, developing a student vision for the library in order to make sure all students, regardless of their involvement or backgrounds, are supported by the University Libraries.
Mizzou is what you make of it, and not only will Alex remember the energy of the Mizzou Vs. Mississippi State football game (his favorite Mizzou memory), he will also remember how personally and academically supportive the Mizzou community was. “I cannot wait to come back to Mizzou one day and see students from other universities’ student library councils touring our libraries to bring back ideas for their schools and I am very thankful for the opportunity to have been the Chair of such an amazing council of student leaders that made this possible.”
Civil Engineering student Elgin Burton decided to attend Mizzou after meeting with recruiters at his high school in East St. Louis, Illinois, deciding to visit, and “falling in love with the campus.” Once he arrived, Burton got involved in a number of organizations. He is currently the president of the national award-winning Timber Bridge Team. He is also T.O.R.C.H (Technical Outreach Community Help) chair for Mizzou’s chapter the National Society of Black Engineers. Once he graduates in May 2018, Burton plans on a career in transportation engineering.
Burton says, “The Engineering Library is a huge resource to me in more ways than one. The obvious one is that there are books here that I can use for all of my classes. The one I just turned in today, I used for my class all semester.”
Burton also likes that that the Engineering Library is a gathering place for his classmates. “This is a place where I do a lot of my studying, so I meet a lot of people here who are also studying the same things. A lot of collaboration happens here. Whenever I am working on a project, we usually meet in the Engineering Library. If I am struggling with a problem, I can usually find people who can help me solve it here. Or I’ll see somebody in my class, introduce myself, and ask how they are solving the problem. I meet many people in different ways at the Engineering Library. There is not another space in the building like that. ”
One of Burton’s favorite Mizzou memories is getting to know the libraries. “it was almost an oddly intimate relationship I had with Ellis and other libraries like the Math Library and [the Engineering Library], because I was completely new to the experience—I was new to Columbia, Missouri, I was new to college, I was new to a research library of that size—and over the course of my college career, Ellis Library especially became my home away from my apartment, where I feel most comfortable on campus.”
If there was one piece of advice that Burton could give to future students, Burton says, it would be to use your resources. He acknowledges that “it can be difficult to tell new students to take advantage of your resources because they might not know about them, but the best thing to do is just to open up to opportunities and be willing to try new things. Getting involved in organizations relevant to your degree gives you contextual information and it gives you a sense of purpose. ‘I am here doing this. I am here making this change.’”
“You leave a lasting impact on the university. It also leaves a lasting impact on you.”
On Wednesday December 27th, Lafferre Hall experienced a water leak which flooded into the Engineering Library & Technology Commons. Most of the damage to the library was cosmetic and occurred near our entrance. We had number of fans running to dry out the walls and carpet. The Engineering Library is open presently, however, computer access and printing is unavailable for the time being. Carpet cleaning and ceiling tile replacement is scheduled for later this week.
We will send out an update when computer access is restored.
Dr. Carlos Sun is a professor in the Civil Engineering Department and the Associate Director of the multi-disciplinary Transportation Infrastructure Center. He has specialized in transportation engineering for over twenty-five years. His research interests include safety, work zones, simulators, Intelligent Transportation Systems, geometric design, traffic analysis, legal issues, and STEM..
One of the courses Carlos teaches is a graduate course on transportation engineering. This course serves as an introduction to research in the field of transportation engineering so Carlos asked Noël Kopriva, the interim Engineering Librarian, to introduce the students to the research tools and databases they will be using for the rest of their graduate work.
Noël Kopriva
“Noël presented a special workshop on performing literature searches for our transportation engineering seminar. In this workshop, she presented various tools and techniques to empower graduate students to conduct exhaustive literature reviews of critical transportation topics. She covered various search databases and the associated query mechanisms. The students really appreciated the dynamic workshop which was filled with hand-on exercises based on the field of transportation engineering. Her insights probably saved our students countless hours by avoiding common pitfalls associated with poor searching methodology.”
Cycle of Success is the idea that libraries, faculty, and students are linked; for one to truly succeed, we must all succeed. The path to success is formed by the connections between University of Missouri Libraries and faculty members, between faculty members and students, and between students and the libraries that serve them. More than just success, this is also a connection of mutual respect, support, and commitment to forward-thinking research.
If you would like tosubmityour own success story about how the libraries have helped your research and/or work, please use the Cycle of Success form.
The Engineering Library & Technology Commons will be closed this upcoming Saturday, December 2nd, for a scheduled electrical outage in Lafferre Hall. This power outage will affect the entire building and it will occur from approximately 7:00am to 7:00pm. The library will resume normal hours on Sunday, December 3rd.
