It’s commonly believed that women’s athletics didn’t begin at ������Ƶ until the 1970s. This misconception likely stems from the fact that women’s intercollegiate sports officially began in 1971, but records of women’s participation in athletics at ������Ƶ go as far back as 1913. These early teams were likely intramural and interclass teams, like the women’s basketball team pictured from ������Ƶ’s first yearbook from 1913. Little documentation of women’s athletics was saved up until the 1970s, and throughout ������Ƶ’s history there has been much less emphasis on the importance of women’s athletics as compared to men’s. This has erased valuable historical knowledge on the many contributions women have made to athletics on campus.

In the artifacts and documents that ������Ƶ has retained, the women’s basketball team is the most well-documented. Thus, the exhibit focuses heavily on the history of women’s basketball, starting in 1913. Moving into the 1970s, the Yow sisters—Kay, Debbie, and Susan—all got their start at ������Ƶ. Debbie and Susan Yow were members of ������Ƶ’s inaugural women’s basketball team, while Kay Yow was ������Ƶ’s first women’s basketball coach, leading the team to success between 1971 and 1975. Each of the Yows would go on to become celebrated head women’s basketball coaches at universities across the country, and Kay and Susan would coach the 1988 Olympic women’s team to gold. Kay and Susan were inducted into the ������Ƶ Athletics Hall of Fame in 1986 and 1993 respectively, and Debbie was awarded the ������Ƶ Medallion in 2021. All three sisters were inducted to the NC Sports Hall of Fame between 1989 and 2016.

Another key figure in ������Ƶ women’s basketball history was Venessa Corbett, a star basketball player between 1977 and 1982. During her time at ������Ƶ she recorded 2,430 career points, a school record that has gone untouched by any athlete since. She was also inducted into the ������Ƶ Athletic Hall of Fame in 1992.

The exhibit also highlights the women’s soccer and volleyball teams, with two autographed artifacts from the 1999 soccer team and the 2003 volleyball team. Both teams participated in conference championships, with women’s soccer winning the Big South Conference Championship final, marking their first participation in in NCAA National Championships in 1999. The volleyball team finished in the top five of the 2003 Southern Conference championship.

This exhibit offers just a small insight into the long and complex history of women’s athletics at ������Ƶ.

For more information on how to preserve records, documents, artifacts and more, please contact University Archives and Special Collections at belkarchives@elon.edu.

These days, February brings a wealth of opportunities for learning, reflection and advocacy around Black history and the legacies of anti-Black racism on ������Ƶ’s campus and around the country. While you’re likely to see pop-up exhibits around campus this month that utilize materials from the ������Ƶ Archives & Special Collection, this seems a particularly appropriate time of year to remind the campus of the records, papers and artifacts related to ������Ƶ’s Black history that the Archives makes available to students, faculty, staff and the public year-round.

Online Resources 

Not all of the materials in the ������Ƶ Archives & Special Collections are available online. Still, there are several small collections and exhibits that represent a good start to exploring ������Ƶ’s Black history.

Since its inception in 2018, the Committee on ������Ƶ History & Memory has worked closely with the Archives to uncover hidden, unsung, and sometimes difficult histories on campus, including the underdeveloped stories of Black contributions and Black excellence at ������Ƶ. After the release of the committee’s 2020 report (see the Recommended Reading section below), the Archives created a special online collection that brings together some of the resources used to write the report, many of which document ������Ƶ’s Black history.

�����Ի� Freedom Footprints—The Archives also created an interactive map exhibit that connects the campus’s physical spaces with the stories told in the 2020 Committee on ������Ƶ History and Memory report, allowing users to walk through Black history on campus. In the summer 2024, the original tour was adapted to create a thought-provoking Juneteenth walking tour titled “Freedom Footprints.” 

This student project, researched and created by Emily Lange ’21, a 2019 recipient of the Lumen Prize, documents the origins of the African and African American Studies at ������Ƶ minor. Starting with the first request for a Black studies course in 1969 and working through Wilhelmina Boyd’s successful launch of the minor in 1994, the exhibit highlights the importance of student advocacy in the long fight for academic recognition on campus.

This collection currently houses only a few interviews germane to Black history on ������Ƶ’s campus, but watch this space for new resources (see Expanding the Collections, below).

�����Ի� ��DZ����𳦳پ��DzԲ�—A sampling of our total photographic and video holdings is available in our online collections and are searchable there, but we have many more AV resources in our collections. Contact an archivist at belkarchives@elon.edu for more information.

Physical Collections 

Within our physical collections, we are always working to identify entry points to Black history and the Black experience on our campus and beyond. What follows is a list of materials we know to be relevant to understanding Black history at ������Ƶ. These can be accessed in the Archives Reading Room at Belk Library. Email belkarchives@elon.edu for more information.

Books and Publications—Moments in ������Ƶ’s Black history have been captured in a range of campus publications, including campus newspapers like the Maroon and Gold (1920-1970), the Veritas Liberated Press (1968-1970), Broadside Today (1972-1973), and the Pendulum (1974-ongoing); in the Phi Psi Cli yearbook (1913-ongoing); administrative publications like the ������Ƶ College/University fact books; newsletters like Black Underground; in original research like L’Tanya Richmond’s master’s thesis, “������Ƶ’s Black History: A Story to Be Told” (2005); and in recent campus reports like the Black Lumen report (2023). Many of these publications have been digitized and are now fully searchable online.

EUA012 ������Ƶ Athletics Collection, 1891-ongoing (13 archival boxes, 18 bound volumes, plus unprocessed material)—Athletics represented a pathway to join the ������Ƶ community for Black student-athletes, and Black athletes were at the forefront of the fight for equity on campus from the late 1960s onward. This collection includes a variety of materials and documents that relate to the history of athletics at ������Ƶ.

EUA040 ������Ƶ Biographical Files—This collection includes biographical information about individuals associated with ������Ƶ and the Town of ������Ƶ, including some of the founders of the institution, faculty and staff, and alumni. Documents within each folder contain a variety of items, such as newspaper clippings, correspondences, essays and memoirs, and other types of printed materials.

EUA041 ������Ƶ Files (General and Administrative)— This collection includes general information files about departments on campus, events, courses, organizations and other miscellaneous subjects associated with ������Ƶ. The files are arranged alphabetically and span eight file cabinet drawers. For example, the “Black Cultural Society/Black Student Union” folder was cited in the 2020 report by the Committee on ������Ƶ History & Memory.

EUA095 Gospel Choir Collection, 1980-ongoing (three archival boxes)—The Gospel Choir at ������Ƶ was founded in 1977 by a group of African American students in search of fellowship on campus. The Gospel Choir Collection includes documents about the organization from 1980 to the present day. Documents include materials such as correspondence, receipts or financial records, advertising flyers, programs and membership listings.

EUA098 African and African American Studies Collection, 1969-ongoing (four archival boxes)— This collection consists of materials relating to the founding and continued work of the African and African-American Studies Program at ������Ƶ.

EUA134 Center for Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity Education (CREDE) Collection, 1992-ongoing (one archival box)—This collection pertains to multicultural affairs across ������Ƶ’s campus, including the creation of the CREDE, as well as some information on the African and African-American Studies minor.

EUA155 Anti-Racism at ������Ƶ Collection, 2020-ongoing (one archival box)— This is a collection of correspondence, news articles, and reports related to anti-racism efforts at ������Ƶ, as well as events that took place at ������Ƶ and in Alamance County in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020. The collection includes the report of the Committee on ������Ƶ History & Memory released in October 2020.

EUA159 Black Excellence Awards Collection, 1993- ongoing (one archival box)—This collection encompasses the history of the Black Excellence Awards from their creation in 1993 to the present day. It includes both programs and invitations from past Black Excellence Awards ceremonies and news articles discussing the Black Excellence Awards. Particularly of note are the programs and newspaper coverage relating to the inaugural award ceremony in 1993.

MSS005 William H. Maness Collection, 1957-2000 (two archival boxes)—The William H. Maness collection contains a variety of materials relating to his tenure as a judge in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as issues of racism, social inequality, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the strides people took to promote the well-being and equality of the human race. 

Expanding the Collections 

Like all archives, the ������Ƶ Archives & Special Collections represents the goals, values and priorities of its participants over the years of its existence. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the history and experiences of those who identified as Black or African American were ignored, elided, or just plain excluded from official archives and records—and ������Ƶ was no different. Within the EUA&SC, we’re committed to making the Archives a place that reflects the histories of the whole community. In the hopes of filling in some of those “archival silences,” we are always seeking materials that speak to the Black and African American experience on campus. In particular, we plan to begin an oral history program within the Archives that will focus on recovering Black voices, with input from the Committee on ������Ƶ History & Memory. We also must acknowledge that, in some cases, evidence and information has simply been lost to history. It’s a difficult truth that keeps us motivated in our efforts to build a more equitable and accurate archive for the future.

References and Recommended Reading 

Alvarez, Shaunta. “������Ƶ’s First Black History Celebration.” Under the Oaks (blog). February 1, 2012. .

Black Lumen Project. The Black Experience at ������Ƶ: A Black Lumen Project Report. ������Ƶ, NC: ������Ƶ, 2023. .

Committee on ������Ƶ History and Memory. Report and Recommendations. 2020. ������Ƶ, NC: ������Ƶ, 2022. .

Richmond, L’Tanya. “������Ƶ’s Black History: A Story to Be Told.” Master’s thesis, Duke University, 2005. ������Ƶ Archives and Special Collections, ������Ƶ, NC.

The is the annual conference for the American Library Association’s newest division, Core: Leadership, Infrastructures, Futures. It brings together decision makers and practitioners in libraries that focus on the following areas:

• Access & Equity
• Buildings & Operations
• Leadership & Management
• Metadata & Collections
• Preservation
• Technology

Patrick Rudd, coordinator of library instruction and outreach services and Shannon Tennant, coordinator of library collections, presented some of their recent work in a session titled “Investigating Information Privilege with First-Year College Students: A Partnership Between Librarians and Teaching Faculty”.

Rudd and Tennant’s presentation discussed the partnership between the two librarians and teaching faculty on a DEI grant to explore issues of information privilege with students in first-year foundation classes. In these class sessions they investigate existing systems of information collection and dissemination, with the premise that these systems are often inequitable and potentially harmful. The instruction sessions inform students on how data algorithms play into information distribution, the reasons for missing and marginalized perspectives in published research and privilege in access to information. The presentation demonstrated how their instruction sessions have made ������Ƶ students more successful in finding and evaluating information.

Tennant also examined how her experience with the grant directly relates to her role in library collections, since technical services librarians at other institutions do not often participate in library instruction. This work allowed her to share her expertise in electronic resource acquisition and collection development with students and teaching faculty, as well as show how the principles of in metadata and classification are relevant to all library users.

Open access (OA) is a movement in academic publishing that makes scholarly content available free of charge and allows scholarship to be disseminated as widely as possible. Authors retain their intellectual property rights, and scholars across the world have immediate access to new research. Learn more on the Belk Library’s .

Belk Library is hosting a on Oct. 23 at 10 a.m. titled “Community over Commercialization: Open Access and Publishing for All.” Learn about open access publishing, opportunities for OA funding available through the library and hear from a panel of faculty who have published OA.

As part of the library’s membership in the Carolina Consortium, the library has agreements with several large publishers (Wiley, Sage, Springer Nature, Cambridge University Press and others) that allow researchers to publish their articles open access for free or at a reduced cost. In 2023, seven articles were published by ������Ƶ researchers through these deals, saving the university over $21,000.

During the session on Oct. 23, Jessie Moore, professor of English and director of the Center for Engaged Learning; Brian Pennington, professor of religious studies and director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society; and Jen Hamel, professor of biology and associate director of Undergraduate Research will share their experiences publishing open access and answer questions about the process.

Please  where there will be coffee and donuts available for all attendees. The library will also be tabling at College Coffee on Oct. 22, so stop by to test your knowledge of OA and win some swag.

������Ƶ students, faculty and staff can claim free access to The Wall Street Journal thanks to a new subscription from Belk Library. This subscription includes unlimited access to WSJ.com, WSJ mobile apps, curated newsletters and podcasts.

Get started in just a few quick steps:

• Visit . This will lead you to the ������Ƶ SSO login page–sign in using your ������Ƶ credentials.
• On the next page, from the dropdown menu that reads “account type”, select your classification (faculty, staff, or student).
• Enter your first name, last name and your ������Ƶ email address (if not already populated). Enter a password, check the box agreeing to the terms of service,�����Ի� click “Create”.
• Once you’ve created your account, you will receive an email that confirms your account. You can now access WSJ via the website, or download their app.
• Note: If you have a personal WSJ account, call 1-800-JOURNAL to cancel and switch over to ������Ƶ’s school-sponsored subscription.

Members of the ������Ƶ community can also claim subscription access to the �����Ի� the .

������Ƶ and Belk Library’s contributions to the conference ranged from topics including AI in library instruction, intellectual freedom, student success collaborations, cultivating healthy workplace environments, and more. Find each presentation title and a brief description below:

In “A Chatbot Did Not Write This: The Library’s Role in AI Instruction,” Health and Life Sciences Librarian Jesse Akman, Engineering and Physical Science Librarian Ellen Cline and Outreach and Marketing Librarian Alison Van Norman discussed Belk Library’s partnership with other offices across campus to develop a series of workshops aimed at demystifying AI, addressing faculty concerns, and offering ideas for using AI constructively in the classroom and in research practices. The library is a natural place and partner for AI education, but what exactly do those roles look like? With an issue as broad as AI, how do we identify topics the library should or should not cover? Who might we partner with for a more comprehensive AI education experience? These questions, as well as strategies for moving beyond the technology itself and towards a more holistic understanding were introduced in this session.

Digital Collections & Systems Librarian Shaunta Alvarez presented with a panel on Demystifying Careers in Technical Services: Getting a job, learning the job, growing in the job with librarians from Appalachian State University, Cabarrus County Public Library, Meredith College, Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, and UNC-Greensboro. The panel featured technical services professionals discussing what it takes to get a job in cataloging, e-resources, acquisitions, and more. Hiring managers, accidental tech services librarians and recent job-seekers from public and academic libraries shared their insights and advice on this often overlooked and misunderstood area of librarianship.

From Co-location to Collaboration: Connecting with Building Partners for Student Success Programming from Outreach & Marketing Librarian Alison Van Norman�����Ի� Executive Director of the Koenigsberger Learning Center & Director of Learning Assistance James Holsinger described the partnership between staff in Belk Library and Learning Assistance to create academic recovery workshops for first-year students on academic probation. The goals of this collaboration were two-fold: first, to find new and creative ways to not only reach ������Ƶ’s most at-risk students but also to convince them to attend a set of workshops that were not compulsory; and second, to create content for academic success workshops that motivates, inspires, and helps students find their academic footing. The presenters shared workshop outcomes, successes, and challenges in this interactive session, encouraging those in attendance to share their own experiences.

Book challenges and censorship continue to be increasingly significant in North Carolina, with attempts to remove or restrict access to books in school, academic, and public libraries. In Intellectual Freedom in NC – What Can YOU Do?, Director of the Curriculum Resources Center Allison Bryan provided an overview of the current state of book challenges and censorship in North Carolina, including changing trends in challenges. She also discussed statewide advocacy efforts and explored strategies that librarians can use to fight censorship in their own communities.

Coordinator of Library Instruction & Outreach Services Patrick Rudd�����Ի� Outreach & Marketing Librarian Alison Van Norman joined librarians from UNC-Greensboro and Wake Forest University for a panel titled Outreach Programming in Academic Libraries: What’s New, What Works, and What We’ve Learned Along the Way! Successful outreach programming requires planning, execution, and evaluation. Libraries must identify target audiences and their needs, develop compelling programming/events that meet those needs, and measure the impact of their outreach efforts to inform future programming decisions. By engaging with their communities in meaningful and impactful ways, libraries can enhance their value and relevance to their institutions and beyond. The panelists discussed various outreach efforts at their three academic libraries, hosting various events that attract a range of audiences and foster deeper connections with the communities they serve, describing programming that can be applied to any type of library.

Student Success Librarian Carlos Grooms�����Ի� librarians from North Carolina A&T State University discussed work done with A&T’s F.D. Bluford Library to elevate conversations surrounding the historical practice of redlining communities in Social Justice and Libraries: Strengthening East Greensboro through archival collections and historical programs. In 2021, the Bluford library received a grant from North Carolina Humanities and began a series of events and talks exploring the history of redlining and discriminatory housing practices in Greensboro. The panel discussed their experiences working on this project, things they learned, the success of the community programs, and more.

Dean of the Carol Grotnes Belk Library Joan Ruelle presented on a panel on Surviving to Thriving: Cultivating Healthy Workplace Environments with librarians from Orange County Public Library, Wake County Public Libraries, and Wake Forest University. Much of the advice that’s given to employees regarding mental health is based on solutions to burnout, coping strategies, and methods to mitigate stress and frustration caused by their workplaces. While this advice helps employees survive, organizations that strive to create healthy workplace environments can focus on harm reduction at the source, allowing team members to thrive. Panelists shared their experiences as both employees and leaders, discussing what they have learned about creating functional workplace cultures, meeting employee needs, and providing support to staff and colleagues.

In When You’re the New Kid: Managing Career Transitions with Intention, Student Success Librarian Carlos Grooms�����Ի� Kate Silton (Electronic Resources Librarian at Wake Forest University) discussed their experiences starting new jobs in 2022 after being colleagues at NC A&T State University for over a decade. After many years in the same workplace, the idea of pursuing new opportunities and trying something new can be daunting and can raise big questions about your career path and goals. The presenters shared from their personal experiences transitioning to new roles and institutions, considerations for library professionals interested in making a change, tips for acclimating to a new library, and suggestions for ways that libraries can successfully onboard new employees.

In addition to the contributions to the 2023 NCLA Conference, Carlos Grooms also serves as the chair of one of NCLA’s sections: Roundtable on Ethnic and Minority Concerns (REMCo). REMCo serves as a voice for NCLA’s ethnic and minority members and strives to improve and initiate services for the ethnic communities that all libraries serve.

The lightning talks will be from:

Jacqueline DeBrew, Nursing

Show Me Your Story:  A community organization that provides transitional housing to people experiencing homelessness was the site for a qualitative study which utilized interviews and Photovoice to understand what activities performed by residents increases self-determination in managing their health, what barriers exist, as well as what nurses can do to support them.

Evan Gatti, Art History

Evan will share work completed as part of the Multispectral Imaging Collective Videntes (Latin, plural for the act of seeing). Over the last few years, Videntes has imaged six of the seven medieval scrolls preserved in the Museo del Tesoro del Duomo e Archivio Capitolare in Vercelli, Italy. Each scroll preserves a different mode of teaching or learning from their original medieval contexts and now, each presents a unique technical problem to their modern interpreters. Gatti’s work, specially, focuses on what we can see better through multispectral analysis using an object that does not demonstrate clear damage or intentional reuse. She will share how the process of slow (or layered) looking encouraged by multispectral analysis offers insights into medieval drawing and copying practices and what the implications of those findings could be for expanded use of multispectral analysis in art history.

Jessica Merricks, Biology

Reflective writing is an underutilized strategy in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) curricula for a variety of reasons, yet it may deepen disciplinary understanding and shape students’ cognitive, social, and emotional perspectives. Jessica’s research focuses on how to help students reflect more deeply on their learning process and their relationship with science content. She will also share results from a newly designed rubric for evaluating students’ written reflections.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Are you interested in participating in a future Faculty Scholarship Lunch & Learn, or would you like to nominate a colleague? Let us know using

The presentation shared Rudd, Tennant and Stein’s experiences with collaborating on a scaffolded approach to teaching data literacy in ENG 1100.

Rudd and Tennant co-taught multiple library sessions with Stein’s ENG 1100 sections focused on the development of research strategies to locate, interpret and use qualitative and quantitative data. Throughout the semester, students practiced how to effectively use and represent data in a persuasive argument. By the end of the semester students could position data sources in conversation through writing and infographics. The presentation discussed the instructors’ approaches, student responses and next steps.

(TILC) is a conference dedicated to the exploration of innovative practices related to teaching and learning in libraries. The conference is sponsored by the Virginia Library Association, William & Mary Libraries, Longwood University’s Greenwood Library, Radford University Libraries and Hollins University Library. TILC grew from a regional Libraries Exchange Observation project in Virginia, and the conference is now is attended by instruction librarians and library partners from across the country.

• Rebecca Kohn, provost and vice president of Academic Affairs
• Larry Mellinger, interim director for the Center for Leadership and two students for HealthEU
• Tiffany Morris, associate professor of nursing and inaugural department chair of the Department of Nursing
• Norma Rodriguez, assistant director of learning assistance and two student tutors for Learning Assistance

Also on display this week are some new additions to our physical book collection. Stop by the book display next to the Belk entrance to check out some new reading materials!

With 50 faculty and staff in attendance to learn and share ideas surrounding “The Wave of Artificial Intelligence,” participants asked thought-provoking questions and offered nuanced viewpoints on how this technology might be used at ������Ƶ and across the country.

The goals of this session included:

• increasing our knowledge about AI and ChatGPT
• brainstorming opportunities for partnerships with ChatGPT during the learning process
• reflecting on strategies for how we can support students with navigating the use of AI in higher education
• building a community for further exploration of topics related to AI and ChatGPT

The session was structured so that each participating office could share information on how ChatGPT relates to their specific discipline, including potential ways to partner with the tool, and any potential issues that could arise from its use. Dhvani Toprani, assistant director of learning design and support in TLT opened the session by giving some basic information about what ChatGPT is, guiding the group through a brief overview of the ChatGPT system, looking closely at the acronym “GPT” and delving further into how the system learns. Kate Moss, Instructional Technologist in TLT then gave some important context on privacy and data security relating to ChatGPT.

Several librarians then placed ChatGPT in the context of libraries and information science. Jesse Akman, health and life sciences librarian, and Ellen Cline, engineering and physical sciences librarian, discussed how ChatGPT might impact information literacy, copyright, research support and citations. Attendees raised several perceptive questions, such as “does ChatGPT cite its sources” and “can ChatGPT be used as a research tool to direct students to other sources?” The short answer to these questions with the way ChatGPT currently operates is no, but these are important questions to think about when considering how students will use this tool and how it might be integrated into the classroom.

Research naturally segues into writing, which brought Paula Rosinski, director of Writing Across the University, into the discussion. Rosinski discussed the many ways that writing is affected by these new technologies, giving meaningful suggestions for how to work with these tools. Rosinski encouraged attendees to assess their own comfort with AI text generators and establish boundaries with students around these tools, to focus on best practices in writing instruction, and to focus on writing as a process. These focal points value student participation, help students learn, and discourage plagiarism and misuse of AI text generators.

Jill McSweeney, assistant director of CATL, and Jen Uno, Associate Director of CATL later responded to an attendee’s question regarding how we can use ChatGPT to amplify engaged learning. McSweeney gave examples of how students can debate with ChatGPT to locate flaws or gaps in its argument, and to grade an essay that was written by ChatGPT. They also discussed some ways that new technologies like ChatGPT can enhance teaching. McSweeney stressed the importance of supporting students’ academic integrity, defining ChatGPT’s presence in the classroom, and the need for contextualized assessments.

In closing, attendees were reminded that:

• AI can support and augment the learning process
• we should have clear and honest conversations with students and be transparent about AI use in the learning process
• we should continue using intentional, authentic, and student-centric assessments

Conversations around ChatGPT and AI will be ongoing as the technology advances further and becomes more prevalent. We plan to provide more space later this spring to continue these important conversations, and to continue building a community around further exploration into these topics.

For more information, check out these resources:

Bali, M. (Feb 3, 2023). . Reflecting Allowed. [Blog].

Bjork, C. (Feb 9, 2023). . The Conversation.

CESE NSW. (2023). .

Cummings, L. (2023). .

D’Agostino, S., (Jan 31, 2023). . Inside Higher Ed.

Hardman, P. (Jan 26, 2023). . The Learning Science Newsletter.

University of Michigan. (2023). .

Van Dis. E. et al. (Feb 3, 2023). . Nature.

Watkins, R. (2022). . Medium.