Brodsky Honored with Chamber's Excellence in Education Award

Karen Brodsky, a librarian and educator at SSU since 1997, has been honored by the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce with its Excellence in Education Award. Nominator Suzanne Tocyski, an SSU French professor, said in a letter to the Chamber:

" Ms. Brodsky’s work in the area of library instruction and, more generally, as a librarian and educator at SSU, has been exemplary, invigorating students and faculty alike thanks to her innovative way of thinking beyond just the library to the “world of information” and the remarkably creative programs and techniques born of that thought. From her design of an interactive library introduction program called “Murder in the Stacks” to her extensive work with the EOP Academy in the “Love Your Library” program and her presentations at SSU’s summer orientation sessions, Brodsky is committed to cultivating a profound appreciation of the library’s resources and the complexity of information beginning with all freshmen. Brodsky’s ground-level work with freshmen will surely – by their own testimony – resonate with those students throughout their university careers. By sowing the seeds of Information Competence at the very beginning of students’ university careers, Ms. Brodsky is not just providing a tool or an approach, she is changing the entire way all SSU students perceive learning itself.…Brodsky’s vision for library instruction at SSU is at once fabulously far-reaching and yet also eminently practical.”

SSU’s Information Competence Coordinator for the CSU Chancellor’s Office, Brodsky has earned several grants designed to foster partnerships between library faculty and instructional faculty. This work has completely altered how faculty incorporate research assignments into their courses, from the broadly effective “Information Competence in the Freshman Seminar” to the “Reaching Ahead, Teaching Ahead” a project for future language arts teachers, and, most recently, a two-year grant, “Information Competence in a Global World: An Integrated Approach to the Freshman Year Experience” which will enhance Information Competence teaching and learning in SSU’s pilot Freshman Year Experience program.

Brodsky also works extensively as Library Gallery Director and as coordinator of many innovative lecture series. Brodsky was promoted to Associate Librarian in 2004. She received her Master’s in Library Science from Simmons College in Boston in 1997 and her BA from UC Berkeley in English Literature in 1987.