As the founder and director of the SMU Libraries Internship Program, I established one of the premier training grounds for aspiring academic librarians. Grounded in the Legitimate Peripheral Practitioner model, this program offers Library and Information Science graduate students hands-on experience in teaching, research support, and user experience projects, equipping them with the skills needed to thrive in academic librarianship.
With a focus on individualized career development, I designed a dynamic curriculum that evolves annually to address emerging trends in the field. This program has guided over 30 graduate students and early career professionals, many of whom have gone on to secure positions at leading universities and have received national recognition, including ALA’s Emerging Leaders Award, Kaleidoscope, and Spectrum Scholarships. This program is designed not just to prepare interns for their first job, but to lay the foundation for long-term professional success.
Links
A paper about the approach of the program: “Becoming Legit: Reimaging Instructor Support Through Communities of Practice” By Laura Dimmit and Jonathan McMichael, LOEX, 2016
Educator. Designer. Librarian. 
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