Nicole Pankiewicz, a research assistant librarian from the U’s Salt Lake Campus, visited the University of Utah Asia Campus (UAC) on April 11.
Pankiewicz taught political science in Ohio before she started her librarian job in January 2019. She is dedicated to supporting UAC students in understanding the Marriott Library’s system.
During her visit, Pankiewicz presented to various classes to inform students about how to use the Marriott Library website and online resources. Due to UAC’s lack of curriculum and courses, UAC students may not know how to use these resources for essays or assessments.
While UAC students learn in their first-year Writing 1010 course to use the Marriott Library website to access information and sources for their coursework, they didn’t get other specific details about the website in that class.
“Everyone is so friendly, so nice,” Pankiewitz said of her visit. “[The] students are really smart and motivated. I am glad that I can support students to get information about the Marriott Library. One of my goals is to build the bridge between UAC and SLC so that SLC students can know the existence of UAC.”
Pankiewicz also emphasized, “Online resources of the Marriott Library are amazing. UAC students must take this advantage before their graduation.” She suggested that if UAC faculty members work more on promoting UAC, then SLC students can come to UAC and make a real American institution. “If SLC students know UAC more than [they do] now, they will definitely come to UAC if they want to study abroad,” Pankiewicz said. “I hope all UAC students know that there are many people, including me, who are super excited to help them.”
UAC students have their own library which is located in the Incheon Global Campus Multicomplex Building and is supported by the Incheon Global Campus Foundation. The library is provided for all students who are studying at the Incheon Global Campus. Only a few students, however, are getting the information that they need from the UAC library due to its lack of resources. Therefore, the University of Utah Asia Campus, George Mason University Korea, State University of New York Korea and Ghent University Global Campus, which are located in the Incheon Global Campus, are offering an e-library system for their students.
Although students can easily find information on the internet, UAC first-year students often don’t have a very good grasp on how references and quotations are important for their essays. “I have had an instance where a student submitted work that had already been submitted to another course, and another where a student copy-pasted directly from a website,” said Ashley Harbers, a UAC writing and rhetoric studies professor. “Those instances are rare. Generally, I encounter more minor instances of plagiarism, like failure to cite a source or poor paraphrasing.” Harbers said that she thinks that UAC students have a technical and working knowledge of plagiarism but wishes that they better understood plagiarism as an ethical issue.
“Thanks to Nicole’s lecture, we could know how to… recheck the materials or information we found,” said Jae-Gun Jung, a first-year student majoring in civil engineering. When first-year students enter the UAC in Korea, they may not feel how an understanding of plagiarism is critical to their academic career, due to the Korean educational system. Before they enter the university, Korean students are used to directly copying and pasting from other sources to submit their assignments.
Pankiewicz also presented a special lecture in U835 for psychology majors on April 25. The main topic of the class was on literature reviews and students could have a productive conversation with Pankiewicz during her special lecture. Six students attended the class and shared their research projects to get Pankiewicz’s advice on how to find proper information for their research projects.
Pankiewicz stayed at UAC until May 3 and plans to visit UAC each semester to help students learn how to use the U’s sources effectively.