Meredith Saba

Biography

Meredith K. Saba is Head of the Access, Research, and Instructional Services Department at the Hunter Library. She manages all the personnel, functions, and services within these public service areas for Western Carolina University's students, faculty, and staff to access and utilize for their teaching and research. Prior to this, Saba spent 4.5 years working overseas at the American University in Cairo (Egypt) as an instruction/reference librarian and department coordinator, where she managed several large-scale projects for the library and university, and was the library's liaison to the School of Sciences and Engineering. Before moving to Egypt, Meredith was a STEM librarian at the University of California, Davis for many years, teaching students and faculty how to conduct library research, write, and manage their citations in the life and physical sciences. She also previously worked in the libraries at Indiana University, Bloomington and at Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Additionally, she has experience working in the International Office at the University of California, San Francisco as a program coordinator for international student and scholar services. Saba has an English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching certificate from a language institute in Oxford, UK and spent a year teaching Academic English to college students in China before pursuing her second Master's degree in International Education and then her PhD in Information Studies. She has traveled to over 80 countries worldwide and has lived and worked abroad in 5 countries outside the US, including an overseas stint at the United Nations Library in Vienna, Austria. Her doctoral research focuses on the globalization of higher education, strategic planning at US universities related to internationalization and online education, and what university libraries are doing to support these initiatives in the global, digital, and informational age.

Education

Teaching Interests

Information Literacy (IL) is the ability to successfully search, find, and easily access all different types of information worldwide (i.e. data, statistics, reports, papers, reviews, etc. on any topic), then evaluate that information for quality (trustworthiness) by testing its accuracy, reliability, and authenticity, and then taking that information and applying it to your discipline to make important decisions (for you or others), and/or to solve problems. These are lifelong skills that can be taught and applied to any academic course of study (major), career, or in one's personal life. IL skills are interdisciplinary and they are an integral part of creating competent, well-rounded civic and globally-minded college graduates in the 21st century; students who will learn how to navigate the complex digital world of online information (overload), and who can be trained to tackle various issues within their disciplines based on the information they find, research, synthesize, and utilize. While every student should have exposure to IL concepts within their undergraduate and graduate curriculum and classes, I am particularly interested in how these skills are taught to First-Year, Graduate, STEM, ESL, and First Generation College Students.

Research Interests

- Internationalization and Globalization Trends in Higher Education<br><br>- Library Strategic Planning and Roles in International Initiatives<br><br>- Online Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age<br><br>- Global Curriculum Development in Higher Education<br><br>- Academic Success/Retention Strategies for International, ESL, and STEM students