Salem selected as 2016-17 ARL Leadership Fellow

photo portrait of Joe Salem

Joe Salem, University Libraries associate dean for Learning, Undergraduate Services and Commonwealth Campus Libraries

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has selected Joe Salem Jr., Penn State University Libraries associate dean for Learning, Undergraduate Services and Commonwealth Campus Libraries, among 28 individuals in North America — one of 22 from U.S. universities, including four Big Ten schools — to participate in its 2016–2017 Leadership Fellows 16-month program beginning in January.

It’s a great honor for the University Libraries for Joe Salem to be selected for this prestigious and highly competitive program,” Barbara I. Dewey, dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications, said. “The valuable exposure to an array of forward-thinking ideas, initiatives and perspectives about higher education from this program that Joe will bring will help inform the Libraries’ strategic pursuits in the years to come and will strengthen our position to best serve our students, faculty, staff and visiting researchers.”

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 124 research libraries in the United States and Canada. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. Its executive leadership program facilitates the development of future senior-level leaders in large research libraries and archives. Created in response to a continued need to develop future leaders of ARL member institutions, the program is designed to build on self-assessment and reflection and to explore a personal or professional area of interest in the context of a group setting.

“I am very honored to have been selected and look forward to working with my colleagues in the cohort and within ARL. The mentoring, networking, and sharing of best practices within many diverse research library settings offered through Fellowship participation will help me to make stronger contributions to my role within the University Libraries,” Salem said. “I am most excited about the opportunity to bring new ideas back to Penn State and to share the innovative work that we are doing at the University Libraries with our colleagues across the country.”

During the course of the program, each fellow will construct a learning plan; engage in a customized, immersive experience to shadow a library director; participate in three weeklong institutes hosted by sponsoring ARL institutions; participate in online synchronous sessions; and attend semiannual Association Meetings.

This sixth offering of the program is being designed by Association staff in collaboration with the Leadership Fellows Advisory Group and the directors of the three sponsor libraries: University of Alberta, Colorado State University and Duke University. The program begins in January 2016 and runs through April 2017.

The 2016-17 Leadership Fellows represent a broad array of backgrounds, experiences, and institutions in North America, including six librarian faculty from five universities in Canada and one librarian faculty or administrator each representing Big Ten schools the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

For more information, visit the ARL Leadership Fellows program website.