UCR takes proactive steps to ensure student success.

As one of University of California’s most diverse campuses, UCR works to support our underrepresented student populations in STEM Graduate programs. Each year, the UCR Graduate Division hosts the GradEdge/JumpStart summer program, designed to help incoming graduate students adjust to graduate program workload and expectations.

GradEdge/JumpStart organizer Dr. Maggie Gover, Director of Graduate Student Academic and Professional Development, has been instrumental in promoting the UCR Library to all graduate students as an invaluable resource.

The UCR Library has partnered with GradEdge/JumpStart for many years, providing one in a series of developmental seminars. The library seminar is a combined orientation to the library resources, as well as advanced research tutorials. Program participants also receive welcome folders filled with information about library departments, hours, programs, workshops, resources, tools, and contact information for their librarian subject specialists.

This summer we introduced 55 GradEdge/JumpStart students to the Campus VPN (off-campus access to online resources), UCR Library catalog, Melvyl (UC-wide catalog), and the "Request" feature for interlibrary loans. Database searching and the creation of alerts for relevant research topics were favorites among the students.

Librarian Marie Bronoel led the seminar that included presentations from librarians Anthony Sanchez, Denise Kane, Stephanie Milner, and Tiffany Moxham. Students showed great interest in Marie’s demonstration of advanced analytical tools available in Biosis and Web of Science databases providing a glimpse of how to visualize and analyze their research areas within the scholarly literature. Another highlight with the students included Tiffany Moxham’s discussion of several types of citation management tools such as Mendeley, Endnote, Zotero, and Paperpile as options for the up-and-coming researchers to begin their "research journey on the right foot."