Presented by Carol Womack, Bibliographic Instruction Librarian at Santa Monica College (SMC), this program focused on SMC’s FII (Fund for Instructional Improvement, an initiative of the California Community College’s Chancellor’s Office) 2001-2002 grant. The purpose of this grant was to develop a faculty-development course designed to apprise faculty fully about information competency and to teach them how to integrate information competency into their respective disciplines and courses.

Carol’s presentation and report which some of us may have enjoyed in other settings, is entitled: "Incorporating Information Competency Into The Curriculum."

This is also the title of the SMC faculty-development course, the product of Carol’s and her colleagues’ grant-funded work and one of the means by which information competency is marketed to SMC faculty, particularly of course to those who take the course.

Carol briefly highlighted (a) the history of information competency in the California Community Colleges; (b) the Fall 2001 through Summer 2002 $97,000 FII grant, including its initiation by and enthusiastic participation on the part of SMC faculty in general (not just library faculty); (c) the project’s goals, objectives, administrative structure, implementation, benefits, and product — the latter, as indicated, being a 2-unit faculty-development course.

Carol emphasized that this information, publicly funded as it was, is freely available for anyone to utilize and adapt. Also, anyone may register with SMC to take Library 15/Education 15, once it becomes a formal (distance-education) course; contact Carol directly for information about this phase of the project.

The program concluded by Carol’s asking for comments from others about their experiences raising consciousness and competence among faculty about information competency or about information competency instruction advanced in general on their campus. Accordingly, at the 12:05-12:50 session, brief reports were given about the 2001-2003 FII grant at Glendale College to assess the effectiveness of various information competency models; about Mesa College (one of the three San Diego Community College District campuses) and the "pairing" of selected sections of Mesa’s basic 8-week information competency introductory course with selected sections of Mesa’s English 101 course; and about UC, Santa Barbara’s introductory information competency course.