Sawyer Library Welcomes New Director

Incoming Director of the Mildred F. Sawyer Library, Gregory Heald, comes to Suffolk from the University of Northern Colorado, where he served as Associate Dean of University Libraries. The New England native recently shared his thoughts about joining the Suffolk community, advancing the use of library technology, and returning to Boston after 20 years.

Q. What excites you about joining the Suffolk community? 

A. First, the students. I believe I can make a positive contribution here that will enhance their Suffolk experience. 

Second, the University seems poised for a period of exciting transformation with the Suffolk 2025 Strategic Plan. I’m eager to contribute my thoughts and efforts to help advance the plan and the University.

Q. What do you see as the strengths of Suffolk’s library? 

A. The people. When I interviewed, I was deeply impressed by the excellence of the library personnel and their commitment to student success, in addition to Suffolk University more broadly.

The library’s e-collections are exceptional, and the space is very beautiful and clearly treasured by the students.

Q. What are your priorities for Suffolk’s library?

A. My first goal is to develop the relationships that are the foundation for further success. I’m going to continue to get to know my talented staff and get out and meet the community. It’s important for me to go and meet folks where they are, so I am planning to go to the student and faculty governance organizations and hear from them. I will be out of my office and talking with students and faculty, using every opportunity I can to communicate what the library can do for them but also listening to what they need the library to do—whether that’s on the elevator, in their offices, or in more formal settings. 

With input from faculty, student leaders, and administration I will establish goals for Sawyer Library that support the Suffolk 2025 Strategic Plan. I will create an assessment plan that will systematically examine the Sawyer Library’s collections, services, software systems, and use of space. 

Q. How do you envision the library’s role in contributing to student success? 

A. I would highlight two items. One is affordable learning resources, and particularly open educational resources. That includes resources such as freely available digital textbooks that are peer-reviewed as an alternative to costly commercial textbooks. We might save students money, foster open and equitable access to materials, and improve educational outcomes. Studies coming out of both Florida and Georgia recently suggest a strong correlation between the adoption of affordable and open educational resources—and positive student learning outcomes and positive outcomes more generally in terms of completion. I think that the library can play an important role in support for faculty use of open education resources and affordable learning resources through a variety of methods both tangible and electronic. It’s an area of service that I’d like to see us expand on. 

To augment the beauty of the library space I think it’s important to make sure we’ve adapted our space to support many different types of learners and learning. That may result in some changes in the way that some of the space is configured in order to make sure that all of our students are being served. 

Some students really require quiet space to concentrate, and providing both the space for social and cooperative study and simultaneously providing space for solitary contemplative study is important, because both types of students exist and both types of circumstances occur.

Q. Under your leadership, how will the library support faculty scholarship and teaching?

A. First of all, ensuring that we have the information resources that are needed for faculty scholarship is the basis for the library’s operation. In addition to that we will be exploring other services areas; for example, the acquisition and/or curation of data for faculty research projects and the results of faculty research projects. Big data sets require some organizational support, and I believe that the library may be well positioned to provide that for Suffolk.

It’s also really important for me to ensure that the library is taking an active hand in promoting the online readership and visibility of faculty and student scholarship, and there are some technologies that I would like to explore in order to make Suffolk’s presence more visible globally.

In terms of teaching, we will partner with faculty to expand on a robust information literacy program with librarians providing workshops at appropriate points in key courses, creation of additional online resources, and deeper integration into Blackboard. We will also be working to enhance the relationships that we have with the College of Arts & Sciences and the Sawyer Business School and forge a new relationship with the School of Public Engagement as it is formed.

Q. The library has been described as the hub of Suffolk’s urban campus. How do you view the library’s functions and purpose in the community?

A. I think that characterization is really notable. Identifying an academic space as the hub would not occur on every campus, and I think it indicates a special commitment to academic excellence at Suffolk. I see the Sawyer Library as the campus center for study, the interchange of ideas, the provision of academic support, and a venue to broadcast the excellent work of our faculty and students.

Libraries are dynamic and exciting places that are undergoing transformation. We are leading some of the most important conversations in higher education right now.

Q. You have a background in library technology. What is the future for university libraries, and how will you move Suffolk forward? 

A. Because libraries are now and have been at the vanguard of technological change in higher education, many of the pressures and opportunities that arise in relation to technology occur in the libraries first. The result of that has been 40 years of innovation in libraries, and that will continue and probably accelerate. 

The role of local and special collections will continue to grow. Curating things that are unique to Suffolk will be a major part of what goes on. Secondly, the library—although it may not emerge precisely as a publisher—the library will continue to advance in its publishing-like role, broadcasting student and faculty research. A third feature is that libraries have a very specific set of values that relate to openness and equity and those values are not articulated precisely the same way by any other entity at a university. We will continue to be a voice for historic library values within the context of a changed technological environment.

Q. What is your favorite book? 

A. The Essays of Michel de Montaigne. It’s a deeply humane book that explores all sorts of aspects of life, generosity, and a keen understanding of our limitations. 

Q. What is your favorite thing about Boston?

A. The vibrant, ever-changing diversity of the people.

Q. You grew up in New England. Returning after twenty years, after so much change what are you pleased to see again? 

A. Polar soda. The flavors are a little goofier now, but it’s a New England classic.