Digital Scholarship Librarian, Library Research and Instruction
Shawna joined USF St. Petersburg’s Nelson Poynter Memorial Library in July 2022. As an academic and public librarian, she has worked on projects promoting equitable access and opportunities for literacy and information-seeking. Alongside her library work, as an educational researcher at Florida State University, she collaborated on a number of projects ranging from language and literacy development, to partnering with local school districts to support culturally relevant and evidence-based instruction. Guided by her experiences as a librarian and educational researcher, Shawna is currently working on her dissertation investigating the experiences of school library media specialists during Covid-19. Her personal interests include traveling, reading, crafting, and cuddling with cute animals.
Primary Areas of Focus
- Library Liaison-Education
- Teaching library and information literacy workshops and classes to undergraduate and graduate students within assigned academic departments
- Collaborating with other R&I librarians to develop, design, implement, and assess the libraries’ offerings of online asynchronous instructional objects
- Providing reference services both synchronously and asynchronously to library clientele using print, electronic and web-based information ·
- Collaborating with students and faculty of academic departments in discovery and use of scholarly resources and technologies
- Engaging and participating in ongoing assessment of library instruction and research services
Education
- Master of Information Science, Specialization in Youth Services
- Master of Educational Psychology, Specialization in Learning & Cognition
Research Interests
- Reading engagement and motivation
- Culturally relevant pedagogy
- Providing equitable access and opportunities
- Open education/open access
- Mixed methods research
- Research-practice partnerships
Recent Work
Funari, C., Durtschi, S., Phillips, B., & Conner, C. (2022, April). Exploring Profiles of Teacher Affective Demeanor in Early Elementary Classrooms. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
Ha, C., Durtschi, S., Roehrig, A., Turner, J., Craig, M., Mesa, M., Funari, C., (2021). Promoting Children’s Reading Motivation with Culturally Relevant Reading Education. Florida Journal of Education Research, 59(1), 268-282.
Durtschi, S., Funari, C., Phillips, B.M., & Conner, C.M. (2019, July). Exploring the Variability of a Reading Block in First through Third Grade: Teacher Demeanor, Instructional Environment, and Student Achievement. Spoken Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Toronto, CA.