Research shows that information competency -- the ability to find, manage and evaluate information -- is vital to academic success. To that end, this year's Cornell Undergraduate Information Competency Initiative Summer Institute, held May 24-28, will once again help faculty improve student research in their classes.

"I completely revamped my Oral Communication 2010 course from my experiences with the institute," said Kathy Berggren, senior lecturer in communication, who has participated in the institute since its inception three years ago. "This community completely revitalized my teaching. I've never gotten such high evaluations from my students."

Berggren worked with Cornell librarians to develop two tutorials that incorporated deeper research skills into her course. She said that beyond the classroom, the institute "fostered teamwork among faculty, librarians, Cornell Information Technology instructional support staff and the Center for Teaching Excellence liaisons. I know these relationships will continue."

The institute, which is supported by the library, the provost and vice provost for undergraduate education, seeks to build a community dedicated to improving student research skills.

Participating faculty members take part in the initiative's yearlong team partnership to bring ideas from the institute into their classrooms and to increasingly focus on digital literacy and assessment.

But student use of old-fashioned archival research of physical objects is also important, said Steven Pond, associate professor of music, whose students explored the Cornell Hip-Hop Collection in Kroch Library.

"The institute has begun a slow but inexorable transformation of my teaching," said Pond, who has also participated in the institute for three years. "My teaching is much more oriented toward the students' discovery of knowledge and much less invested in my imparting it in the front of the classroom. It's them teasing out the questions and devising research strategies with my guidance. The results are stunning.

"That's really the thrust of the institute: We're trying to encourage students' curiosity and give them the tools to satisfy that curiosity in a way that is diametrically opposed to an older style of lecture-based teaching that I grew up with. By no means are we saying that it's only a digital problem with a digital solution. It's a curiosity problem and a research solution," Pond said.

In addition to research skills, participating faculty members teach students to evaluate the information they find for truth, accuracy and usefulness.