Cynthia Medrano Email & Phone Number

Highland Park, Illinois, United States

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States

I finally made it to a public library! I am so thrilled to explore a new environment for information sharing and community building while adjusting to a whole new state and city! I'm on my way to full Yinzer status.At CLP, I am a New & Featured Librarian focusing on reader's advisory, collection maintenance, and excellent service standards. More to come!

Champaign, Illinois, United States

My time at Parkland allowed me to enhance my supervisory skills, strengthen my confidence as an information professional and a leader, and engage in making data-driven decisions. While working on behind the scenes library work, I was also able to participate in outreach activities, leading our National Library Week celebration as my final task before departure! I loved my time at Parkland and transitioned due to a state relocation!

Normal, Illinois, United States

I really started with the ball rolling here! With online learning being so necessary right now, a lot of my work involved connecting students with adequate resources, the research skills to find those resources, and eliminating barriers to accessing information. This can happen via instruction, one-on-one research appointments, and brief interactions via chat or email. I also served on a college-wide assessment committee to revamp learning outcomes, the Boxes & Walls EDI taskforce, and job searches. Additional projects I accomplished here were migrating to OpenAthens for authentications, database management, building relationships with vendors, maintaining the website, along with coordinating social media and student engagement efforts.There are so many rich opportunities to keep students engaged remotely and I welcome ideas on what you are doing! Let's chat :)

Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Area

Project: Young ResearchersPrimary Investigator: Rachel M. Magee, Ph. D.Research objective: Develop and implement camp curriculum where underserved teens create independent research projects within the public library environmentI mainly supported administrative duties through record keeping, transcription of interviews for text analysis, data collection, updating the project website, and communicating with partner libraries. This practicum also introduced me to the IRB process and gave me access to the original research process. I also participated in the selection process for our professional development fellowship which was incredibly useful in learning how to identify candidates that aligned with the project's goals and values.

I adored my time working at Uni High . I loved getting to know the students and their reading tastes + interests, which helped me in selecting books to add to our collection. My responsibilities included creating bulletin boards and book displays and running our social media. Additionally, I designed engaging + relevant programs like making glass magnets using Banned Books quotes and images, decorating sugar skulls for Day of the Dead, and screening a documentary on Indigenous languages during Native American Heritage Month. My favorite aspect of the job were reader's advisory and coming up with trivia questions for our reference game to encourage information literacy and research skills.

I joined the team at the Oak Street Library to assist with a cataloging project for a huge collection of Spanish-language plays from the 19th and 20th centuries, with some outliers dating as far back as 1652! In my role, I process the plays into the university library's online catalog. This entails comparing the plays' bibliographic metadata to existing records, and importing them accurately into our system. I am also creating new records if they do not exist. The last step is to search for digitized versions of the play, and prepare the plays for the facility's storage. It's fascinating to hold these old stories and think about the author, publisher, and all the people who held them before I did. I enjoy the repetitive process, examining all the plays, and making them accessible to library users.

I worked as a graduate assistant with the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences' Life + Career Design Initiative to research trends in digital education and using ePortfolios in students' learning journeys. As the in-house Digication nerd, I collaborated with professors in the college, student interns, and the team at the CITL to design template portfolios, create Digication tutorials, and answer any questions about Digication.I am most excited to brainstorm with the undergrad student interns to develop programming like workshops, drop-in troubleshooting hours, and online help as more students across LAS begin designing their ePortfolios. Digication's implementation is in its beginning stages at U of I and I love being a part of engineering the gears that will make a lasting effects in the years past my graduation.

Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Area

I compiled the careers bulletin for students at the iSchool and this entailed working with numerous recruitment platforms to data mine for jobs fitting the interests and skills of my fellow students. I also assisted with student registration for career events, and performed administrative tasks, such as distributing flyers for events and organizing our databases with potential employers for our mentorship program and career fair.

Greater Chicago Area

As an associate at Relativity, I collaborated with two Dev teams to document updates to their products. I supported four applications and enhancements to the user interface. Some of my other responsibilities included content management, copy editing tech support articles, compiling a department newsletter, and participating in certification exam committees as well as growing my interpersonal and team work skills.

Greater Chicago Area

Here, I dove into my role as a liaison between high schools and companies to coordinate events such as: workshops, career days, and job shadows. This involved teaching workshops as well as leading training sessions for company and high school volunteers. I gained knowledge of the company database by entering volunteer, school, and company information. I also engaged in volunteer recruitment as well as writing communication tool kits. I helped run corporate fundraising events, such as the annual Bowl-a-thon and Golf Day.

Chicago, Il

Send me your resume.

University Center For Writing-Based Learning

As an office manager, I created and oversaw the writing center schedule for a staff of 80. For two years, I coordinated All-Staff Orientation, developing a mentorship program for returning staff to guide new hires as well as implementing ongoing internal events to promote community, such as the winter retreat, game night, quarterly tutor time, and the end of the year banquet.The technical aspect of my job consisted of completing biweekly reports, updating contact information for staff members, participating in the hiring process, and collaborating with directors to revise and write policies in the employee handbook. My legacy there was advocating for the use of "cohort," as our nomenclature for writing fellows who work together.Being a Head Writing Center Tutor allowed me to understand the capacity necessary to keep an office running, and most importantly, to thank and encourage the people who make it possible.

University Center For Writing-Based Learning

I worked with people from all different disciplines and backgrounds, which truly developed my interpersonal skills, and made me quick on my feet. A big priority in this role was building rapport with new and returning writers to encourage a collaborative work environment. As a peer writing tutor, I enhanced my pedagogy knowledge by providing feedback on writer's work and conducting face to face, online real time, and conversation partner appointments. In addition to one on one interaction, I also led workshops, staffed info tables completed classroom visits to inform students about our services, and acted as a member of the Outreach team.

University Center For Writing-Based Learning

As a Head Writing Fellow, I scheduled 35-50 writing fellows, and hosted professional development events four times a quarter. I worked with my fellow Heads and the directorship on administrative work, including: revising policies and instructions for the Handbook, organizing the All Staff Orientation, and creating the Writing Fellows schedule. I also had the honor of participating in the hiring process and then mentoring and collaborating with new tutors as they were integrated into the community.

Chicago, Il

During my time here, I participated in hands-on projects as the company strengthened their brand, and launched their beta testing. I developed content for automatic customer email templates, copyediting the front end website, blog, and operational documents. I generated material for their FAQ page and structured the Terms & Conditions page. Working here allowed me to step out of my comfort zone, and participate in the start up of a company as well as gain experience in the business world and look at how the administrative side of things connects with outside audiences.

Chicago

Not only did I stock the sales floor and develop a deeply personal connection with the inventory program, I can also help you pick out a pillow and bedspread guaranteed to send you on a safe trip to dreamland. During my time here, I developed patience, organizational skills, and an ability for small talk in addition to training new hires. I also know about candles, and nonstick cooking pans.

Master Of Library & Information Science - Mlis

Activities and Societies: ALA Spectrum Scholar 2018, President- iSchool Students of Color, iSchool Student Ambassadors, American Library.

Bachelor'S Degree, Rhetoric And Composition/Writing Studies

Activities and Societies: Collaborative for Multilingual Writing & Research; Building Communities, Ending Violence