Kelly Broughton Named UCLA Library Senior Fellow

Dr. Kelly Broughton, assistant dean for research and education services for University Libraries, was recently selected for the UCLA Library Senior Fellows program, which is one of the most prestigious leadership-development programs for librarians in the country. In July 2020, she will attend lectures and panels and participate in workshops and field trips during the three-week program. 

Every other year, the University of California, Los Angeles, selects 20 of the top academic library administrators to participate in the fellowship program, which it has hosted since 1982. The fellowship is considered the oldest leadership-development programs in the library profession.

Broughton will be traveling to Los Angeles for the program, which she said she is very excited to attend. She said in her application for the fellowship that she saw the program as an opportunity to learn from experienced deans of academic libraries, as well as her peers.  

“I’m pretty confident that I’ll come back exhausted but excited about all of the thought-provoking things I’ve learned, and I’ll have lots of opportunities to share them with the librarians here,” she said. 

As an academic library administrator, Broughton said that a focus on student learning and creating support for faculty research are the main drivers of her work at the OHIO Libraries. She found the UCLA fellowship attractive because of its immersive nature and the fact that a cohort of library managers would be attending the program together. 

“[The other] members’ experiences may be unique to their institutions, and they will be different from [mine],” she said, “and they are also from all over the country, so that’s one of the biggest things that attracted me to the program.”

Broughton said that UCLA was looking for a “unique variety of representatives from different kinds of institutions” so that the cohort would be diverse and would make the experience even more exceptional. Her peers in the 2020 cohort represent academic libraries from across the country, including representatives from Yale University Library, the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries, Johns Hopkins University Medical Library, Harvard Library and several others. 

“Kelly is an invaluable colleague and collaborator within the Libraries and across the University,” Neil Romanosky, dean of the OHIO Libraries, said. “I know that she will bring a great perspective to this cohort’s experience–we are all very excited for her!” 

In 2019, she completed a longtime personal goal and earned her doctorate in higher education from Ohio University. Broughton’s dissertation was “Student’s Sense of Belonging in Study Spaces,” and she has published numerous papers and given presentations on subjects related to library management, scholarly communication and technology in libraries.

Now, Broughton hopes that the UCLA fellowship will help her set new goals.

“At this point in my career where I have more than a decade of experience with administration in academic libraries, I’m trying to see where I’m going to go next and refresh my perspective,” she said.