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Outstanding Teacher: Betty Ronayne

There are many ways to describe Betty Ronayne -- award-winning teacher, reference librarian, TV star.

Ronayne received the Outstanding Teaching Award for her work training students how to find their way through databases while researching projects and papers. Winning the award was “very gratifying,” Ronayne says, especially for acknowledging the role of librarians.

One of two education librarians, Ronayne works with the University’s College of Education, primarily helping graduate students on their way to earning their master's degrees.

Ronayne received her bachelor’s degree from San Diego State and her master’s from Kent State in Ohio. She was hoping to move back to San Diego from her instruction librarian post at Johns Hopkins University 16 years ago, not realizing her alma mater was a very popular destination for a lot of professors.

So she landed at Sacramento State and, three years later, decided it was the place to settle down. “The students I met on this campus were the most motivated and eager to learn of any of the places I’ve worked,” Ronayne says, crediting the faculty for instilling that kind of outlook.

Technology has made a lot of changes in Ronayne’s work over the years. When computers first proliferated in libraries, it was the librarian’s job to learn how to search databases with very complicated search protocols, says Ronayne. “Just as we got really top-notch, able to do this, the whole attitude changed ... where the students would be taught how to do their own research,” she says.

Librarians had to make the transition from doing very high-level searching, to teaching students how to do their own research at a more general level, says Ronayne.

That doesn’t mean computers have taken over every function. At the beginning of her courses, Ronayne gives the students a packet of handouts to guide them through the process. She once eliminated the paper documents since the information is online and in the databases, but heard from students and faculty that the handouts gave them an extra level of comfort. So she brought them back.

Ronayne’s teaching experience includes some television time. When she and Debbie Rogenmoser created the Distance Education Support program, it was broadcast on television and cable stations established for that purpose.

The two didn’t find out they would be teaching a live class until a week before the first broadcast. “After we did it once, it was kind of exciting,” she says. Ronayne was even stopped occasionally by people who had seen her on TV. The courses are now available on the Internet, but Ronayne hasn’t forgotten her media exposure. “I got just a little taste of how it feels to be a rock star,” she laughs.

More changes are coming for libraries, according to Ronayne. The future will likely include making information available through podcasting and streaming video, says Ronayne, as librarians aim to give students more “end-user empowerment -- making it easier for students to work from wherever they happen to be located, not in the library.”