Dr. Marisa Beard will serve as Interim Dean of Library Services and Educational Technology while a national search is under way to replace former dean, Dr. John Weaver.

Weaver is now the academic dean of the Church of Christ school, Florida College in Temple Terrace, Fla.

Beard said the move into the position as interim has been a fairly smooth process since she has worked at ACU for five and a half years as Director of Educational Technology.

While Weaver was still in the role of Dean, he set up a group called the Library Leadership Team which contained the directors of the various areas of the library.

Beard has been a member and shown involvement with the Library Leadership Team who have shown her positive support. She said she is grateful for the support from the team as well as the other library staff, which has been important for the transition.

Beard’s current role as an intern means she is in between the previous dean and the new dean that will be hired in the future. The role holds the same responsibilities as the former dean, including meeting with different leaders in the library and attending university and dean meetings.

Beard said, “Student, specifically, when they come into the library, they think of it as a place to get Starbucks, or they just come in to study, but the library services go beyond that.”

The library also contains the reference desk that provides help to students with upcoming papers, the circulation desk where a student can check out books, and information services that take care of all database information. Database information includes the information students find when searching for books on the ACU Brown Library website.

The Library Services and Education Technology also oversee the ACU Press and the special collection of books that are kept in the basement of the library.

The educational technology side of the services includes the Maker Lab, Learning Studio, Innovation Foundry, and Scholars Lab. Educational Technology also handles academic software such as Canvas, Course Evaluation, Adobe Creative Cloud, LinkedIn Learning.