Susan Archambault is the head of Reference and Instruction in the William H. Hannon Library at Loyola Marymount University (LMU), a position she has held for the past 12 years. In this role, she supervises six librarians and one support staff. Her department supports LMU’s mission to encourage learning, academic excellence, and the education of the whole person by developing and maintaining the library’s online and face-to-face information literacy program.
Susan enrolled in LMU's Ed.D. Program to expand her knowledge and leadership capacity within a supportive learning environment, enabling her to improve student success at LMU and beyond through the lens of social justice. She also joined the program to strengthen her ability to apply research and foundational knowledge to make improvements in higher education.
Her dissertation research explores algorithmic literacy for college students. Algorithmic literacy is a growing subset of information literacy, and it is defined as a critical awareness of what algorithms are, how they interact with human behavioral data in information systems, and an understanding of the social and ethical issues related to their use. In particular, she wants her research to contribute to the development of higher algorithmic literacy in college students and greater awareness of the invisible bias present in the way we design technology and information systems that use algorithmic decision-making.
Susan’s participation in the Ed.D. Program allowed her to share her research with a wider audience of education researchers and practitioners. Specifically, one class assignment led to a presentation at the 2021 American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting, and another class assignment led to publishing an article in BYU Education and Law Journal.