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November 16, 2007 > News > Lowman officially promoted to vice provost position

Lowman officially promoted to vice provost position

By Dale Swartz | For the Thresher

Sara Lowman, who has served as vice provost and university librarian in an interim capacity since March, was officially promoted to the position this week. She took over for the previous university librarian, Chuck Henry, who left to head a nonprofit group in Washington.

As university librarian, Lowman is responsible for overseeing the Digital Media Center, Digital Library Initiative and Fondren Library’s collaboration with the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management’s Business Information Center. She will work in planning and strategy for these departments.

“My responsibility is to be aware of what’s happening on campus and bring that information back to the library in order to improve and support what other people on campus are doing,” Lowman said.

Lowman said her tenure at Rice has given her a unique perspective on the library’s efficacy, both now and in the future. She is particularly proud of the success of the renovation that was completed last year. As a result, she said more students are studying in Fondren than ever before.

But, Lowman said, the library still has room for improvement. The staff is currently implementing suggestions from a large-scale survey conducted last year. Some improvements will be rapid and tangible; others will be behind the scenes. For instance, the staff is currently working with Information Technology to purchase more computers that can be linked to Owlnet. The staff is also exploring ways to make searching the online catalog and databases more efficient, and to put course reserves on Owlspace.

“The library is a service organization,” Lowman said. “If we’re not meeting students’ needs, we want to know what we can do to improve.”

The library staff is also looking for other ways to market the library’s services and show that it extends farther than the walls of Fondren, and is beginning to use blogs and online resource tools like Facebook and YouTube.

“We hope that students continue to find the library relevant as their primary information source, and that it remains the intellectual center of the campus,” she said.

A native of Iowa, Lowman majored in biology and Russian studies at Carleton College in Minnesota. After working in a lab one summer, she decided that she didn’t want to be a scientist, and went on to earn a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Iowa.

“I had worked in the libraries at Carleton and had really enjoyed it,” Lowman said. “I thought I would try becoming a librarian. If I liked it, great, if not I would try something else.”

She ended up liking it. After moving to Texas with her husband, she was hired by Rice as a science librarian and has been here for 22 years.

“I never thought I’d be here this long, but I’ve really enjoyed working here, living in Houston, and being part of the Rice community,” she said.

Lowman served as director of Fondren from 2000 to 2007. Her duties then dealt with day-to-day internal library operations. She oversaw circulation, special collections and operations, in addition to troubleshooting. Before that, she served as head of reference at Fondren and assistant university librarian for public services.

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