From Learner to Library Leader
From the Radford City Public School library to the national stage, Longwood University School Librarianship Endorsement alumna Rebecca Caufman brings a strong passion for literacy and a love for creating memorable learning experiences. Her selection for the 2025 American Library Association (ALA) Emerging Leaders Program highlights her commitment to advancing the role of school librarians. Through her work on national tools supporting the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) standards and her ongoing role as an adjunct professor at Longwood, Caufman is preparing and empowering the next generation of educators.
As part of ALA’s leadership development program, Caufman’s Emerging Leaders team produced digital resources focused on “Developing Responsibly Engaged Learners in an Interconnected World,” a guide outlining strategies to foster thoughtful inquiry, responsible technology use, and active engagement in digital learning spaces. She hopes the materials will support librarians across the country in integrating the AASL shared standard: Engage.
“We were the fifth AASL Emerging Team to go through the process of creating an activity guide, infographic, and video for an AASL Shared Foundation,” said Caufman. “I feel like Engage is the trickiest of all the foundations to understand the expectations, and our materials are designed to help librarians understand what instruction in this standard could look like.”
Since presenting the resource guide at the ALA Annual Conference in June 2025, Caufman and her team have been preparing to showcase their work at the AASL Annual Conference in St. Louis this October.
However, long before presenting at national conferences, Caufman was just beginning to explore what a future in school librarianship could look like. A 2016 visit to Longwood for the 13th Annual Summer Literacy Institute planted the seed. At the time, librarianship wasn’t on her radar, but hearing about the program sparked her curiosity. By spring 2017, when a local cohort launched with a flexible schedule (that even respected her beloved Hokie football games!), she knew it was the right next step.
Longwood’s endorsement didn’t just fit her schedule; it fit her goals. Caufman could immediately apply what she was learning on the job, and the cohort model offered the kind of flexibility she needed as a full-time educator.
“The cohort system at Longwood is amazing,” she said. “They come to you and your location and design classes so that you can be successful even while working full-time. The Longwood endorsement is flexible. You can cohort hop, which allows you to finish the classes on your timetable.”
But the program’s greatest strength, in her eyes, is the community it builds.
“In-person classes help you form relationships,” she said. “It is great to reconnect with people from classes at conferences, and you know you can always send them an email if you have a question.”
That professional network has stayed with her. Caufman enjoys reconnecting with other SLIB endorsement alumni at Longwood’s annual event at the Virginia Association of School Librarians (VAASL) Conference. In fact, a colleague’s post in her cohort’s Facebook group led directly to her current job.
“Someone posted in the group the job opening for the position that I am in, and I applied,” she said. “I probably wouldn’t have known about the opening without seeing the post.”
Today, she serves as a secondary school librarian for Radford City Public Schools while staying closely connected to Longwood as an adjunct faculty member.
“Being an adjunct allows me to combine my educational experience and knowledge of best practices in learning,” she explained. “The thing I enjoy most about working with future librarians is helping them envision how they want to organize, manage, lead, and foster learning in their school libraries.”
No matter how far her career takes her, Caufman continues to champion the program that helped shape her path.
“I always recommend Longwood’s SLIB endorsement to prospective students because I think it is the strongest program in the state,” she said. “It is flexible, offers in-person classes, and you become part of an amazing support system.”