CSB+SJU welcome new library director

Editor’s Note: Khodahrami disclosed to The Record that she “used ChatGPT to help edit and polish [her] responses.”

As summer gives way to autumn and our campuses settle into another school year, CSB+SJU starts to look recognizable again. The hallways swell with conversation, the paths between buildings get crowded and students are brought back to the libraries with their coffees in tow, ready for another semester of studying as assignments already begin to pile up.  

Amid the familiar sights and sounds of our campuses, there’s a new face getting settled in: Dr. Mozhdeh Khodarahmi. 

Khodarahmi joined CSB+SJU over the summer as the new Director of Libraries and Archives, bringing more than 20 years of experience working in libraries and a particular interest in the future of information and technology, as well as the impacts of artificial intelligence, specifically on college campuses. 

As director, Khodarahmi oversees the libraries and archives at both CSB and SJU. Her work includes everything from supporting library staff to managing collections and technology to developing various programs that benefit the CSB+SJU community. 

“Libraries touch almost every part of a college or university,” Khodarahmi said via email. “I see my job as helping connect people and ideas.” 

That was part of what attracted her to CSB+SJU to begin with. Khodarahmi said she was drawn to the schools’ liberal arts education and Benedictine tradition and values, and that the people she met during the interview process made an impression, too. 

“I encountered genuine warmth, curiosity and a willingness to collaborate,” she said. 

The feeling has continued since she arrived on campus. 

“I keep meeting people and thinking, ‘There is something we could do together,'” Khodarahmi said. “That’s a wonderful feeling to have in a new position.” 

Khodarahmi’s career in libraries began more than 20 years ago in Iran, where she worked at local, regional and national levels. After moving to the United States, she earned her Master of Library and Information Science degree and began building her career back up again.  

Since then, she has worked in several academic library settings and held a variety of positions. 

At the University of Illinois-Chicago, Khodarahmi managed Access Services and a large team of staff and student employees. She later served as Acting Library Director at St. Joseph’s College in Indiana during a challenging transition period within the institution. 

Before coming to CSB+SJU, she was Associate Library Director for Access, Instruction and Research Services at Macalester College. 

As she begins her first year at CSB+SJU, Khodarahmi does not have a long list of things she immediately wants to change. 

“I don’t want to arrive with a predetermined list of things that need to change,” she said. “I want to understand the strengths of our libraries and archives, the aspirations of our staff and what students, faculty and communities need from us.” 

Rather than arriving with immediate plans, Khodarahmi seems more interested in first understanding the community she has joined. That same approach carries into one of the areas she has spent much of her career thinking about: how people interact with information in an increasingly digital world. 

AI is a popular area of discussion that has continued to grow in the past few years, especially on college campuses, where it has become difficult to avoid. As it became increasingly common, Khodarahmi became interested in how it was changing the way people find, evaluate and use information. 

She has worked on AI literacy and misinformation, participated in faculty learning communities and taught a course focused on AI literacy and misinformation. She has also gotten the opportunity to get involved in broader conversations about AI and higher education as a faculty member in the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Institute on AI, Pedagogy and the Curriculum. According to the AAC&U website, the institute is a project that helps institutes of higher education “respond to the opportunities and challenges artificial intelligence presents for teaching, learning and academic programs.” 

Khodarahmi does see ways AI can be useful to students. It can help with brainstorming, explaining unfamiliar concepts, testing ideas and providing feedback. However, she also sees a problem with making the process too easy. 

Searching for information, comparing sources, encountering conflicting ideas, and just sitting with uncertainty can—and should—all be a part of learning. Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini, among others, on the other hand, give students one confident-sounding answer in seconds. 

“Fluency is not the same thing as accuracy,” Khodarahmi said. “An answer that sounds authoritative may still be incomplete, biased or wrong.” 

For Khodarahmi, the rise of AI also raises a bigger question: What do students need to learn when technology can increasingly do things for them? She points to curiosity, critical thinking, deep thinking, creativity, communication, ethics, adaptability and self-awareness—all skills she believes that technology cannot replicate. 

AI can generate ideas, analyze information and accomplish tasks. But it can’t decide what is meaningful and what is worth pursuing. 

This distinction is becoming increasingly important as AI becomes a bigger part of college life. There will always be another tool that can summarize a reading or answer a question. The harder part is knowing when that answer is worth trusting. 

For Khodarahmi, that is where the library still has a role to play. In a world where information is everywhere and answers are increasingly easy to generate, students still need places to ask questions, encounter different perspectives and take the time to decide what they actually think. 

As Khodarahmi begins her first year at CSB+SJU, she’s taking the time to listen to students, faculty, staff and the community around her. What the libraries and archives will look like under her leadership will take time to develop, but her approach so far is less about having all of the answers and more about asking questions. 

For now, she’s starting where she believes libraries have always been the strongest: with people, ideas and the connections between them.