Donell Callender received her master's in library science from University of North Texas in 2002. She has been with the TTU Libraries since 1997 as staff and became faculty in 2002. Currently she is the Head of the Research, Instruction & Outreach department in the library. This department has 13 faculty that provide research instruction, collection development and outreach services for the entire campus and the Lubbock community. She teaches Essentials for Scholarly Research as well as the first year seminar class, Raider Ready, each fall. Her research interests include instruction assessment, active learning, and student retention. She is active within TTU faculty governance and is on several faculty committees. She is also active nationally with ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries) and TLA (Texas Library Association).