Making connections, understanding, sharing and exploring, or “MUSE” is a new program that gives students the opportunity to partake in a wide range of activities and learn about things outside of the academic level, according to Terri Ramos, media specialist and chairperson of the communications department. She said she started the program to go beyond curriculum-based learning and offer students more than the basic resources of a library.

“(MUSE is) just an idea that I had. I see the library as a portal to the world, and so as a portal to the world I want my offerings like the public library to be wide and broad and diverse,” Ramos said. “(The public library has) a lot more opportunity sometimes to offer things beyond what we focus on with curriculum.”

Senior Katie Tellus said the program gives students more information on the activities planned and expands the mind of students.

“It’s trying to allow our students to experience a variety of creative options but also dig deeper and see what more the media center has to offer,” Tellus said.

Ramos said as a librarian, she constantly keeps up with what is in the news so she can help students find what they need.

Some of the activities Ramos said she plans on doing include bringing in therapy dogs so that students can learn about what it is like to train a therapy dog and what a therapy dog does, but the idea is not completely finalized. She said she came across the idea when she was talking to the English teacher Allison Wells-Podell who had a therapy dog of her own.

“(Wells-Podell) mentioned how she has a therapy dog, and how much she would love to bring the therapy dog in,” Ramos said. “…I thought ‘hey that would fit into MUSE.’”

Currently there is no set schedule for the events, but the media center wants to offer a special program for MUSE at least once every month according, to Ramos. As it does not have any events set in stone so far, the media center will offer the makerspace every SRT unless it does not have the space. Ramos said the days where the media center has a special MUSE day will be spread out through the year.