2014 Lorena Herrig Career Enhancement Award:
Finlay Terhune, Shields Library

Finlay Terhune, a 2012 graduate of UC Davis and a library assistant in the Access Services Department of Shields Library, is the 2014 recipient of the career enhancement award given by the UCDRA. Building on his degree in Anthropology, Finlay is studying at the University of San Francisco, Sacramento campus, pursuing a master’s degree in counseling psychology.

Finlay stated in his application that he chose the USF program in Sacramento, even though it requires three years rather than two, “because of the chance it provided me to continue my professional development at Shields Library.” As a night and weekend supervisor there, he is responsible for the safety and security of the facility and for all circulation operations outside normal working hours.

USF’s program has another important advantage for Finlay: “When the time for traineeship (an active internship period which is meant to demonstrate supervised competency before we are allowed to see clients on our own) comes, the Sacramento branch of USF already has a traineeship contract with the agency [in] which it has always been my goal to be placed – the Gender Health Center in Sacramento. Gender Health Center provides counseling services and medical services to the largely under-served transgender and gender non-conforming populations in the surrounding area. The services provided there are, in my opinion, vital and life saving, and their counselors work closely with the populations that I myself hope to serve by completing this degree: the transgender and gender non-conforming communities, and within this the homeless, youth, and sex-worker communities.”