Intersections
SCHOOL OF INFORMATION SCIENCES I FALL 2024
The iSchool at Illinois educates leaders in the information sciences who impact our communities, nation, and world.
FALL 2024
School of Information Sciences
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Published by iSchool Communications and Marketing. For more information or to submit story ideas, please contact brya@illinois.edu.
Dean: Eunice E. Santos
Editor: Cindy Ashwill
Managing Editor: Cindy Brya
Contributing Writers: Cindy Ashwill, Cindy Brya
Photography: Cindy Brya, Michelle Hassel, Amanda Nguyen, Thompson-McClellan Photography
501 East Daniel Street
Champaign, Illinois 61820
ischool@illinois.edu
ischool.illinois.edu
Phone: (217) 333-3280
People use information for analysis, inquiry, collaboration, and play—and in so doing, change the world. The iSchool at Illinois is dedicated to shaping the future of information through research, education, and engagement, both public and professional. Intersections highlights our current work in these areas as well as achievements of our students, alumni, faculty, and staff.
On the cover: The Center for Children’s Books (CCB) has moved to the second floor of the iSchool building at 501 East Daniel Street. Suzan Alteri, assistant director, and Sara L. Schwebel, professor and director, sit in the Center’s colorful, new space.
Intersections
NEWS
2 Letter from the Dean
3 Chen appointed interim executive associate dean
3 Faculty receive promotions
4-5 New Faces—Fall 2024
5 Bonn elected president-elect of ASIS&T
6 La Barre and Williams retire
6 New degree to prepare students for careers in video game industry
7 Knox and Wagner receive ALISE awards
7 2023 Downs Intellectual Freedom Award given to Missouri Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee
RESEARCH
8 Advancing the makerspace movement
8 Advocating for libraries through data storytelling
8 Schneider contributes to NISO communication on retractions
8 Increasing financial literacy among older adults
9 Integrating human and machine intelligence to address information integrity
9 Creating inclusive learning environments and advancing workplace equity
9 Kilicoglu group wins first place at BioLaySumm competition
FEATURES
10 Thacker recognized by Research Park
10 Kemboi receives international award for digital preservation work
11 Student says ‘thank you’ with a helicopter ride
11 Leep student discusses the intersectionality of mental illness and libraries
12 New home for the Center for Children’s Books
13 Record enrollment for campus and iSchool
ALUMNI
14 Get to know Grant Florence, user experience designer
14 ISAA Annual Awards announced
15 Where are iSchool alumni?
CLASS NOTES
17 In Memoriam: Pauline Cochrane and David Hopping
Letter from the Dean
“Providing a high-quality education for students is a top priority for our School.”
With the fall semester well underway, our faculty, staff, and students are making great progress in their work. The iSchool continues to grow at a rapid pace across our degree programs, which now include a total of more than 2,000 students. Compared to five years ago, enrollment has nearly doubled. This tremendous growth reflects the value of our programs to society as well as the excellence of our teaching and research.
This issue of Intersections highlights new faces, one of which is Jiangping Chen, our new interim executive associate dean. I am very pleased to welcome Jiangping. Her expertise includes organizational growth in higher education and how to align this growth with strategy for programs and research. Her leadership is evident in the contributions that she has made since joining us in August. I look forward to continued collaboration with her, and I know that other members of our iSchool community feel the same way.
The iSchool’s interdisciplinary research focuses on connecting people, information, and technology to develop solutions for current challenges. In this issue, you will read about projects that impact society in a variety of important areas, such as healthcare, disaster response, public safety, financial literacy, computational literacy for people with disabilities, and inclusive learning environments. This research and many other projects in the School receive substantial support from federal agencies and national foundations.
Providing a high-quality education for students is a top priority for our School. Our students are truly “the best and the brightest” among their peers. Their achievements, as shared in this issue, demonstrate our School’s excellence. We are proud to play a role in their success and look forward to watching them progress in their careers.
Sincerely,
Eunice Santos, Dean
Chen appointed interim executive associate dean
Jiangping Chen has assumed the position of interim executive associate dean and visiting professor. In this role, she will work closely with Dean Eunice E. Santos to realize the iSchool’s strategic goals and objectives. She also will provide leadership for administration, including oversight of associate deans and assigned staff as well as the coordination of faculty affairs. Chen’s position will become permanent following approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.
Chen comes to the iSchool from the University of North Texas, where she served as Regents Professor and chair of the Department of Information Science. Her accomplishments include growing and shaping the department with a focus on educational programs and strategic research directions.
“Professor Chen’s expertise is well aligned with our current needs. She will contribute significantly to the creation of wellformulated strategies to support our School's phenomenal growth, while emphasizing innovation and efficiency,” said Santos.
Chen conducts research in information science, data science, and library science. She focuses on applying data science techniques to information problems and misinformation. Her research has been supported by prestigious funders, such as the Institute of Museum and Library Services and National Science Foundation. She also is adept at graduate and undergraduate instruction, developing and teaching courses in information science and data science.
“I look forward to working with the wonderful faculty, staff, and students, and making my contributions to the School's vision and strategical goals,” said Chen.
Chen holds a PhD in information transfer from Syracuse University, a master’s degree in information science from the Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a bachelor's degree in information science from Wuhan University.
Faculty receive promotions
TheiSchool is proud to announce the following appointments: Emily Knox and Yang Wang have been promoted to professor; Elizabeth Hoiem has been promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure; Associate Professor Maria Bonn has been granted indefinite tenure; Judith Pintar has been promoted to teaching professor; and Martin Wolske has been promoted to teaching associate professor. Their new appointments became effective August 16, 2024.
Knox’s research interests include information access, intellectual freedom, censorship, information ethics, information policy, and the intersection of print culture and reading practices.
Wang’s research interests include usable privacy and security technologies, social computing, human-computer interaction, and explainable artificial intelligence.
Hoiem’s research explores the history of technological innovations in children's literature, from early children's books and toys to contemporary applications of digital pedagogy.
Bonn’s research focuses on scholarly communication and publishing.
Pintar’s research and teaching interests include narrative design, game studies, and gameful pedagogies, which she pursues through the Extended Literatures & Literacies Lab (EL3).
Wolske’s research focuses on community informatics; engaged scholarship in the information sciences; critical, culturally sustaining pedagogies, especially as applied within active learning; and critical constructivist approaches to sociotechnical information systems.
Emily Knox
Elizabeth Hoiem
Maria Bonn
Martin Wolske
Yang Wang
Judith Pintar
New Faces—Fall 2024
Kahyun Choi Assistant Professor
Focuses on machine learning in libraries, music information retrieval, computational analysis of poetic texts, responsible AI, digital humanities, and public library-based AI education
Stacy Clemmons
Academic Advisor and Coordinator of Graduate Affairs
Provides academic advising and support for students in the MS in Information Management and MS in Bioinformatics programs
Craig Evans Lecturer
Focuses on educating undergraduates in the use and application of database technologies
Yue Guo
Assistant Professor
Focuses on AI in medicine, natural language processing, health informatics, health information accessibility, personalization, and literature-based knowledge discovery
Yaoyao Liu
Assistant Professor
Focuses on computer vision, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and medical image analysis
Desiree McMillion Director of Undergraduate Affairs
Provides leadership and strategic direction for the School’s undergraduate degrees, the BS in Information Sciences and BS in Information Sciences + Data Science
Alexis Miller Office Manager
Provides support to the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs and assists with various student affairs activities
Amira Al-Mutairi Academic Advisor and Coordinator of Graduate Affairs
Provides academic advising and support for students in the MS in Information Management and MS in Bioinformatics programs
Bonn elected president-elect of ASIS&T
Maria Bonn, associate professor and director of the MSLIS and CAS programs, has been elected presidentelect of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T). She will assume the presidency in fall 2025.
Carolyn Thomas Human Resources Manager
Works with the HR team to mentor and train, create efficiencies and streamline tasks, and provide successful delivery of HR services
ASIS&T is an international, professional organization that seeks to discover new theories, practices, and tools to improve information access. Publications of the association include the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIS&T), Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST), and Information Matters. Bonn has served as a member of the ASIS&T Board of Directors since 2021 and previously chaired the Publications Committee. She shepherded the relaunch of ARIST and helped develop Information Matters
Bonn’s research focuses on scholarly communication and publishing, especially on what means and methods of scholarly communication best serve scholars in achieving their goals. Her latest work focuses on how scholars and the librarians that support them are responding to shifts toward openness in data, publishing, the conduct of science, and education. She holds master’s and doctoral degrees in American literature from SUNY Buffalo and a master’s in information and library science from the University of Michigan.
La Barre and Williams retire
TheiSchool is pleased to acknowledge two faculty who have retired, Kathryn La Barre and Kate Williams. Both have been awarded emeriti status, an honorary title that recognizes their professional contributions.
Associate Professor Emerita La Barre, affiliated with Gender and Women’s Studies and the Women & Gender in Global Perspectives Program, conducts community-focused research grounded in information history. Publication venues include the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology and Libraries and the Cultural Record. A longtime American Library Association member, La Barre served as faculty adviser for the Queer Library Alliance and the Progressive Librarians Guild. “Seeking to hold space for access, equity, and justice, I’m most proud of my work with 1,400 master’s and 36 doctoral students, and I enjoy their regular updates.”
Continuing research includes Libraries of the Future Past, tracing conceptions of library futures, and Forgotten Figures, microhistories of femme and gender diverse trailblazers. A Fulbright Specialist (2016-2023), La Barre co-founded the North American chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization and served as the first Curator (2017-2020) for the Association for Information Science & Technology.
Associate Professor Emerita Williams taught two foundational iSchool courses, Community Informatics and Libraries, Information and Society, for 16 years. During and after COVID she split her 25-person online classes into two, teaching each half separately in order to conduct the seminars despite the lockdown. Her community informatics research took her not only into the Chicago Public Library but also to such places as the UK, China, Cuba, and since her retirement, the Texas Gulf Coast. She just published Another Way: Poetry and Prose by High School Students in Jefferson County, Texas (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024), which contains writings about extreme weather and inequality. Williams is also working with her husband Abdul Alkalimat (Gerald McWorter) on their second book about the 19th century abolitionist community of New Philadelphia, Illinois, to be published by the University of Illinois Press. In her second year of retirement, she continues to advise three doctoral students.
New degree to prepare students for careers in video game industry
Anew master’s degree program offered through Game Studies and Design, an Informatics program hosted by the iSchool, will provide professional training for students who are interested in working in video game studios, game-adjacent industries, or other businesses where game-related skills are increasingly in demand.
The Master of Science in Game Development, which was approved by the Illinois Board of Higher Education in June, will launch in fall 2025. The new interdisciplinary degree will offer concentrations in the areas of art, design, production, programming, and narrative. It will be offered online with synchronous and asynchronous courses.
While designed to be completed in two years, the online program will have a flexible timeline to accommodate both full-time students and working professionals. In the second year of the program, students will gain real-world experience by working on actual video games with industry partners.
“We think Illinois’ depth and diversity of disciplines will support a new kind of interdisciplinary game development program—one that prepares students to make contributions beyond the entertainment industry in ways that transform how we educate, conduct business, and even manage healthcare,” said Director of Informatics Programs Lisa Bievenue.
Informatics is developing a studio-based pedagogy in which students gain critical, real-world skills that include collaboration, communication, and professional business practices in interdisciplinary studio-based classrooms. The new and developing programs in Game Studies and Design, for example, will bring together students from across campus, including computer science, art and design, theater, architecture, history, and area studies, to work together on interactive and immersive projects addressing a range of modalities and domains.
Kathryn La Barre
Kate WIlliams
Knox and Wagner receive ALISE awards
Professor Emily Knox and Assistant Professor Travis L. Wagner were recognized by the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) for their teaching and research.
Knox was selected for the 2024 ALISE Excellence in Teaching Award. She has taught three required courses at the iSchool: Social Aspects of Information Technology (IS 202), Information Organization and Access (IS 505), and Libraries, Information, and Society (IS 510). In her graduate-level courses, students are encouraged to complete projects that interest them and benefit their career goals. Knox also has developed and taught three elective courses: Intellectual Freedom and Censorship (IS 584IF), Information Ethics (IS 584IE), and Information Policy (IS 594IP). In addition, she has contributed to the improvement of instruction across campus. Knox is a member of the inaugural class of the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITL) Faculty Fellows, a program supported by the Office of the Provost. She has been part of CITL’s strategic planning process and assisted in the development of new programs and initiatives to benefit faculty across campus.
A paper coauthored by Assistant Professor Travis L. Wagner and Vanessa Kitzie, associate professor of information science at
2023 Downs Intellectual Freedom Award given to Missouri Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee
For its educational programming and advocacy work in support of the right to read, the Missouri Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC) has been named the 2023 recipient of the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award. The award, presented annually to individuals or groups who have furthered the cause of intellectual freedom, particularly as it affects libraries and information centers and the dissemination of ideas, is given annually by the iSchool and is cosponsored by Sage, a global academic publisher of books, journals, and library resources.
Around five years ago, the IFC created an Introduction to Intellectual Freedom Workshop. The free workshop covers the basics and history of intellectual freedom and the rights of patrons and the values of library workers. It can be modified from one to three hours and offers scenarios from events that have occurred in Missouri libraries. These workshops have been presented to
the University of South Carolina, titled “‘In Many Ways, You’re This Person Who’s Providing Light’: Theorizing Embodied Responses to Information Absence with LGBTQIA+ Communities,” has been selected as the winner of the 2024 ALISE/Bohdan S. Wynar Research Paper Competition. According to Wagner, their paper examines how LGBTQIA+ communities respond to the loss of information resources and spaces. Examples of these unique information resources and spaces include gay bars, queer-affirming blogs on sites like Tumblr, and Gay Straight Alliances in high schools. It also explores what this loss communicates about the role of information professionals in facilitating how these communities might seek, share, and recreate information spaces and resources.
Knox and Wagner were honored at an awards ceremony during the ALISE 2024 Annual Conference, which was held in October in Portland, Oregon.
libraries and at board meetings and conferences across Missouri and in several states.
In addition, the IFC has generated content for the association’s social media accounts, offered table talks and other sessions for library workers at the Missouri Library Association (MLA) conference, sent letters of support for keeping proposed banned books on shelves, talked to news outlets about book banning, and worked with students to ensure their voices are heard. The IFC collaborated with the MLA’s Legislative Committee to develop the Right to Read Coalition, a group of nonlibrary Missouri residents, religious groups, educational associations, law firms, and more.
The IFC was honored at a reception during the 2024 American Library Association Annual Conference.
Emily Knox Travis L. Wagner
MLA Intellectual Freedom Committee members Rachelle Brandel, Colleen Norman, Cindy Hohl, Casey Phillips (2024 chair), Sarah Whalen, and Joe Kohlburn. Not pictured: Kris Dyer, Otter Bowman, Kimberly Moeller, and Krystal Smith.
Advancing the makerspace movement
Associate Professor Kyungwon Koh, director of the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab, has been awarded a $149,995 Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant as part of the National Leadership Grants for Libraries program. The goal of the project, “National Forum to Connect and Advance Library Makerspaces,” is to enhance the capacity of makerspaces to meet the evolving needs of their communities as well as to advance the maker movement nationally. Partners will include the American Library Association; Nation of Makers, a national nonprofit supporting America’s maker organizations; and Library Makers, a community of library makerspace professionals.
Schneider contributes to NISO communication on retractions
There are several reasons why publications may be retracted, but in all cases, correcting the record requires that these decisions be clearly communicated and broadly understood so that the research—whether retracted due to error, misconduct, or fraud—is not propagated. The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) recently announced the publication of the Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern Recommended Practice (NISO RP-45-2024), which establishes best practices for the creation, transfer, and display of retraction-related metadata. The communication is the product of a working group made up of crossindustry stakeholders, including Associate Professor Jodi Schneider. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation provided funding for the working group as well as for Schneider’s Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science project, which informed the group’s deliberations and decisions.
Advocating for libraries through data storytelling
Associate Professor Kate McDowell has been awarded a threeyear, $578,677 grant from the IMLS under the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. The grant is an extension of the Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians project, which helps librarians present data in story form using narrative strategies. Her new project, “Implementing the Data Storytelling Toolkit for Libraries,” is a collaboration with the Public Library Association (PLA) that will combine PLA Benchmark: Library Metrics and Trends, a tool for data-driven planning and advocacy in public libraries, with innovative data storytelling instruction and lessons learned from the original project. Assistant Professor Matthew Turk and Teaching Assistant Professor Jill Naiman will serve as coprincipal investigators.
Increasing financial literacy among older adults
Doctoral
student Abhinav Choudhry has received a 2024-2026 Institute for Information Literacy at Purdue research award for his project, “Gamified Finance Simulator for Older Adults: A Financial Literacy and Vulnerability Intervention.” The $4,000 award is intended for research that enables people to navigate and contribute to today’s information environment. Associate Professor Rachel Adler and PhD student Kyrie Zhixuan Zhou will serve as co-principal investigators on the project, which aims to create a gamified simulation of digital banking. Players will be taught the basics of operating bank and credit card accounts, performing online transactions, and using utility services. The simulation will also teach older adults how to guard themselves against common online threats.
Integrating human and machine intelligence to address information integrity
Associate Professor Dong Wang has been awarded a three-year, $599,999 National Science Fountation (NSF) grant for the project, “CrowdAssisted Human-AI Teaming with Explanations,” which will integrate diverse human and machine intelligence to examine multimodal data (e.g., text and image) that was produced during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Wang, the new project will develop a crowd worker-based interactive artificial intelligence (AI) system that explores the collective strengths of the professional knowledge of domain expert crowd workers, the general logical reasoning ability of non-expert crowd workers, and the effective information retrieval capability of AI models. While the focus of the project is COVID-19, the framework and models that are developed will be able to address information integrity with explanations in other domains, such as healthcare, disaster response, and public safety.
Creating inclusive learning environments and advancing workplace equity
Kilicoglu group wins first place at BioLaySumm competition
TAssistant
Professor JooYoung Seo has been awarded a four-year, $459,000 grant from the NSF to create inclusive learning environments and advance workplace equity for persons with disabilities in STEM fields. The project, “An AudioTactile Data System for Blind or Low Vision Faculty, Staff, Postdocs, and Graduate Students in Chemistry, Math, Computer and Information Sciences,” will build on Seo’s work in making computational literacy more accessible to people with dis/abilities by using multimodal data representation. The new research aims to develop and test software and hardware tools for blind and low-vision faculty, staff, postdoctoral research fellows, and graduate students in STEM fields. Using the tools, these users will be able to generate, identify, and manipulate digital data patterns and trends in chemistry, mathematics, computer science, engineering, and information sciences.
he highly technical language used in biomedical publications makes it difficult for nonexpert audiences to fully understand their content and draw insights. The BioLaySumm competition focuses on making biomedical research publications more accessible to lay audiences. This year, the winning team was a group from Associate Professor Halil Kilicoglu’s research lab: PhD students Zhiwen (Jerome) You and Shufan Ming and Computer Science master’s student Shruthan Radhakrishna. Their work was presented at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
For the competition, the organizers provided teams with summarization datasets, which had humangenerated plain language summaries for a set of biomedical publications. These datasets allowed the development and evaluation of novel, state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) methods. The generated summaries were evaluated on their relevance, readability, and faithfulness to original publication. Fifty-three teams from around the world participated in the 2024 competition, and Kilicoglu’s team ranked first overall and first in relevance metric.
Thacker recognized by Research Park Features
MSIMstudent Peeya Thacker was named “Most Outstanding Graduate Student Intern” for her work at COUNTRY Financial DigitaLab in the University’s Research Park.
During her eleven-week internship, Thacker served as a project manager for the company’s Customer Data Platform (CDP) project, leading a team of four interns to strategize and develop an implementation roadmap for the company’s key 2025 initiative. She also worked as a data developer on the
Doctoral
student Gladys Kemboi has been awarded the 2024 Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) Fellowship Award for her distinguished contribution to securing digital legacy to advance local and Indigenous knowledge in development in Kenya and across Africa.
Kemboi, who recently started her PhD studies at the iSchool, was raised in Iten, Elgeyo Marakwet County, Kenya. It was during her childhood that she learned about preserving food, traditional medicine, and predicting weather from her grandmothers.
“This early connection with Indigenous knowledge instilled in me a deep connection for my community research on Indigenous knowledge systems to create communitydriven solutions,” said Kemboi. “My
data engineering and analytics team, “developing a data pipeline to ingest data into the company’s data lake for enhanced analytics.”
According to Thacker, her favorite part of the internship was the people. “Everyone was so open and eager to help, fostering an environment that encouraged learning and growth. I cherished every moment, from navigating new challenges and learning countless new things to building meaningful relationships and creating lasting memories,” she said.
After completing her MSIM degree, Thacker would like to find employment that will help her refine her interests and career direction. She also plans to pursue an MBA and further develop her management and leadership skills.
Kemboi receives international award for digital preservation work
work focuses on addressing epistemic injustices—ensuring that Indigenous voices are heard, included and recognized.”
Kemboi, who holds a bachelor’s degree in information studies from The Technical University of Kenya and master’s degree in information and knowledge management from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, has over a decade of experience as a knowledge manager and Communities of Practice leader. Since 2020, she has been an advocate for the decolonization of knowledge in international development, working with the Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev) community. Kemboi previously worked at Jhpiego, a nonprofit organization for international health, where she developed knowledge management strategies and Community of Practice for various countries. Her professional contributions include
implementing the Global Coalition Knowledge Management Strategy on Youth, Peace and Security with the United Nations Development Programme and working with the Visions of Hope for Africa charity in developing the knowledge management strategy on local resource mobilization and sustainable partnership in the U.S. and Africa.
“My desire to contribute to social change through decolonization of knowledge and digital preservation of Indigenous knowledge found a home at the iSchool,” she said. “My research focuses on decolonization of knowledge, epistemic justice, building Communities of Practice and digital preservation of Indigenous knowledge in addressing climate change shocks, and contributing to the work done by my community scholars such as Dr. Isaac Tarus about the Keiyo [ethnic group in Kenya] during the early colonial period.”
“It’s not easy at times balancing coursework with other commitments, but my instructors in the MSIM program have been very understanding.”
Student says ‘thank you’ with a helicopter ride
This past summer, Michael Ferrer showed his appreciation for one of his MSIM instructors in a unique way—by inviting him for an insider’s look at his work as a reservist in the Illinois Army National Guard. For the ILARNG BOSS Lift, which took place this summer at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, Ferrer selected Michael Wonderlich, iSchool adjunct lecturer and senior associate director of business intelligence and enterprise architecture for Administrative Information Technology Services (AITS) at the University of Illinois.
The BOSS Lift is a special event that is usually reserved for employers who support their National Guard reservist employees. It is an opportunity for employers/mentors to fly in a helicopter and oversee training events that their employees/mentees perform as military reservists. Since Ferrer, who serves as a captain in the Guard, is currently a student, he was given the option to invite a faculty member instead of an employer. For this honor, he chose Wonderlich, his instructor for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence (IS 525).
During the BOSS Lift, guests had the opportunity to interact with Engineer units that operate military versions of construction vehicles, such as bulldozers, backhoe loaders, and motor graders. They also observed traditional military units, like Field Artillery and Infantry, to see how they train and deploy their platforms.
“I felt privileged to join Michael at the BOSS Lift event,” said Wonderlich. “He was letting me into a part of his life that matters deeply to him. As someone whose father-in-law served in the Army Corps of Engineers, I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about its work and mission. Not to mention, the helicopter ride was a thrilling experience!”
Ferrer credits the Guard with giving him the opportunity to pursue his military career and higher education at the same time.
“Even though I am a full-time graduate student, I am also a leader in the Guard. It’s not easy at times balancing coursework with other commitments, but my instructors in the MSIM program have been very understanding,” he said.
Leep student discusses the intersectionality of mental illness and libraries
Leep (MSLIS online) student Morgan Rondinelli shares her experience as a mentally ill library professional in the article, “What’s Missing in Conversations about Libraries and Mental Illness,” which was published in June in the open access, peerreviewed journal In the Library with the Lead Pipe. She was inspired to write the article to improve the culture of library professionals toward those with mental illnesses.
“I’ve been writing about mental health, personal experiences, and advocacy, for years,” said Rodinelli, who writes about her obsessive-compulsive disorder in the blog My OCD Voice. “I find it meaningful, both as a way to express myself and to hopefully help others feel less alone.”
Rondinelli is a library technical assistant at a public library and co-founder of the mental health nonprofit, Not Alone Notes. In her article, she maintains that the vision of librarians as helpers and patrons as those who need help is a false dichotomy. She makes the claim that because of their shared experience, mentally ill library staff are better able to help mentally ill patrons.
By being open at her library about her experiences with mental illness, Rondinelli has had coworkers feel comfortable enough to confide in her about their experiences. She appreciates the opportunity to share stories and make connections.
Read the article: bit.ly/4dmPxYj
New home for the Center for Children’s Books
The Center for Children’s Books (CCB) at the iSchool is a crossroads for critical inquiry, professional training, and educational outreach related to youth-focused resources, literature, and librarianship. The CCB houses a noncirculating research collection of children’s and young adult books, with emphasis placed on books published within the last two years. The CCB recently moved to a new home in the iSchool building at 501 East Daniel Street. Formerly housed in the basement, the Center relocated upstairs to a large space on the second floor. Professor and Director Sara L. Schwebel and Assistant Director Suzan Alteri discuss what was involved in the move and describe their new, colorful quarters.
Why did the CCB move to a new location?
Schwebel: Historically, children’s rooms in public libraries were placed in the basement. Many see this space as lessthan-desirable and therefore a reflection of attitudes that devalued children. When the iSchool had the opportunity to rethink space usage, the youth services faculty met to talk about shared vision. The desire to move out of the basement came across loud and clear. Our new location is bright, sunny, and easy to find. It also provides a better, drier environment for our books. We look forward to welcoming visitors!
What was involved in the move?
Alteri: The move was quite a process. The Center has always been staffed by a fabulous group of graduate assistants who have helped in all our activities, and this was no exception. The GAs worked with Gennye Varvel at the Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library (SSHEL) in the Main Library to pull books from the Center’s historical collection and transfer them to SSHEL—and if warranted, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. This was a monumental task and took the better part of two years. Next, we had to brainstorm and design the new location on the second floor. After getting input from youth services faculty, the CCB staff thought carefully about who would use the collection and what would most benefit iSchool students, faculty, and staff. Once we had a blueprint, we worked with Tad Schroeder [assistant director of facilities] to order new furniture that fit our mission. It was fun to see the second-floor space come together, and now we’re just so excited to share it with people.
Tell me about the new location.
Alteri: It’s very welcoming to all ages. We have a child-friendly activity station and bright, soft seating. We have three large rotating displays for new books, and most of our furniture is modular, so the layout
lends itself to creativity and collaboration. We have 1,795 different books for ages 0-18, mostly from 2022 onward. It’s a great place to come and look at all the newly published books to include in classrooms and libraries.
What do you like best about your new home?
Schwebel: It is bright and cheery—and located near the offices of faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral students who work in children’s literature and youth services librarianship. This new location facilitates planned and spontaneous conversation about books, young readers, and the wonderful things that transpire when they are brought together.
Alteri: It’s fun and colorful. When I walk into the space, I just feel lighter and happier. Seeing all these great books makes me smile.
What makes the CCB unique?
Alteri: The Center has such a rich and storied history that can be explored through special exhibits on our website. If you visit the Center, you can also look at the original card catalog from the University of Chicago. We’ve grown in such new and exciting ways, and we have unique relationships with book reviewing through The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books as well as scholarship on diverse youth literature through the Research on Diversity in Youth Literature
The Center is open for reader’s advisory or if visitors just want to browse and hang out. The Center’s hours are 11:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and 3:00-6:00 p.m. on Tuesday. Learn more about the Center: ccb.ischool.illinois.edu
Record enrollment for campus and iSchool
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign welcomed a record-breaking number of students for the fall 2024 semester. With a freshman enrollment of 9,008, the new class is the largest ever and brings total enrollment to 59,238, including on-campus and online students. This total includes 37,140 undergraduates and a record number of 20,765 graduate students. The iSchool added 307 students (first-year freshmen and new transfer students) to its undergraduate program.
“It is exciting to see the increasing demand for our programs, which couple technical skills with broader social issues,” said Director of Recruitment and Admissions Katrina Hagler. “The iSchool provides students with a competitive edge, whether their career goals are in industry, libraries, or the public sector. I can’t wait to hear about our students’ amazing experiences as they unfold.”
iSchool Enrollment – Fall 2024
433
Bachelor of Science in Information Sciences (BSIS)
398
Master of Science in Information Management (MSIM)
391
Bachelor of Science in Information Sciences + Data Science (BSIS+DS)
592
Master of Science in Library and Information Science (MSLIS) Includes school librarian licensure students
9
Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS)
207
Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) Includes 80 Informatics students
Assistant Director of Recruitment and Admissions Tara Batte, Director of Recruitment and Admissions Katrina Hagler, and Assistant Director of Recruitment and Admissions Adrienne Jackson celebrated a successful recruitment season.
Alumni Get to know
Grant Florence, user experience designer
Grant Florence (BSIS ’23) used final projects from his iSchool courses to assemble a portfolio of case studies, which helped him land his job as a user experience designer for Microsoft. Now he is helping to design solutions for the cloud computing platform Azure.
Where do you work and what is your role?
I work at Microsoft as a user experience designer on the Cloud Native Experiences team. I help to create interfaces for Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.
What do you like best about your job?
Because of Microsoft’s broad product scope, I get to learn a lot from talented colleagues. I work with designers, researchers, and engineers on a daily basis. Knowing that I’m helping to design solutions for global Azure users is satisfying.
Why did you decide to pursue a degree in information sciences?
I decided to apply to the IS program because I liked the blend of technical and humanities coursework. Also, the idea of working in design and technology seemed like it could lead to a fulfilling career.
How did the iSchool help you get to where you are today?
I had some great professors who were very helpful in talking about careers. I found the one-on-one conversations about the working world to be extremely beneficial. The projects in my design and research courses gave me material for a design portfolio of case studies, which I leveraged in landing my job.
What advice would you like to share with iSchool students?
I recommend working somewhere in Research Park as soon as possible. It’s an incredible asset on campus.
Do a group fitness activity on a regular basis. Push yourself to do something hard. You will feel more capable in every area of your life if you invest in your health.
Don’t stop reaching out to new people. Join a business fraternity, Greek life, or RSOs. College is the time to make as many friendships as you can.
What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
I love getting together with friends, working out, writing, and going to run clubs in Chicago.
ISAA award recipients announced
TheiSchool Alumni Association (ISAA) is pleased to announce the recipients of its annual awards.
Michèle Cloonan (MSLIS ’84, PhD ’88) is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumna Award. Each year this award is given to an alum who has made an outstanding contribution to the field of library and information science. Cloonan is dean emerita and professor at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University. Her accomplishments reflect a long and successful career dedicated to promoting preservation in practice, theory, and graduate education. She is the author of numerous publications, including Preserving Our Heritage: Perspectives from Antiquity to the Digital Age (2015) and The Monumental Challenge of Preservation: The Past in a Volatile World (2018).
Ted Quiballo (MSLIS ’17) is the recipient of the Leadership Award, which is given to an alum who has graduated in the past ten years and shown leadership in the field. Quiballo has served as an instructional technologies librarian at Northwestern University since 2019. In this role, he works closely with other librarians to develop and incorporate instructional tools; manages and develops collections to support research, teaching, and learning; and provides strategic direction and outreach for the MakerLab at Mudd Science and Engineering Library. He also supports the university’s prison education program.
Christine Hopper is the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award. Each year this award is given to an individual who has served ISAA or the School in an exceptional way. Hopper has served as assistant to the dean of the iSchool since 2010. She acts as a consultant and advisor to the dean and other senior administrative staff and serves as a key resource concerning administrative matters and university policies and procedures. Hopper supports faculty governance activities and acts as an ambassador for the iSchool through her participation in hiring processes related to faculty and staff.
Class Notes
1970s
Elise Henderson (MSLIS ’79) passed away on April 9, 2024.
Patricia Fravel Vander Meer (MSLIS ’77) is coauthor of Artificially Yours: A Tale of Uncanny Animals, a book of fiction based in part on her work as an academic librarian.
1980s
Carol Leibiger (MSLIS ’85) has been promoted to professor in the University Libraries at the University of South Dakota.
Ruth Riley (MSLIS ’85) has retired from her position as assistant dean for executive affairs and director of library services for the Charles S. and Donna H. Bryan School of Medicine Library at the University of South Carolina.
Diane Zabel (MSLIS ’82) received the 2024 BRASS Excellence in Business Librarianship Award from the Reference and User Services Association, a division of the American Library Association (ALA).
1990s
Karen (Kay) Bronshteyn (MSLIS ’96) recently started a new position as director of the Preus Library at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.
Michelle Glatt (MSLIS ’93) has been elected as a director-at-large of the 2024 Illinois Library Association (ILA) Executive Board.
Chad Kahl (MSLIS ’98) started his new role as data and social sciences librarian at Illinois State University’s Milner Library on July 1. He has worked at the library since 2003. 2000s
Jennifer Asimakopoulos (MSLIS ’07) received the 2024 Reader’s Advisory Service Award from the ILA.
Wendy Edwards (MSLIS ’09) placed in the top ten of an international contest sponsored by Target and Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) and won a scholarship to the WiCyS 2024 Annual Conference in Nashville.
Joshua Finnell (MSLIS ’07) was recently appointed as the associate university librarian and director of research and scholarly initiatives at Case Library and Geyer Center for Information Technology at Colgate University.
Elizabeth Fox (MSLIS ’08) earned her Doctor of Health Sciences degree in 2022. In 2024, she published a book chapter, “The Role of the Hospital Librarian in Supporting Health
Literacy,” in Health Literacy and Libraries, edited by E. Vardell and D. Charbonneau.
Leah Gregory (MSLIS ’04) has been elected to the Board of Trustees for the Association of Illinois School Library Educators (AISLE).
Lissa Staley (MSLIS ’01) was selected as a 2024 Library Journal Mover & Shaker in the Community Builders category.
2010s
Tarida Anantachai (MSLIS ’11) was selected as a 2024 Library Journal Mover & Shaker in the Change Agent category.
Mary Baker (MSLIS ’16) has been accepted to the 2024 Clean Energy Leadership Institute (CELI) Fellowship Program. CELI partners with experts from universities, companies, and organizations to offer energy education and leadership development opportunities.
Anna Coats (MSLIS ’11) has been elected to the ALA APALA (Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association) leadership board.
Aaron Collie (MSLIS ’10) recently started a new position as assistant director of research data security at Princeton University.
Chris Houchens (MSLIS ’16) has been elected as a director-at-large of the 2024 ILA Executive Board.
Mallory Jallas (MSLIS ’12) started a new position as the head of information literacy and academic outreach and clinical associate professor at the University of Illinois Springfield in August.
Kristin Lansdown (MSLIS ’19) has received the 2024 Core Career LIFT Award, sponsored by OCLC and Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures, a division of the ALA.
Nisha Mody (MSLIS ’17) has created a course called Trauma-Informed and Relational Care for Libraries.
Courtney Moore (MSLIS ’14) received the 2024 Young Adult Library Professional of the Year Award from the ILA.
Joshua Newport (MSLIS ’13) has been elected as vice president/president-elect of the 2024 Illinois Association of College and Research Libraries (IACRL) Executive Board.
Conrad Remington (MSLIS ’17) married Greg Remington (née Alvarez) on February 29, 2024.
Jordan Ruud (MSLIS ’12) has been appointed as the director of library services at Boreham Library at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith.
Laura A. Sheets (MSLIS ’12) has been selected to guest-edit a special issue of Advances in Online Education: A Peer-Reviewed Journal. The special issue, which was published in fall 2024, focuses on librarian collaboration with faculty in the development and delivery of online education.
In 2023, Nicholas Stark (MSLIS ’11) was promoted to branch chief of research services at the IRS Office of Chief Counsel Library in Washington, D.C.
Lydia Tang (MSLIS ’15) delivered a keynote on the intersection of archives and accessibility for the COSA SERI STEER Unconference and Society of Ohio Archivists Annual Meeting. She was also promoted to senior outreach and engagement coordinator, a position in which she continues to provide leadership for hosted ArchivesSpace and advance accessibility at Lyrasis.
Kim Tipton (MSLIS ’18), reference librarian at the McHenry County College Library, was featured in the ILA’s Member Spotlight for the week of March 11, 2024.
Anna Trammell (MSLIS ’15) recently started a new position as community archiving program manager at Internet Archive.
Katherine Villa (MSLIS ’18) started her new position as arts, humanities, and social sciences librarian for Researcher Services at the University of California-Davis Library in March and graduated with a PhD in philosophy from the University of Miami in August.
2020s
Sarah Appedu (MSLIS ’22) has been accepted into the 2024 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Leadership Development Internship Program.
Emily Benton (MSLIS ’20) started her new position as the Prairie Research Institute librarian and clinical assistant professor at the University of Illinois in September.
Jessica Yi-Yun Cheng (PhD ’22), assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, has been awarded an IMLS grant for her project, “Storytelling Across Time: Building a Community Around Provenance (B-CAP).”
Kaitlin Fink (MSLIS ’22) has accepted a job as LRC coordinator for JB Nelson School in Batavia, Illinois. She is excited to move from a classroom to a library setting.
Pim Halka (MSLIS ’20) has a new role as the supervising reference librarian with JeffersonMadison Regional Library in Charlottesville, Virginia. “I look forward to building the community engagement program at JMRL with skills I learned at the iSchool,” Halka said.
Cordiah Hayes (MSLIS ’22) has been selected as the recipient of the 2024 Beta Phi Mu Distinguished Member Award.
Dyamond Hutton (MSLIS ’21) has started a new job as a knowledge and research service coordinator at Mendelson P.C.
In March, Gene Kannenberg, Jr. (MSLIS ’22) published Here Comes Charlie Brown! A Peanuts Pop-Up (Abrams ComicArts). He created the book using paper-engineering techniques he learned in Bookbinding: History, Principles, Practice (IS 590) with Adjunct Lecturer Andrew Huot.
Jane Kanter (MSLIS ’20) is featured in the Library Journal article, “Among the Stars: The Adler Planetarium Collection | Archives Deep Dive.”
Olivia Palid (MSLIS ’21) was recently promoted to senior coordinator, Chicago programs, at the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois.
Erika Ternes (MSLIS ’24) continues to serve her “tiny but mighty” rural library in youth services. She enjoys the variety of small library work, from conducting story time and editing MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) records to redesigning cash handling procedures and hula hooping on the library lawn.
In Memoriam: Pauline Cochrane and David Hopping
Pauline Cochrane
Professor
Emerita Pauline Anna Blazina Atherton Cochrane passed away on July 29, 2024. She was a pioneer in subject access in information organization during her distinguished career as a professor of library and information science.
Among her many achievements, Cochrane created an online UDC (Universal Decimal Classification)-based retrieval system, which was the first campus-based retrieval system for Psychological Abstracts; strove to improve the ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) Thesaurus; and as part of the Digital Library Initiative, assisted in designing a hypertextual thesaurus browser. She also helped to introduce computerbased cataloging and online reference courses in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Cochrane significantly influenced the field of LIS through her many consultancies, visiting professorships, funded research, and publications. She served as president of the American Society for Information Science (ASIS), and she was recognized with the ASIS Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award and the ASIS Award of Merit.
Until her retirement in 2008, one of Cochrane’s greatest joys was teaching and encouraging early career researchers. The first twenty-five years of her career are documented in a 1985 Oryx Press book, Redesign of Catalogs and Indexes for Improved Online Subject Access: Selected Papers.
David Hopping
Teaching
Assistant Professor and Workforce Development/Continuing Education Director David Hopping passed away on April 10, 2024.
We’d love to hear from you! Send us your updates as well as any employment/ internship openings or opportunities for iSchool alumni to connect in your area.
Office of Advancement and Alumni Relations
School of Information Sciences
501 East Daniel Street, Champaign, IL 61820 ischool-advancement@illinois.edu (217) 300-5746
ischool.illinois.edu/engage/alumni
Hopping’s research focused on social and community informatics, sociological theory of human rights, relational sociology, and action research and public policy related to digital inclusion and digital literacy. At the iSchool, he taught Web Technologies and Techniques, Web Development for Organizations, Social Network Analysis, Web Design Fundamentals, and Web Content Strategy and Management.
Hopping was committed to securing the safety and well-being of others, which was evident in his volunteer work with Hope Meadows in Rantoul, Illinois, where older adults and foster families join together to raise and adopt foster children. He worked with founder Brenda Eheart to create Generations of Hope, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of intergenerational communities as solutions to complex social problems. Hopping served as the organization’s executive managing director from 20072015 and executive director from 2015-2016.
Hopping and his wife, Teaching Professor Judith Pintar, coauthored Information Science: the Basics (Routledge, 2023). Recently, he and his students had been developing the Web Innovation Studio, a pedagogical approach to teaching web development that engages students in meaningful, collaborative work.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
501 East Daniel Street, MC-493
Champaign, IL 61820-6211
