Alumni
INTERSECTIONS SPRING 2021
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Same program but different paths for iSchool sisters Mariah and Fernanda Schaefer
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or Mariah and Fernanda Schaefer (both MS ’20), having your twin as a study partner when going through graduate school was extremely helpful. Originally from Brazil, the Schaefer sisters received their bachelor’s degrees—Mariah in journalism and Fernanda in advertising—and master’s degrees from the University of Illinois. “It was incredibly convenient when we got to work on group projects together,” said Fernanda. “As you can imagine, scheduling time to work was super easy!” Her decision to pursue a master’s in library and information science (LIS) was sparked by her experience as a marketing and communications intern at the Office of Technology Management, where she used information from a knowledge management system to market professors’ inventions to potential licensees. This internship led to a passion for information organization, which she decided to follow by enrolling in the LIS program. Fernanda worked as an institutional repository management graduate assistant in the Scholarly Communication and Publishing unit of the University Library, where she managed metadata for the IDEALS repository of scholarly works. She was a data analytics intern at Caterpillar’s Research Park office and a summer intern at the Academy Film Archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. Now employed as a metadata and content acquisition analyst at NBCUniversal, Fernanda manages, analyzes, and enhances descriptive and administrative metadata used to enable anti-piracy initiatives. She works with the legal team to ensure NBCUniversal has enforcement rights set for their titles and liaises with NBCUniversal brands such as DreamWorks and Peacock to identify priority titles in need of content protection. She also sources and processes the audiovisual files that are fed into the company’s anti-piracy workflows. Mariah’s decision to study LIS came after taking the history course, Publishing the Past. “I became fascinated with the intersection of publishing and librarianship and thought it would be cool to learn more about libraries, as I was interested in working in book publishing,” she said. Like her sister, Mariah also secured a graduate assistantship prior to starting the MS program. As a pre-professional graduate assistant at the University’s International and Area Studies Library, she planned an author talk with Brazilian-American author Frances de Pontes Peebles. This successful event led to a summer internship at the Macmillan Speakers Bureau. “I also completed a practicum in editorial management at the University of Illinois Press,” she said. “My practicum was one of the most rewarding experiences I had in graduate school, and it made me realize the Press would be a wonderful place to work.” Mariah is now an assistant acquisitions editor at the University of Illinois Press, where she helps guide projects through the publication process and works with books in the subject areas of music, folklore, communication, film and media, sports, and Chicago. In addition to assisting with project management, she maintains records, coordinates peer review, and works with authors to finalize their submissions. “I wanted to work in book publishing, and Fernanda wanted to work with entertainment metadata; neither of those paths fit a ‘traditional’ LIS route, but the program prepared us well for our positions,” said Mariah.
iSchool degree prepares Nettles for meaningful career
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aundra Nettles (MS ’68) credits the iSchool with teaching her skills, such as systems thinking and interdisciplinary teamwork, that she has been able to transfer across work settings in diverse organizations. Nettles, who also holds a PhD in psychology from Howard University, has served as a special recruit at the Library of Congress, librarian at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, principal research scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Social Organization of Schools, and faculty member at the University of Maryland, Georgia Southern University, and University of Illinois. She decided to earn her MS/LIS degree because of her mentor, Annie McPheeters, a librarian and provider of resources for the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta, who was influential in Nettles’ learning and desire for social justice. “GSLIS [the iSchool] was interdisciplinary, a strong point for me as I had varied interests from African American history to architecture,” she said. Nettles was recently honored for her own mentorship, receiving the 2020 Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award for “inspiring a former student to create an
