Alumni Highlights

Dr. Barbara Freedman

Dr. Barbara Freedman graduated in 2019 with a PhD in Learning Technologies with a dissertation on The Impact of Technology-based Music Classes on Music Department Enrollment in Secondary Public High Schools in The Northeastern United States. Since 2011, along with teaching classes at UNT as adjunct, Barbara has taught high school technology-based music classes and had her program featured in a documentary, called The Creative Element, in which three music teachers explain how music technology helps their students engage with the creative process and make the music that matters to them.

Dr. Jen Seale

Dr. Jen Seale graduated from the Linguistics Department in 2007 with her masters in Linguistics and recently completed her Ph.D. in computational linguistics at the CUNY Graduate Center. After UNT, Seale went on to work in ontology-centered natural language processing at an AI startup. She also worked as a computational linguist in the educational technology world and as an NLP-focused researcher in a telecommunications-focused AI startup in NYC.

Dr. Tara Zimmerman

Dr. Tara Zimmerman graduated in August of 2020 with a Ph.D. in Information Science. Tara already held an M.S. in Library and Information studies and had worked as a public school librarian for eight years. She had been involved in the human side of information-seeking behavior but became interested in exploring an information focus, leading to her dissertation work, Research on Information Behavior of Social Media Users. Tara was awarded the Computing Institute Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, funded by the National Science Foundation, for a two-year span. This position has allowed Tara to broaden her research endeavors, get experience in the field, and increase her opportunities to publish, lining up perfectly with her passion for research.

Mathew Zuniga

Mathew Zuniga graduated with an M.S. in Library Science in 2021 w/Youth Services Certification and Librarian Certification. Zuniga was awarded Teacher of the Year at his campus as he was graduating from UNT for completely redoing the library and taking it over as a teacher-librarian. Recently, he spoke as a keynote panelist for one of New Tech Network’s main presentations about how his campus is working to help make college accessible for all students. And last summer he was selected as an IASL (International Association of School Librarianship) video winner and had his video about his school library and its programs premiered at the conference.