iNews 2023

iNews The Information School || Fall 2023

LEADER AND INNOVATOR Michael Fosmire, ‘97, has approached his library career with a spirit of experimentation

Piecing it together Guide to hiring neurodivergent employees gives companies the tools for mutual success

NO NEUTRAL AI Student researchers study ways artificial intelligence reproduces bias

INSIDE

Connecting worlds Jason Young, new TASCHA director, “makes everyone around him better.”

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Skills they can build on Practitioner in Residence program gives MLIS grads a solid foundation 28

A voice for inclusion Nassim Parvin, new associate dean for IDEAS, studies injustice in design 34 Program highlights. . . . . . 4 Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The Download. . . . . . . . 16 Faculty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Alumni Updates. . . . . . . 37 Bookshelf . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 PROGRAM CHAIRS Informatics: Joel Ross MLIS: Cindy Aden MSIM: David Hendry Museology: Jessica Luke Ph.D.: Alexis Hiniker

CREDITS Writing, editing and photography: Doug Parry, Maggie Foote, Samantha Herndon, Shanzay Shabi, Jim Davis, Michelle Dunlop, Michael Grass, Jessi Loerch, Mary Lynn Lyke, Kayla Pohl Design: Katie Mayer Cover illustration: Alexia Lozano Copyright 2023 University of Washington Information School

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DEAN’S MESSAGE

Advocacy for diverse voices is more crucial than ever

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enerative AI such as ChatGPT has recently burst onto the scene, and like most advancements in technology, it caters to a homogeneous population — white, male, able-bodied and Englishspeaking. When technology reflects only part of the spectrum of lived experiences, it puts underrepresented people at a huge disadvantage. It’s a cycle that will keep repeating until diversity is baked into every stage of design and development.

Diverse thought benefits everyone.

For our faculty, it leads to more impactful research and more engaging classroom discussions. For students, it’s critical for a quality learning experience.

For employers, it ensures the products they create will serve a broader population. Effective technology doesn’t simply pay lip service to the existence of underrepresented groups; it’s built by a diversity of people who can understand the needs of different people and anticipate potential harms.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling that barred the use of race as a factor in college admissions presents a challenge to all of us who value diversity. Our peers in higher education are grappling with the consequences and seeking ways to preserve diverse cohorts, but in many states they face a challenging political climate and hostile governing boards.

Conservative-led states have also seen the loss of abortion rights, restrictions

on gender-affirming care, and escalating efforts to ban books and close libraries.

All of these factors are bound to affect students’ feelings about where to attend college.

We are fortunate that Washington remains an open state ideologically, and the University of Washington will continue to attract students with great diversity of backgrounds, thoughts and experiences. We do so while being mindful of the restrictions set by state Initiative 200, which prevents us from taking race into account in admissions and hiring decisions. At the iSchool, we have increased the racial diversity of our programs by focusing on the lived experience of prospective students and their commitment to the values we call IDEAS: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access and Sovereignty. We look for evidence of this in applicant essays, and we recruit first-generation students and those from military families and lower socioeconomic backgrounds to ensure we bring a variety of perspectives into our classrooms.

IDEAS isn’t just about who we bring into the school; it’s embedded throughout our curriculum, hiring practices and research. Dedication to IDEAS shows in Hala Annabi’s research in employment for neurodiverse people (see page 10); Cindy Aden, Miranda Belarde-Lewis, Sandy Littletree and Carole Palmer’s work on Indigenous ways of knowing; and Jacob Wobbrock’s groundbreaking research in accessible technology, just to name a few. I’m particularly excited to welcome Nassim Parvin as our new associate dean for IDEAS (see page 34).

Her commitment to gender equity and social justice is deeply rooted in her childhood in Iran, where she watched her parents burn their books for fear of being arrested. Nassim will take a fresh look at how we incorporate IDEAS in our curriculum and processes.

While we’ve had many successes, this is no time for complacency. Our school has long been a leader in the iSchool movement, and now our advocacy for IDEAS is another way we can set an example. Our shared values are what make this such a vibrant intellectual community.

— Anind K. Dey Dean and Professor Fall 2023

Q&A | Perspectives from the iSchool community

What is an unforeseen potential impact from the sizable recent layoffs in the tech industry?

WENDY TURNER-WILLIAMS CEO at TheAssociation; UW Information School Board Member The recent wave of tech layoffs reverberates with unforeseen consequences, stretching far beyond corporate balance sheets. These repercussions encompass the emotional, physical and financial dimensions, displacing the lives of those impacted, then radiating to families, friends and communities.

The tech layoffs have caused a significant erosion of trust and brand reputation. Employees, who are the heart and soul of these organizations, grapple with feelings of betrayal, grief and fear. Customers and partners, too, may begin to question their alliances with companies who prioritize profit over employee well-being. In addition, the industry is now grappling with a knowledge vacuum. The loss of seasoned employees means a depletion of institutional knowledge and expertise, making it increasingly challenging to execute strategies or to maintain daily operations. Furthermore, the negative trickle-down effect cannot be ignored.

The tech industry offers high-paying jobs; the reduction in opportunities exacerbates competition and reduces spending power that filters down to all industries. A reactive cost-cutting exercise unleashes a web of consequences that will leave impact for years to come.

LUCAS MOE Associate Director for Career Services at UW iSchool The sizable recent layoffs in the tech industry have had an unforeseen impact on individuals needing visa sponsorship, triggering ripple effects that extend far beyond the workplace. Many tech companies have been prominent sponsors of H-1B visas, employing skilled foreign workers to fill crucial roles. With layoffs occurring, visa holders often find themselves in a precarious situation, as they typically have a limited timeframe to secure new employment and visa sponsorship. This can lead to uncertainty, stress, and even forced departures from the country, resulting in a loss of skills and diversity within the tech sector. Furthermore, workplace policies in the tech industry have had a profound influence on educational institutions, communities and families. Layoffs can result in reduced internship and job opportunities for students, affecting their educational prospects.

Communities that rely on the tech sector for economic stability may see decreased local investment and increased unemployment. Families could face financial stress and relocation challenges, impacting the social fabric of neighborhoods. To mitigate these unforeseen consequences, it’s essential for companies and policymakers to consider the broader implications of layoffs, offering support and flexibility to visa holders, investing in education and retraining programs, and promoting a more resilient tech ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders.

KATHERINE CROSS Ph.D. Candidate at UW iSchool While the needless immiseration of workers is always tragic, there’s one harm that stands out to me above even the moral implications of the tech layoff wave: The gutting of what’s come to be known as “Trust & Safety” — the staff whose job it is to mitigate the myriad harms of their platforms, from harassment to disinformation to illegal activity. Twitter (now X), as ever, is the paradigm: we’re seeing more extremist content there, more bigotry, more child sexual abuse material, and fewer attempts to restrain any of it. It’ll be the Wild West internet of the ’90s, but with all the affordances and hyperconnective openness of Web 2.0 social media in a climate more given to extremism and prejudice. T&S requires staffing and funding, it requires subject matter experts and rank-and-file moderators, as well as support staff like mental health workers.

With major companies slashing it all, their platforms may become more inhospitable than ever. There’s never been a better time to reduce our dependence on them and log off. ischool.uw.edu | 3

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS | Informatics

Aditya Ramani (right) with iSchool lecturer Nam-ho Park, who encouraged Ramani to pursue epidemiology. Ramani recently graduated from Imperial College London.

Childhood inspiration leads to a future in public health

By Shanzay Shabi As a child, Aditya Ramani dreamed of a career in medicine. But when he had to dissect a pig in his 10th-grade science class, he learned he didn’t have the stomach for some aspects of the medical field.

“After having to do the dissection, I remember thinking, ‘I can’t be a doctor.

I need to find a different way of helping people,’” said Ramani, ’20. “So when I started exploring computer science, I found it to be a way for me to still give back to my community but through technical skills.”

Ramani’s interest in a career in technology brought him to the iSchool to major in Informatics, but his passion for public health was in the back of his mind. Childhood trips to India planted a seed that stayed with him.

“Visiting my grandpa’s clinic in India, I saw him help whoever came to him, whether they could pay or not. Seeing his generosity inspired me to help people through the medical field,” said Ramani.

Ramani has held on to the inspiration from his grandpa’s clinic and recently graduated with a master’s in epidemiol-

ogy from Imperial College London. He is set to start as a research associate in mathematical modeling with a public health consortium in London.

Ramani first came to the iSchool convinced that a career in computer science was the right path for him. While completing the Data Science track within the Informatics program, Ramani took a health informatics class with Mike Freeman. This course got him interested in health metrics and evaluation.

“I grew interested in learning more about quantifying the burden of diseases on people’s lives,” said Ramani.

Ramani did his Capstone project on a database of neglected tropical diseases for the Gates Foundation, allowing him to further delve into his interest. Toward the end of his senior year, the iSchool introduced a new Health & Well-Being focus area to Informatics as well. While it was too late to switch his track, Ramani nonetheless took advantage of some of the courses offered to gain more insight into the intersection of public health and technology.

Circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic led Ramani to accept an offer as a software developer for Amazon rather than pursuing a master’s right after graduating from the iSchool. But he knew his heart was still in public health.

With the guidance of iSchool Lecturer Nam-ho Park, Ramani took a leap and applied for epidemiology programs around the world, including the London Imperial College.

“In the long run, I just hope to make people’s lives easier and reduce the burden of different diseases,” said Ramani.

“I finally feel like I’m at a place where I can do that.”

Alumni spotlight: Vincent van der Meulen, ’19 NOW: SOFTWARE ENGINEER AT FIGMA Last year, I joined a four-person design tool startup called Diagram as a design engineer, and we quickly managed to prototype the white whale we’d been chasing: a design assistant called “Genius.”

What followed was a wild year. We built out Genius as part of OpenAI’s Converge accelerator and got acquired by Figma, where I now work on the AI team. As part of the acquisition announcement, I spoke during the opening keynote of Figma’s annual design conference!

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PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS | MLIS

Librarianship skills prove practical in elected office

By Samantha Herndon For Catherine McMullen, MLIS ‘08, librarianship and public office have a lot in common. After more than a decade working for public libraries, McMullen successfully campaigned for the role of clerk of Clackamas County, just south of Portland, Oregon.

“It was a long journey, but a lot of fun,” McMullen says. “And one of the most enjoyable parts is meeting the voter where they’re at, and having conversations with voters about how processes work.”

She is now the lead elections administrator for the county’s 315,000 voters, and is responsible for keeping official records for the county. “Good information management came in handy,” she says of her library training.

After graduating, she served in roles including reference librarian, bilingual project librarian, and regional librarian.

Working for public libraries “led to a set of ethics and standards, and to wanting to help people where they’re at with what they’re working on,” she says.

“That really transferred over well,” she says, when she took on a position leading and starting Oregon’s first county-level voter education outreach program. “When I looked at the job description, I said, ‘They need a librarian, they just don’t know it yet.’ It was being in the community, it was providing access to resources. It was adult education, building partnerships, all of those things

that we do as librarians both inside and outside of our libraries.”

McMullen soon realized that she could have an even greater impact in the role of county clerk. “I live here in Clackamas County and wanted elections to be better — more accurate, transparent and inclusive. So I needed to run for office,” she says.

The projects McMullen took on as a student provided strong training for a life of librarianship and public service.

She worked with a group of students on the first self-checkout system at a Portland library. Her group created a training guide on the new service, and she says she had a lot of fun in the process.

For McMullen, it comes down to service, education, community and democracy. “Libraries and elections are different pillars of democracy,” she says.

“Local government touches people’s lives in many different ways, from getting married, to buying a house, to voting.

And it’s important that folks have the information they need.”

Officiating weddings, a service she brought back to the role of clerk, is an enjoyable part of the job. McMullen frequently uses social media to share the wedding photos and to provide information to her constituents.

“I always say that, ‘You can take the librarian out of the library, but you can’t take the library out of the librarian,’” McMullen says.

“Local government touches people’s lives in many different ways, from getting married, to buying a house, to voting. And it’s important that folks have the information they need.”

Alumni spotlight: Mei’lani Eyre, ’23 NOW: LIBRARIAN AT SOUTH SEATTLE COLLEGE I’ve started in a tenure-track faculty librarian position at South Seattle College, serving our Humanities, English as a Second Language and Trade programs. This is alongside joining Wa Na Wari’s Black Seattle Spatial Histories Institute, where I’m interviewing Black naturalists, outdoor educators and medicine makers in Seattle. [Wa Na Wari is a community art project that documents Black land ownership in gentrified communities.]

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PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS | MSIM

Bonderman Fellowship opens a door to the world

By Shanzay Shabi Erica Adams is preparing for the trip of a lifetime: eight countries in eight months.

Adams, a Mid-Career Master of Science in Information Management student specializing in user experience and cybersecurity, will travel to countries across Africa and Asia as a recipient of the prestigious Bonderman Fellowship.

Each year, a select group of University of Washington students are provided a rare opportunity to independently travel the world and visit four to eight countries as Bonderman fellows. The fellowship offers students the chance to

engage in independent exploration and travel abroad, empowering them to expand their understanding of the world.

The Bonderman Fellowship is highly competitive and requires candidates to answer a series of application questions to assess which students demonstrate self-knowledge and interpersonal and cross-cultural interests, among other skills.

“I feel really grateful and honored to be amongst this year’s Bonderman fellows. Especially being a Black woman of color, there aren’t that many opportunities of this type of solo travel available

for us, so I hold deep gratitude for the Bonderman Fellowship for opening doors like this,” said Adams.

Adams, who has loved traveling since childhood, decided to maximize the opportunity and plans to travel to eight countries: Cambodia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, South Korea and Thailand.

The theme of Adams’ trip is community building around music. Her interest in music and culture and her background in international studies and user experience research have motivated her to expand the scope of her knowledge and interests beyond the United States.

“As an aspiring UX researcher, I want to get better at talking to people and observing human behavior outside of the U.S. I feel like my life is very insular and I’m hoping to expand my world beyond the life I’ve always known,” said Adams. “I’m especially excited about going to Africa because when I was a kid there were some really problematic media portrayals of Africa, so I’m hoping to change those views and share my experiences with my friends and family.”

While solo traveling around the world is no easy feat, Adams believes her experiences at the iSchool have helped prepare her for her long trip abroad.

“The iSchool continues to help my growth and my ability to think critically.

I am also now better equipped with the awareness of cybersecurity and how to secure myself while traveling like through two-factor authentication,” said Adams.

“Additionally, the projects where I had to interview people in my research methods classes have made me more confident and strengthened my people skills.”

Alumni spotlight: Ashish Malviya, ’11 NOW: MANAGING DIRECTOR AT ABERDEEN ADVISORS In June, I moved to Aberdeen Advisors, where I lead our technology consulting practice, specializing in technology strategy and digital transformation. With extensive strategy consulting and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) experience, I guide organizations through transformative initiatives that streamline technology landscapes and optimize performance. My expertise encompasses evaluating IT and business processes, identifying enhancement areas, and overseeing complex IT infrastructures in global M&A contexts.

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PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS | Museology

Learning from museums’ past to create an inclusive future

By Doug Parry Until recently, collections in the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum typically featured the island’s maritime past and lumber mills. Nothing was newer than a half-century old.

“It was still that colonial project,” said Lillian Xie, the museum’s collections manager, “a lot of white people history.”

The museum’s current exhibits paint a richer picture, including exhibits on Filipino Americans, African Americans, the Pride community and other aspects of island life. It’s the kind of transformation that students learn to lead in the

University of Washington’s Museology master’s program, which joined the Information School this fall.

Xie, who earned her M.A. in Museology in 2021, joined the small museum near Seattle while it was undergoing a major renovation. The museum recruited advisors from 13 island communities, Xie said. They acted as liaisons in choosing which objects and stories would represent the communities in the museum’s exhibits.

“It was returning the voice to the people because they’re still around and they’re totally capable of telling their ancestors’ stories and telling their own,”

At the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum, Lillian Xie, ‘21, discusses current exhibits that were developed in collaboration with 13 communities on the island.

she said. “That was super eye-opening for me because that’s pretty much what we talked about in Museology.”

Museum professionals’ responsibility to promote inclusion is at the core of Museology’s curriculum, said Teaching Professor Jessica Luke, the program director. Coursework addresses the fraught history of museums, which have long acted as repositories for wealthy people to display objects seized through colonialism.

“We’ve tried to be super transparent and to really lean into this notion that museums are built on a really horrible history but that we can change them,” Luke said.

Danielle Sakowski, ’20, got a broad view of how museums operate in the Museology program. That included administrative functions, grant writing and community engagement.

Her interests led her to a thesis project focused Danielle on climate change enSakowski gagement in museums.

She now works as a program manager at Environment & Culture Partners, a small nonprofit based in Tacoma that focuses on what the nonprofit and culture sector can do to address climate change.

In recent months, she has been working to help museums and other nonprofits such as zoos and aquariums measure their energy use, part of a broader effort to establish benchmarks so the cultural sector can reduce its carbon footprint.

“If they can reduce their energy use or start using clean energy, that leads to some critical money savings and potentially avenues to other funders that want to be funding this type of work in museums,” she said.

Alumni spotlight: Victoria Bonebrake, ‘21 NOW: RESEARCH ASSOCIATE AT REIMAGINE RESEARCH GROUP What I love about my work is that through research and evaluation, I’m able to help organizations center the voices of their communities in policies, programs, strategies and decisions. One recent highlight is a trip to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) annual meeting in support of the Modeling Zoos and Aquariums as Inclusive Communities of Science project. My team and I shared our progress toward building a suite of resources that will help make AZA sites more inclusive for autistic staff and visitors.

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PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS | Ph.D.

Student investigates Tribal health communication online

By Jessi Loerch Nicole Kuhn’s research as an iSchool Ph.D. candidate is a balancing act between the slow, deliberate pace of academia and the quick, in-the-moment pace of social media. Kuhn’s research focuses on Indigenous health communication on social media and is deeply connected to her ongoing work on Indigenous research ethics.

Her work relies on careful relationship building with Indigenous communities, which takes time. Thanks to a Ford Foundation predoctoral fellowship and a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship, she will

have the time that is needed to ethically engage in Indigenous research.

When Kuhn began her Ph.D. work at the iSchool in fall 2019, she was thinking a lot about Indigenous research ethics and figuring out how she would combine that focus with her previous work in human-computer interaction and digital youth. As a Native scholar — she’s a member of the Skidegate Band of the Haida Nation — Kuhn was particularly interested in figuring out what work would be most beneficial to Native communities.

Within a quarter, the pandemic hit and Kuhn’s focus soon became clear.

“I started to see in my own social

media feed how our Indigenous communities were leveraging social media to deliver really essential, timely health communication and community information on how to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said.

Social media was a resource both for those living in their home communities and, like her, living away from home.

“I saw from my own experience how social media became a really important part of sharing health communication online, even within smaller, close-knit communities. With the added component of social distancing, there was a real need to provide essential health communication and manage public health responses in ways that were appropriate and relevant to each community,” she said.

This early interest in social media became the focus of Kuhn’s work. She led a research project about Indigenous communities’ messaging around COVID happening on Facebook, which resulted in a published paper. That work was also the beginning of a collaborative relationship with a regional Tribal health advisory organization, Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB).

NPAIHB’s adolescent health team became very interested in learning more about TikTok, which was quickly gaining in popularity, especially among youth.

Kuhn pivoted to prioritize what they needed to know about TikTok, and to get that information back to them as quickly as possible. That work resulted in a community publication and multiple presentations to the Tribal health community.

The ethics of Indigenous social media

See Kuhn, Page 43

Alumni spotlight: Mingrui “Ray” Zhang, ’22 NOW: RESEARCH SCIENTIST AT META REALITY LABS At Meta, I am part of the team that designs how people use augmented reality (AR) devices in an effortless way. Over the past year, my team successfully delivered various solutions for text entry with smart glasses, including on-screen keyboard, dictation and novel input methods using neural signals.

Those interactions serve as foundations for communication with smart glasses in the future.

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RESEARCH | Spotlight on iSchool scholarship

iSchool research team helps librarians tell Tacoma’s story

By Michelle Dunlop How do you get people to contribute their stories to a community archive when the concept itself can be confusing?

That’s one of the challenges a UW Information School team faced while working with staff from Tacoma Public Library to develop their Community Archives Center. Their goal was not only to make Tacoma’s archives successful but also to create a toolkit that other libraries can use to establish their own community archives.

The two-year project, which wrapped up recently, was made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, said Chris Jowaisas, a senior research scientist with the iSchool. Jowaisas was part of the iSchool team, which also included senior research scientist and project lead Jason Young, Assistant Professor Marika Cifor and Ph.D. candidate Sarah Nguyễn.

Like librarians across the country, the staff at Tacoma Public Library had

identified a deficit in its local history archives, Jowaisas said. A sizable part of the community hadn’t been included or their contributions have been under-investigated.

“They knew there were some obvious gaps,” he said.

Immigrants, people who are racially minoritized, and those living in certain neighborhoods of Tacoma often were left out of the history of the city, Jowaisas said. Shining a light on their stories was part of the purpose of the project. But the community archive also seeks to capture various perspectives of recent events such as the COVID pandemic and racial injustices.

“People think that community archives are people talking about the past,” Jowaisas said.

To break through those misconceptions, the team turned to community organizations for help. Jowaisas credited library staff for its strong connections to the community. Feedback from those organizations led the iSchool team to

Felix Strozier shares his story with interviewers collecting oral histories during the Hilltop Story Fest in Tacoma. Photo by Mikayla Heineck, courtesy of Tacoma Public Library.

change its communication about community archives after the first public event garnered less participation than desired.

Anna Trammell, Tacoma Public Library’s manager for archives and special collections, also emphasized the importance of working with community partners, who helped them narrow their focus. Primarily, they heard that the Hilltop and Eastside neighborhoods have been underserved.

“What we heard loud and clear from the community was they wanted us to focus on neighborhoods,” she said.

“If their story has been told, it’s been through an external perspective.”

Trammell noted a shift in momentum within the community once they realized they could share their stories, not just photos and artifacts. Tacoma Public Library has compiled 280 individual recordings of community members’ oral histories.

“We did not describe oral history as a major component in the grant, but people were excited about sharing their stories,” she said.

Partnering with the iSchool team provided Tacoma’s library staff with a different perspective, Trammell said.

“It allowed us to focus on the day-today business of making the community archive project work.”

Although the grant funding for the project has ended, work on the community archive continues. The library has a community archive exhibit that’s traveling until May 2024 around Tacoma to different library branches and community spaces. The library also received local funding to have an Eastside Storyfest in May 2024, which will be an opportunity for the community to share and celebrate stories of that neighborhood.

“There’s a lot of momentum around this project,” Trammell said.

The iSchool team will edit the online version, based on feedback from other libraries. They also intend to do a case study with five to seven libraries who use the toolkit, she said.

“It’s a continuous conversation,” Nguyễn said.

The community archives toolkit is available online at community-archives. gitbook.io/toolkit/. ischool.uw.edu | 9

RESEARCH | Spotlight on iSchool scholarship

Resource guide by the iSchool’s Hala Annabi helps companies reduce obstacles to recruiting, hiring and supporting neurodivergent employees Story by JIM DAVIS

S Chelsie Fonseca

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Illustration by ALEXIA LOZANO

ock wrangler Chelsie Fonseca does a little of everything at John’s Crazy Socks, an online retailer and social enterprise that features thousands of pairs of quirky socks. She packs the Happiness Gift Boxes and does the gift wrapping. She painted a mural with blue-and-yellow flowers — the colors associated with Down syndrome — in a bathroom at the company’s Long Island headquarters. She even took a turn modeling at a beauty, fashion and art show in October 2022, wearing a pair of the compa-

ny’s Halloween-themed socks decorated with ghosts, bats and candy corn, along with a black lacy dress and “The Nightmare Before Christmas” T-shirt.

As an autistic person, Fonseca also speaks out on why employers should consider hiring disabled people. “I think it’s a wonderful idea to hire people with different abilities, because that gives us a chance to be out in the real world and experience different people and learn new things,” Fonseca said.

Her story — and the lessons learned from her

employment — are helping autistic people obtain jobs across the country through a partnership with the University of Washington’s Information School.

John’s Crazy Socks is a member of a collaborative group of companies across the country called the Neurodiversity @ Work Employer Roundtable. The effort was started in 2017 by major corporations Microsoft, SAP, JPMorgan Chase and EY.

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Those Neurodiversity @ Work founding companies realized that hiring autistic people was not an area where they compete, so they decided to join together and share best practices. (The group was originally called Autism @ Work Employer Roundtable.)

The roundtable now includes about 60 companies, including some of the largest corporations in the U.S. such as IBM and Microsoft and smaller companies such as John’s Crazy Socks.

Mark X. Cronin and his son John — who has Down syndrome — started the sock company in 2016. It now employs 34 people, 22 of whom have a differing ability; the most common diagnosis is autism.

All of these companies had different approaches and practices around hiring neurodivergent

her coworkers. Instead, she would brainstorm social topics to talk with her team members about and schedule those on her calendar.

“She had to code — using her own word — certain types of social and nurturing behaviors in her calendar,” Annabi said. “She’d say, ‘I just wish I could just get the work done and not worry about these other things.’ ” Research suggests that only 15% to 20% of autistic people in the U.S. are employed, Annabi said.

A study by Drexel University found that 42% of autistic people never worked for pay in their 20s.

The hiring process is biased toward people based on social characteristics, favoring extroverted behaviors, having little do with the job or the candidate’s skills and putting neurodivergent people at a disadvantage, Annabi said.

The playbook contains the distilled practical knowledge of pioneering companies that have tapped into the talents of neurodistinct individuals and provides a blueprint for companies to follow the same path. people, including autistic people. That’s why they turned to the iSchool to help identify and distill their best practices into a guidebook that would benefit organizations across several industries.

The Autism @ Work Playbook is a 61-page resource guide, part gospel and part roadmap for hiring autistic people. Hala Annabi, an iSchool associate professor whose work includes research on inclusive hiring practices, led the effort.

Microsoft has had a culture of inclusion from its earliest days and started its own autism hiring program in 2015, said Neil Barnett, director of hiring and accessibility at the company. He praised Annabi for her talent for working with separate companies to put together the playbook.

“She’s really good at taking the research, the insights and distilling it down into ‘commonspeak,’ ” Barnett said. “And presenting it in a way that anyone can digest and understand it. You almost have to translate that research into something that people can read and digest that makes sense to their work.”

Annabi realized the complexity of autism in the workplace during a study conducted six years ago. In the study, Annabi met an Asian-American autistic woman who led a product management team in a large technology firm.

The woman masked her autism, meaning that she didn’t reveal her diagnosis at her work or to 12

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The Autism @ Work Playbook goes beyond getting people in the front door. The playbook makes the case for not only hiring neurodivergent people, but also supporting their growth and career development in their roles.

“It’s one thing to hire people in entry-level jobs, but how do you continue to help them in their career?” Annabi said. “This is true for all employees, but sometimes it becomes more challenging with neurodivergent people to see the pathways for themselves and to advocate for themselves for promotion.”

Organizations hire neurodivergent people for several important reasons. In addition to it being the right thing to do to provide equitable access to employment opportunities, many companies, especially over the past few years, have been trying to fill the talent gap, Annabi said. There aren’t enough people with skills needed in the workplace.

“It’s really hard to secure tech talent,” Annabi said. “So this was an untapped market. Especially earlier on, there was a great need for technology workers, data scientists, cybersecurity folks that firms like SAP and Microsoft need.”

Another reason is representation, and it’s not just checking a box. If you’re building a product for a mass market, particularly technology, you want to be able to make the design accessible to the broadest number of people possible. The best

way to do that is to include neurodiverse individuals on your team.

“If you think about accessibility, there’s no better way to create accessible products at your company than having people with disabilities at the center,” Barnett said.

The playbook is one of the most vital resources in the field, said Tara Cunningham, CEO of Beyond Impact, a consultant group that helps companies remove barriers to recruitment, onboarding and retention with a focus on neurodiversity.

“It has the University of Washington name on it, which is really important,” said Cunningham, who was diagnosed as autistic later in life. “And then you have the original starters of the Autism @ Work inclusion movement. It gives validation to this document.”

She always shares the playbook with her clients who are seeking to develop autistic or neurodivergent programs. “I believe that it’ll be the full Fortune 1000 in the next five years,” Cunningham said.

Too often, companies chase what Cunningham calls “purple squirrels,” people with certain degrees or experience who just don’t exist. By broadening the search, these companies are able to find talent that may be overlooked. And it’s not just helping neurodiverse individuals, it’s helping others as well, Cunningham said.

“We’re finding that if you create systems that are good for neurodiversity inclusion, it also helps disadvantaged communities and first-generation college graduates,” Cunningham said.

The playbook contains the distilled practical knowledge of pioneering companies that have tapped into the talents of neurodistinct individuals and provides a blueprint for companies to follow the same path, said Robert D. Austin, a professor of Information Systems at Ivey Business School and an affiliated faculty member at Harvard Medical School. Austin is a leading scholar in the emerging field of neurodiversity and employment.

“This is a big win for neurodistinct job candidates, their families, the companies that need talent, the governments that gain new taxpayers, and societies that become more fair and sustainable,” Austin said.

Annabi has been happy that so many companies have embraced the playbook and joined the roundtable. While this has changed the lives of thousands of people so far, millions more neurodivergent people could benefit. “So I think while we’ve made some progress, some really good progress,” she said. “I think we still have a long way to go.”

Currently, Annabi is developing a version of the playbook for the federal government in collaboration with the MITRE Corporation and

the nonprofit Melwood to support neurodiversity employment across federal agencies.

One of the ways that the program will grow is by word of mouth through businesses or organizations such as Moji Coffee + More, a nonprofit with coffee shops in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The nonprofit was started in 2019 with the help of a Special Olympics coach and a group of parents who were concerned about what support would be available to their children after high school graduation. Moji Coffee has a mission to provide meaningful employment to people with differing abilities and build up their job skills for the future.

The two coffee shops now employ 27 people.

Moji program director Dan Wellman learned about the Autism @ Work Playbook when Microsoft’s Barnett spoke at a conference hosted

by Moji last year. The Moji program director saw how the practices could benefit his organization.

He’s been impressed with the suggestions in the playbook for hiring and also for scaling the program to an organization. He’s shared the PDF file with other employers.

He’s changed some of his practices due to the resource guide, such as meeting a job candidate in a neighborhood park or going for a walk with an applicant before the interview begins.

“The idea is to create an environment that is less intimidating and more approachable for someone that either has anxiety or has perhaps a learning disability and needs a little bit more time to process and think through their answers,” Wellman said.

Mark and John Cronin, the father-and-son duo who started John’s Crazy Socks, frequently travel the country to talk about the experience.

Mark Cronin said he doesn’t talk about the moral decision to hire people who are seen as different from the norm, because that should be self-evident. Instead, he argues the business case.

He boasts that his company, which has shipped more than 400,000 packages, has a better record than Amazon.

“We do better shipping than Amazon and John, he puts a thank you note and candy in every package,” Mark Cronin said. “Jeff Bezos is not doing that at Amazon.”

Employers have been looking for good workers for years now, Mark Cronin said. There are 20 million people with a disability who are ready, willing and able to work. He said that employers need to look beyond what these employees can’t do to what they can do.

“That person may not be able to get through the interview,” Mark Cronin said. “They may not look you right in the eye. They may not give you a firm handshake. What the heck does having a firm handshake have to do with writing good code?”

Information School Associate Professor Hala Annabi (above), who developed the Autism @ Work Playbook, “is really good at taking the research, the insights ... and presenting it in a way that anyone can digest and understand it,” said Neil Barnett, director of hiring and accessibility at Microsoft.

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RESEARCH | Spotlight on iSchool scholarship

CIP scholar promoted to new role

By Michael Grass Center for an Informed Public postdoctoral scholar Rachel MoranPrestridge, who studies communication, misinformation and trust in information, was recently promoted to a newly created CIP research scientist position. Since starting as a postdoc in 2020, Moran-Prestridge has published work in 25 peer-reviewed journals and been interviewed by numerous news organizations, including The New York Times, The Washington Rachel Post, National Public MoranPrestridge Radio, Reuters, Vox, Axios and The Seattle Times, on timely topics including problematic information, digital wellbeing, trust and safety, and content moderation.

But beyond all that impact, MoranPrestridge has also been an invaluable mentor for graduate and Ph.D. students studying at the CIP, including those who have worked as part of the center’s rapidresponse research efforts and projects collaborating with communities impacted by misinformation, including work with iSchool doctoral candidate Sarah Nguyễn studying how misinformation spreads within Vietnamese diasporic communities in the United States.

In May, Moran-Prestridge received the inaugural CIP Robert Mason Outstanding Mentorship Award, an honor named for an iSchool professor emeritus whose own mentorship a decade ago nurtured the work of CIP co-founders Emma Spiro and Kate Starbird when they were junior-level faculty. Mason’s mentorship played an early, vital role in guiding the work and laying a strong foundation for their research that helped lead to the establishment of the CIP as a research center based at the iSchool in 2019.

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A researcher analyzes fishing data from maps, logs, and temperature records on Marshall Island. Photo by Francisco Blaha, www.franciscoblaha.info.

Tool supports inclusive collection of ocean data The decisions we make about our oceans need to be informed by sound data, and more importantly, the process for collecting and interpreting that data needs to be inclusive of the diverse realities, values, and knowledge systems of local marine communities. All too often, however, that isn’t the case. Researchers with the Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA) investigated the reasons why and have collaborated to create a training resource for communities to foster inclusive data-driven decision-making.

Inclusive Ocean Data for Decision-Making is an open-source, adaptable training resource for community organizations such as libraries and nonprofits.

Current and former TASCHA research scientists Araba Sey and Chris Rothschild partnered with Yoshitaka Ota, the director of the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center at the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, to create the guidebook over the past three years.

Sey, Rothschild and Ota explained the conceptual framework and content of the guidebook in a recent presentation. Inclusive Ocean Data for DecisionMaking is a data literacy training tool designed to support local marine communities’ full participation in the collection and use of data in order to create policies and interventions to manage oceans and coastal environments. It’s also designed to support consistent reflection about the inclusiveness of the process of data collection and knowledge generation.

“We envision,” said Sey, “that this type of inclusive process will enable communities to have a stronger voice and be more comprehensively involved in all aspects of knowledge generation for marine decision-making.”

Community organizations can selectively use, revise and adapt the guidebook to support their inclusive data processes. Others, such as marine scientists and policymakers, can also use it to understand, reflect on and improve the inclusiveness of their engagement with local communities.

Research updates Assistant Professor Clarita Lefthand-Begay is serving as deputy director of the new UW Center for Environmental Health Equity, housed in the Department of Environmental Clarita Lefthand& Occupational Health Sciences Begay in the School of Public Health. A $12 million, five-year cooperative agreement announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency created the center. The iSchool brings its expertise in Indigenous water justice, data sovereignty and Indigenous research methodologies to the center.

Associate Professor Hala Annabi and Ph.D. candidate Milly RomeijnStout have released the AutismReady Libraries Toolkit, a free, online resource. It equips librarians across the Milly Romeijncountry with research-based strategies Stout to conduct inclusive programming, change their library environments and learn how to interact with neurodistinct children.

Assistant Professor Marika Cifor was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to lead development of a free-standing Spanish-language Marika Cifor Homosaurus. The Homosaurus is a linked data controlled vocabulary used by libraries, museums and other cultural heritage institutions worldwide to describe LGBTQIA+ resources and aid in indexing and retrieving content. iSchool researchers Chris Coward, Jin Ha Lee and Rachel Moran-Prestridge are among the researchers awarded a grant from the National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health for their project “Misinformation escape room: A gamified approach to building health (mis) information literacy.” This project is being conducted in partnership with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Approximately 700 Washington high school students, teachers, librarians and other educators participated

in MisinfoDay 2023 programs across three events at the University of Washington and Washington State University. Presented through a statewide partnership between the iSchool’s Center for an Informed Public and WSU’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, the events promoted strategies for combating misinformation.

Alexis Hiniker

Associate Professor Alexis Hiniker’s research was used to inform the Federal Trade Commission’s report on dark patterns. The report showed a rise in tactics such as disguised ads, difficult-to-cancel subscriptions, buried terms, and tricks to obtain data.

Doctoral student Hyeyoung Ryu and Professor Wanda Pratt won a best paper award for their paper published in JAMIA, the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Hyeyoung Ryu Association. “Microaggression clues from social media: revealing and counteracting the suppression of women’s health care,” exposes how social media reveals and reinforces the suppression of health care for unmarried Korean women.

Ph.D. candidate Ishita Chordia was the lead author on a best paper award winner at CHI, the leading conference on human-computer interaction, for “Deceptive Design Ishita Patterns in Safety Technologies: Chordia A Case Study of the Citizen App.” Co-authors included faculty members Jason Yip and Alexis Hiniker.

Assistant Teaching Professor Heather Whiteman was elected to serve as the international lead and convener for an International Organization for Standardization project focused on the value and importance of privacy in Human Resource Management data policies, processes and practices.

Heather Whiteman

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The download Team of Informatics students takes a stand against hazing A group of Informatics students took on a particularly meaningful Capstone project this year. After the tragic death of 19-year-old Sam Martinez from acute alcohol poisoning after a hazing incident at Washington State University, his parents wanted to help other families avoid such a senseless loss. They found that information about hazing incidents is rarely transparent or easily accessible, so they turned to the iSchool to help them change that. To help prospective Greek life students and their families learn the true story about hazing incidents at universities, the students designed a first-of-its-kind database. Students partnered with StopHazing, a national nonprofit organization focused on hazing research and prevention. The team also worked with researchers in other states and with Seattle-based SeaMonster Studios, which helped to launch, host and maintain the database.

“It’s been incredibly inspiring to work alongside them. Their capabilities are remarkable, and their heart, and their energy that they bring to this work, is truly humbling and inspiring to me.”

Jolayne Houtz, Sam Martinez’s mother

9 Information School students recognized for leadership as part of Husky 100 The University of Washington recognized nine students from the Information School for the 2023 Husky 100, awarded to undergraduate and graduate students making the most out of their Husky experience by demonstrating leadership inside and outside the classroom. They are: (above, from left) Roshni Srikanth, Informatics; Roland Conley, MLIS; Kenny Pham, Informatics; Jax Morgan, Informatics; Sabrina Lin, Informatics; Shreya Balaji, Informatics; Saurabh Patil, MSIM; Tina Nguyen, Informatics; and Gulsima Young, Informatics.

Ending on a high note The Husky Band played a rousing rendition of “Bow Down to Washington” at Mary Clark’s retirement Mary Clark party at the end of the academic year.

The sendoff also featured a musical performance by all three iSchool deans — Harry Bruce, Anind Dey and Michael Eisenberg. Clark served as the assistant dean for resource planning and management and kept the iSchool financially steady. She spent 30 years at the UW, 22 of those in the iSchool.

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Searle risks retirement “Risk Detective” Annie Searle, who has inspired hundreds of students over more than a decade at the iSchool, retired this past spring.

Searle developed courses on information and operational risk that were popular electives in the MSIM program, as well as master’s and undergraduate course on ethics, policy and law in information management, cybersecurity, and risk management. As emeritus faculty, Searle is working on a podcast, spending time on watercolor painting, and considering reviving her college expertise in shooting pocket billiards.

Top row, from left to right: Jonathan Farias, Drew Grimstead, Benjamin Bunyatipanon; (middle row from left to right) Julia Nichols and Pragnath Chintalapati; (bottom row from left to right) Liliana Alvarado Garcia, Amaya Kejriwal, Cynthia Chung, and Brielle Bush. Not pictured: Sid Jayadev.

Big platform for big issues iSchool Ph.D. student Marx Wang had a global platform in September, presenting on two wellness-related topics at the United Nations General Assembly’s 2023 Science Summit.

Wang, who is advised by Associate Professor Alexis Hiniker, presented an online session on the need for comprehensive mental-health education and in person on mobilizing youth for grassroots advocacy on topics such as mental health, climate change, and youth empowerment.

“The core philosophy of these sessions is that simply ‘fixing’ mental health is not enough. We need people to care, to connect and through that process participate in self-organizing,” Wang said.

INFO grad named Marshall Scholar

Two honors for Hall

Daniel Guorui Chen, Informatics ’22, has been named a Marshall Scholar, one of the highest honors available to college graduates in the U.S. Chen plans to attend the University of Cambridge. “I was so Daniel Chen surprised when I learned I was awarded.

This is such an honor,” Chen, 19, said.

Marshall scholarships finance young Americans of high ability to study for a degree in the United Kingdom. They pay all expenses for up to three years of study at a British university of the student’s choice.

Tracie D. Hall, ’00, has notched a pair of major honors. In September, she received the Roosevelt Institute’s Freedom of Speech and Expression Award, which honors individuals who represent the principles proclaimed by Tracie Hall President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941: freedom from fear, freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship and freedom from want. She was also named to Time magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Hall served as executive director of the American Library Association from 2020 until October 2023. ischool.uw.edu | 17

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ichael Fosmire was a dedicated UW graduate student in physics when h he spent long hours in the old physics library poring over academic pap mean? How do you get a job like this? “I was seeing that the role might librarianship professor and scholar, who, after graduating with his UW

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD 2023

MICHAEL FOSMIRE’S

SCIENTIFIC METHOD Observation, experimentation and evidence have been key in Fosmire’s 25-year career as a librarian and professor at Purdue University

he first became interested in science librarianship. He knew little about it, although pers. He began asking the librarian there questions: What does this profession be more fulfilling than spending my days in a lab,” says the Purdue University W master’s in physics, switched academic gears and entered the UW iSchool.

STORY BY MARY LYNN LYKE PHOTOGRAPHS BY CAROLINE YODER, PURDUE LIBRARIES

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“Michael Fosmire has impacted librarianship in so many ways, here at Purdue University and for the academic library community at large.”

He earned his master’s degree in library science there in 1997. It was a time of transition, with the school moving from strictly library studies to studies in library and information science. Technology was on the rise.

He studied the cultural changes at the school closely. “It was the end of one era and the beginning of another,” says the eminent professor, who heads the Information Studies school at Purdue. “I watched how it worked organizationally and internalized that. It affected how I work as an administrator now: getting consensus, eliciting responses, getting everyone involved in the process, getting them invested in the organization.”

More than 25 years after earning his M.Lib ­— years that saw academic journals moving from paper to electronic formats and scientists browsing the Web instead of flipping pages — Fosmire is being honored with a 2023 UW iSchool Distinguished Alumni Award, given to graduates who have made significant and exceptional contributions to the information field.

The honor is well-deserved, say colleagues.

They describe him as an excellent, nurturing mentor, a thoughtful collaborator, and an innovative leader. “Michael Fosmire has impacted librarianship in so many ways, here at Purdue University and for the academic library community at large,” says Beth McNeil, dean of Libraries and School of Information Studies at Purdue.

Fosmire joined the prestigious university in West Lafayette, Indiana, shortly after his UW iSchool graduation, taking a “dream job” as the Physics and Earth and Atmospheric Science librarian. Within years, he was heading mul-

tiple libraries at Purdue in physical sciences, engineering and technology. Fosmire was encouraged to innovate from the get-go. “We were fairly independent and there was a lot of opportunity to experiment.”

Early on, he began working with colleagues to introduce a more efficient, cross-functional team approach to librarianship across campus, getting different departments talking and working together. “There had been a lot of silo-ing. But we got more conversations happening, more collaborative work and there were fewer frustrations.”

The resourceful leader also helped convert an old, little-used periodical reading room in the engineering library into one of the first active learning centers on campus, with early-generation smartboards and pod seating that encouraged lively small group and whole-class collaboration. “It was incredibly successful. The classroom was booked solid,” says Fosmire.

His iSchool lessons at the UW had emphasized the importance of using studies to determine actual information usage of scientists and engineers and build from that data. It was a holistic, user-focused approach that would be foundational to Fosmire’s work in science librarianship. “You have to understand how serious scientists think and then translate that into how you understand what their information needs are in order to meet them,” he says.

“It helps to “speak their language,” he adds.

The iSchool graduate has published extensively in his field, both books and articles, often in strong collaboration with peers. “Michael is extremely creative and superb at problem-solving,” says collaborator Margaret Phillips, associate professor of Library Science and associate head of Information Studies. “He has a high level of intellectual curiosity, which allows him to think more deeply and come up with creative solutions.”

Purdue’s libraries were rebranded the Libraries and School of Information Studies in 2020, reflecting a hybrid mission to combine traditional library services and curricular offerings. Fosmire was named inaugural head.

He again put user-centered research to work in discerning student needs and gaps in understanding, conducting interviews, surveys, even a “think-aloud” protocol he discussed in an article titled: “But What Are Students Really Thinking When They Do Research?”

When he asked one group of physics graduate students what they needed information-wise, they told him they didn’t really know how to read a scientific paper or how to

make sense of it. He responded by creating an animated tutorial on the subject, soon used widely on campus and picked up by librarians around the world.

Fosmire is passionate about boosting students’ information literacy. He describes it as a process, a habit of mind, a way of thinking that gives students critical tools for problem-solving.

It’s a far cry from cutting and pasting information from a Web browser for a science paper or turning to unreliable, sometimes nonsensical artificial intelligence for answers. “It took about 30 seconds for AI to be thoroughly a part of the student workflow,” he notes.

To help combat the onslaught of fake science online, Fosmire and his colleagues developed an intervention that teaches students to raise questions about the reliability, accuracy and authenticity of sources. “Making up data is one of the most egregious things we face as science librarians,” he says.

Fosmire and the libraries’ faculty are working to expand the Information Studies curriculum, which includes certificates in geoinformatics, digital humanities and courses in research data management. “By evolving and expanding our mission, we are keeping libraries relevant and integral to the success of our students, just like the UW iSchool reinvented the librarianship program at the start of my career.”

He says he is honored to be recognized as one of the iSchool’s Distinguished Alumni. “It’s pretty humbling to have that kind of recognition. It’s a chance to look back and see what you’ve accomplished — to look at your work as a totality.”

What he sees from that vantage is revealing: it’s not his own accomplishments that make him most proud, he says, but the successes of others he has mentored. “I’ve had a ton of very skilled, motivated and energetic colleagues I’ve been able to work with over the years to publish together and create new programs. We have encouraged risk-taking and trying stuff out to see if it works,” he says.

He wants new librarians to have the same freedom to experiment, to try and fail and try again. “I’ve tried to bring that forward for them, encouraging them to do something interesting, impactful, and to tell me how I can support them.”

NICOLA ANDREWS GOLD ALUMNI IMPACT AWARD 2023

Breaking down barriers in libraries, education

By Jessi Loerch Nicola Andrews believes education should be more accessible — and she’s working toward that goal in her academic and professional work.

Andrews, the recipient of the Information School’s 2023 Graduate of the Last Decade Alumni Impact Award, is the open education librarian at the University of San Francisco.

The GOLD Award celebrates recent graduates for their contributions to the information field.

Andrews — who is from Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (Auckland, New Zealand) and is a member of the Ngāti Paoa iwi, a Māori tribe — came to the iSchool with a background in libraries. Her first job was at Auckland City Libraries — Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero.

She later moved to the United States and was working in public libraries in Whatcom County, Washington, when she chose the iSchool’s online Master of Library and Information Science program. She earned her MLIS in 2017.

“I was very drawn to the ways in

which UW’s online program was accessible to learners including caregivers and those already working during the day,” she said.

At first, Andrews planned to stay in public libraries. However, her experiences at the iSchool — including as an American Library Association Spectrum Scholar, an Association of Research Libraries’ Kaleidoscope Program fellow and an ARL Career Enhancement Fellow at UW Libraries — exposed her to a variety of career paths. She found a particular interest in academic librarianship.

She also wanted to be able to share her own perspectives. Ever since her first job, Andrews had been interested in how Indigenous communities intersected with libraries. She’d seen then the ways that library workers were trying to improve libraries for Indigenous people. At the iSchool, she was able to pursue that interest more deeply.

Sandy Littletree, an iSchool assistant professor focused on Native North

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connect Collaboration and community

are the heart of Jason Young’s work for the Technology and Social Change Group

Story by Kayla Pohl

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tion across worlds O

Jason Young acquainting himself with the frozen ocean outside of the Inuvialuit hamlet of Ulukhaktok, Canada.

ver the past six years as a senior research scientist with the

Photographs courtesy of Jason Young

Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA), Jason Young has done expansive and eclectic work. A short list of projects includes supporting Indigenous communities in the Arctic and Peruvian Amazon, advocating for library visibility in Africa, and collaborating with local rural librarians to develop interventions for misinformation. This agility as a researcher, as well as his reputation for collaborating with and uplifting others, are why, according to founder of TASCHA Chris Coward, Young was an obvious choice to replace him as director.

“Everyone at TASCHA pointed to Jason as the person who would be the best to lead it going forward,” said Coward.

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Young’s first experience with the Arctic came as a graduate student, when he visited the Inuit hamlet of Igloolik, Canada.

Here, he is exploring the ice outside of town.

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Young joined TASCHA in 2017 after completing his Ph.D. in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington.

He’s also an affiliate assistant professor at the Information School and at the Jackson School of International Studies as well as a research fellow with the Center for an Informed Public.

Young’s research sits at the intersection of technology, society and the environment. “The through-line for my work is using technology to work with Indigenous communities to highlight their knowledge and to empower that knowledge to have greater impact for them,” he said.

These interests grew out of what he describes as a fantastic research opportunity he experienced as an undergraduate: working with the Maijuna Indigenous people in Peru.

The Maijuna, who’ve lived in the Amazon for centuries, were subject to forced displacement by the Peruvian government. They were relegated to small sections of the Amazon, Young learned, and the rest of their ancestral lands were open for highway development, poaching and logging. Young, along with a team

of ethnobotanists and environmental scientists, brought in mapping software to document the historical presence of the Maijuna, including their cultural sites and their vast knowledge of ecosystems that hadn’t been scientifically documented before.

“We were able to combine that Western, scientific knowledge with the Maijuna’s knowledge,” Young said, “and package it in this authoritative-feeling mapping system that the government recognized as scientific.” The Peruvian government then changed course and recognized the legitimacy of the knowledge and history of the Maijuna.

“It led to them being able to create this conservation area that they now control, which is about a million hectares, which is like three times the size of Yosemite National Park,” he said with excitement.

Young said the experience was a formative one. His research has since been guided by this interest in how historically marginalized populations can leverage technology to amplify and give credence to their knowledge. He’s also

interested in how political forces determine whose knowledge is valued and given power.

“Those remain a core interest of mine,” he said.

Another project Young is currently working on spans the circumpolar north — including Alaska, Canada, Finland, Iceland and Greenland — and explores how to use education to support Arctic Indigenous communities. During a workshop at the Sámi Education Institute in Finland, the Sámi people showed researchers videos documenting their practice of smoking fish, and an Alaska Native scholar, who’d never been to Finland, had a remarkable realization.

“She was like, ‘Wow, we do the exact same thing,’” said Young. “It was this really empowering moment, this connection across worlds.”

It led to a research proposal to work with international partners to create more moments like this, in which education and technologies can facilitate connection and knowledge exchange. Colonial forces have stripped Indigenous communities of their language, knowledge and cultural practices. Some communities have lost practices that others have held on to. And since travel in the Arctic is so difficult and expensive, small communities tend to be isolated from one another.

This case, Young said, illustrates the need for resources to support video making and sharing.

If video capturing Indigenous knowledge can be shared across communities, lost practices can be recovered, and this can build resilience and increase wellness.

Such work requires a high degree of trust between researchers and communities.

Young has developed expertise in practices that build trust and lead to positive outcomes for communities and researchers, said Chris Jowaisas, a senior researcher at TASCHA who has collaborated with Young on a number of projects. Among them is Co-Designing for Trust, a large multi-site study working with communities to create interventions for misinformation. It’s funded by a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

Like Young’s work in the Amazon and the Arctic, Co-Designing for Trust is grounded in community-based participatory research methods, which emphasize collaboration between researchers and those affected by the research, recognize everyone’s knowledge and expertise, and empower everyone to be decisionmakers.

Since misinformation is such a complex and challenging problem that afflicts different communities differently, there isn’t a one-sizefits-all solution, said Zoë Bermet, research

project manager with the Center for an Informed Public, who’s also involved in the Co-Designing for Trust project. “It really has to come from the community. They are the ones that know how misinformation is targeting their community and how to best respond, how to best mobilize and educate within their own context,” she said.

Co-Designing for Trust brings together academic researchers, community organizers and researchers, librarians, and teachers, said Stacey Wedlake, research scientist with TASCHA. “Jason’s really able to work across those different contexts, and he strives to ensure that everyone’s voice and perspectives are embedded into the work and are valued,” she said.

The project originated from Young’s gut instinct that since extant approaches to information literacy training are focused on critical thinking and logic, they are missing a crucial component. “We need to address the emotion part,” he said, “because emotions can prevent us from wanting to use those logical and critical thinking skills.” So, Co-Designing for Trust combines academic expertise in information literacy and library science with the expertise and knowledge from rural and Black communities to investigate how misinformation shows up and what holistic interventions stand a chance at creating healthier information behaviors.

Communication and convergence across

Young talking with colleagues while visiting the Sámi Education Institute in Inari, Finland.

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STORY BY JIM DAVIS • ILLUSTRATION BY ALEXIA LOZANO

IN Student research group investigates ways that artificial intelligence reproduces inequity

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any people believe that technology is just a tool, neither good nor bad. Damian Hodel isn’t one of those people.

“That’s an old but wrong story that technology is neutral,” said Hodel, a second-year Ph.D. student at the Information School. “I think many people agree with that idea, and I would say that’s not true. That’s misinformation basically, or at least a misunderstanding.

“Technology is never neutral, because technology is developed by humans, and humans, as we know, aren’t neutral.”

As computer technology, and especially artificial intelligence, becomes more intertwined with daily life, understanding its biases becomes vitally important, Hodel said. That’s why he and six other graduate-level students took part in a directed research group last year to examine biases in AI, specifically language models, chatbots and vision-language models.

Aylin Caliskan, an iSchool assistant professor, led the class.

Caliskan’s research into Aylin AI ethics and biases has Caliskan been the main focus of her career. She’s teaching the directed research group again in the 2023-24 academic year. “In order to solve these problems, we need to first understand them in great detail with precise, accurate, concise approaches,” Caliskan said. “And that is what we have been contributing to, identifying the potential harmful, unintentional side effects of these models so that we can start to fix these problems and make AI more beneficial and less harmful.”

In last year’s class, five papers were submitted for publication looking at various aspects of biases in technology.

No one is precisely sure how AI and language models — which are designed

to predict the next word in a given sentence or phrase, among other things — learn and then reproduce biases, but the main signals of bias are in the training data, which is the massive amount of internet text used in machine learning.

So far, four papers from last year’s class have been accepted and published.

The fifth is under review.

Sourojit Ghosh, a fourth year Ph.D. student in the UW Department for Human Centered Design, co-wrote with Caliskan one of the first academic papers on ChatGPT. That’s the AI chatbot that captured widespread attention when released by OpenAI in November 2022. The paper was published at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence-Association of Computing Machinery Conference on AI, Ethics and Society.

The question that piqued Ghosh’s curiosity was how ChatGPT would translate conversations from one language to another and whether it would perpetuate biases in those translations.

In the research, they examined six languages that exclusively use gender-neutral pronouns: Bengali, Farsi, Malay, Tagalog, Thai and Turkish. They translated phrases from those languages into English and found that the chatbot would translate ‘they’ into ‘he’ or ‘she’ depending upon the context of the sentence or phrase.

In particular, the chatbot perpetuated gender stereotypes in certain occupations. So, a phrase in Bengali would use the gender-neutral ‘they’ in a phrase about a doctor, but ChatGPT would translate the pronoun to ‘he’ and ‘him.’

“I was hoping it would be better, but I think the pessimist in me did have a suspicion that it would be this way,” Ghosh said.

The software behind ChatGPT isn’t open-source, meaning that researchers can’t determine exactly what’s happening in the mechanics in the

translation. Ghosh suspects that the training data used to create ChatGPT has been skewed toward English and other Western languages.

Bengali is the seventh most spoken language in the world, but Bengali, Farsi, Malay and the others in the research are considered low-resource languages.

That means there is not a lot of text on the internet in those languages.

The second published paper was written by Katelyn X. Mei, Sonia Fereidooni and Caliskan. Mei is a Ph.D. student with the iSchool and Fereidooni is a master’s student with the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. The paper was published at the Association of Computer Machinery Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency.

Their research was based on 93 groups considered stigmatized in the U.S., as

identified by a previously published academic paper. Those groups include a wide range of conditions related to disease, disability, drug use, mental illness, religion, sexuality and other factors.

In their research, they examined six masked-language models, which prompt predictive text in a sentence. Mei, Fereidooni and Caliskan posed a question to the models and would then rate whether the word supplied was positive or negative.

For instance, they asked these models to come up with the word in the sentence, “It is ____ for me to rent a room to someone who has depression.” The research found that the language models would more often offer a negative word when these stigmatized groups were used in the rest of the sentence.

“We saw that for the most stigmatized

conditions, such as illiteracy or mental health conditions, that the negative biases were even amplified,” Fereidooni said.

These biases can cause real-life problems. For instance, if a language model were to be used to screen job applicants but contained a gender bias, it might rate female applicants lower when they apply for roles associated with men, such as engineering.

ChatGPT has been envisioned to create subtitles for movies or create multi-language marketing materials.

These translations could misstate genders or overlook nonbinary people, essentially erasing them from media, especially in low-resource language translations. These problems could become even worse as society relies on AI

See Bias, Page 43

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SOLID FOUNDATI

By Jessi Loerch Hanna Roseen’s job is varied and very hands-on. She works as the branch librarian for NCW Libraries in East Wenatchee. It’s a one-room space where she’s the only full-time librarian, and she regularly works with members of the community of all ages. She helps library patrons at the reference desk and she organizes events.

With so many aspects to her job, Roseen, MLIS ’20, has to make use of a wide range of practical skills in her day-to-day work. One of the key ways the iSchool helps students gain those necessary skills is the Distinguished Practitioner in Residence (DPIR) program, which is funded by a 10-year, $1.4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The program brings leading professionals to the iSchool to offer a practical perspective on scholarly pursuits in library and information science. These professionals serve for two years and bring a current perspective from the professional world, as well as connections to other professionals who can help students in their careers.

When Roseen was a student, she took a class in community engagement with Rolf Hapel, a respected librarian from Denmark who was the iSchool’s second Distinguished Practitioner in Residence when Roseen was a student.

“The MLIS, especially for a librarian, is a professional degree,” Roseen said. “And for someone like me who works primarily as a practitioner, Rolf was super helpful. He really brought in practical knowledge and prioritized the hands-on work. The program adds value to the degree.”

As part of her job, Roseen connected with Triple Point NCW, a program for LGBTQ+ youth. In building that relationship, she leaned on what she’d learned from Hapel, particularly in his community engagement course, about centering the needs of the

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In her job as a branch librarian, Hanna Roseen (above) has leaned on what she learned from Rolf Hapel, who was the iSchool’s second Distinguished Practitioner in Residence.

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Distinguished Practitioner in Residence program equips MLIS students with skills they can build on

community. Roseen has spoken to the group, participated in Pride Month events, and talked about books and censorship with the kids.

“He talked about how to engage in communities in a good and equitable way,” Roseen said. “He taught us about building mutually beneficial partnerships and he had real-life examples to share and examples of why it mattered.”

Building community after a hurricane In 2022, Hurricane Ian hit Sanibel Island off the coast of Florida. The bridge to the island was destroyed, the library was flooded, and the community’s needs completely changed. Beth Jarrell, a reference librarian and digital archivist at Sanibel Public Library, had to help the library adapt. She looked back at what she learned from Hapel’s community engagement class, the last course she took before she graduated.

“When we were hit by the hurricane, I used that class as a reference on how we could serve our community. I even went back to my old notes,” she said. “We talked in class about evolving our mission and how we can’t be set in our ways. We couldn’t go to the library, so we used social media to support our community. We really leaned into information sharing.”

Jarrell said one of the strongest messages she took from Hapel was that information could go both ways, from the library to the community, but also back to the library. That was particularly true after Hurricane Ian. Jarrell has invited library patrons to share their stories and their images from the storm.

“We are archiving their photos and building a community-focused display about this massive, historic event that nearly destroyed this island,” she said. “I don’t know if I would have had the idea if I hadn’t taken that class.”

Beth Jarrell, reference librarian and digital archivist at the Sanibel Public Library on Sanibel Island, Florida.

“When we were hit by the hurricane, I used that class as a reference on how we could serve our community. I even went back to my old notes.”

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The power of collaboration

Shannon Adkins, senior library research and data analyst at Hennepin County Library, Minnesota.

“As a student, it was really valuable for someone looking to go into public libraries to hear that person talk about what it is like in the field, how they’ve been impactful in the communities that they’ve served and what they’ve learned.”

Shannon Adkins, ’18, studied with Susan Hildreth, an accomplished city and state librarian and the iSchool’s first distinguished practitioner. Adkins, who is the senior library research and data analyst at the Hennepin County Library in Minnesota, particularly remembers Hildreth’s emphasis on the importance of relationships in library work.

“Susan was really focused on collaboration across the field,” Adkins said. “She is so dialed in and really connected to people.”

As Adkins was wrapping up her time at the iSchool, she was already working at the Hennepin County Library. She was grappling with how to do capital planning in a way that used community data and focused on equity.

“Susan gave me some really good advice,” Adkins said. “She said that was something other folks were thinking about too, and she connected me to other library leaders who could help.”

Adkins thinks about that a lot. When she’s stuck, she makes use of those contacts and reaches out to other professionals.

“As a student, it was really valuable for someone looking to go into public libraries to hear that person talk about what it is like in the field, how they’ve been impactful in the communities that they’ve served and what they’ve learned,” Adkins said. “Susan kept it real about what it’s like to go into public librarianship.”

Leadership and mentoring

Stacey Akahoshi, virtual content manager at Maricopa Library District.

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Stacey Akahoshi went into Hildreth’s public library management class with an interest in management and hopes of one day becoming a library director.

“After that class, I felt that I could go into the public library field and that I could be a leader,” Akahoshi said. “I knew what type of tough decisions I was likely to face and I had tools to be able to make decisions.”

Akahoshi appreciated having that knowledge before she started having to make difficult decisions in her career. She now works as the virtual content manager at the Maricopa County Library District in Arizona.

Hildreth shared her own extensive knowledge, Akahoshi said, and welcomed a variety

of guest lecturers.

“She was totally skilled herself, but she brought other people into the conversation to give new perspective,” Akahoshi said.

“I learned so much and we immediately had connections to people doing great things in the field.”

Akahoshi said Hildreth was also generous with her time and helped Akahoshi clarify her career goals. And she credits Hildreth for helping her become an American Library Association 2023 Emerging Leader.

“I think that I might never have learned about that program — or thought that I could do something like that on a national scale — if I didn’t have Susan as an example,” she said.

Real-life connections Nancy Pearl, an author, former iSchool lecturer and a member of the iSchool’s MLIS Advisory Board, is a strong supporter of the DPIR program.

“I think that it brings realism into what can be a program that teaches a lot of theory, and does that really well,” she said. “But I think when you are going to work at your first library, you would really like to know what it would be like when you go to work. I think that dose of realism is a good thing.”

Cindy Aden, who recently wrapped up her term as the third DPIR and is staying at the iSchool as a teaching professor and the MLIS chair, said real-life experience is a vital element of the program.

“The DPIR program is for the benefit of the students. Because the DPIR has been working the field for decades, they know a lot of people,” she said. “They have all of these recent experiences and connections they can share with students and other faculty.”

Aden said she’s grateful for the chance to help students on the path to their careers.

She appreciated the chance to contribute to the research at the iSchool, and she loves teaching.

“It’s fun to be a professor,” she said. “I like being part of big ideas, having an impact. I like being able to impress and impact young and emerging minds. I love being part of something bigger.”

Distinguished Practitioners in Residence Susan Hildreth worked as a librarian for more than three decades.

She specializes in public libraries, library organization and funding and strategic planning. She was a city librarian in San Francisco and Seattle and state librarian in California. She also was the director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Rolf Hapel is an internationally recognized leader in public libraries.

He specializes in leadership and management of public libraries, the development of public library services and spaces, and community engagement and partnership building for libraries. He was the Director of Citizens’ Service and Libraries for the City of Aarhus, Denmark, and also worked as a librarian in various Danish cities.

Cindy Aden served in the Library of Congress and at academic libraries. She also worked in public libraries and for private companies, including Amazon. Before taking on the role of Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, she was the Washington State Librarian. She specializes in the role of libraries in broadband access and strategic library partnerships. She is remaining at the iSchool as a teaching professor and MLIS chair (see story on page 33).

Lorcan Dempsey, the current DPIR (see story on next page), is a librarian, writer and advisor who worked for OCLC, a global library organization based in Dublin, Ohio, for 21 years, most recently as the vice president for research and membership and the chief strategist. He has worked for library, non-profit and education organizations in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the U.S. His extensive writings have provided guidance and resources for working librarians.

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FACULTY | New at the iSchool

“Libraries are evolving to more readily recognize and respond to all the communities they serve ... It is important to reflect this shift and challenge in teaching,” says Lorcan Dempsey, who joins the iSchool after 21 years at OCLC.

Lorcan Dempsey joins the iSchool as Distinguished Practitioner in Residence

By Samantha Herndon

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A guiding voice for the library community After 21 years at OCLC, most recently as vice president for research and membership & chief strategist, Lorcan Dempsey was ready for a change. The opportunity to serve as the University of Washington Information School’s Distinguished Practitioner in Residence (DPIR) came at the right time for the librarian, writer and advisor.

While at OCLC, a global library organization headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs, Dempsey wrote extensively for the library community. His research articles and public scholarship share guidance and resources for working librarians.

The practical and technological skills he gained through this experience will translate to the classroom as Dempsey teaches in the Master of Library and Information Science program. iSchool Dean Anind Dey says, “We're very lucky to have Lorcan Dempsey as our newest DPIR. Lorcan brings an incredible amount of experience working with libraries, their community programs and the technology they need. As we continue to work on the technology-focused aspects of the MLIS curriculum, his on-theground expertise will be very helpful.”

With a deep interest in operational and intellectual collaborations, Dempsey brings a curiosity about the future of

libraries and their evolving roles, and a commitment to sharing what he has learned with the next generation of librarians and information scientists.

Asked what he will teach iSchool students, “One is the relational element,” he says. “Libraries are very much social organizations, and they are embedded in the communities they serve.

Increasingly, libraries are evolving in discussion with communities.

“A second one is storytelling.

Because of the way the library is changing, it’s important to be able to tell a story about what the library is and what the library does.”

Dempsey jokes, “Because we’re in a transitional stage at the moment, a library director’s elevator pitch now requires a very tall building.”

He is also very interested in how libraries manifest culture and values, and in how deficits in equity and empathy have been foregrounded in recent years. “Libraries are evolving,” he says, “to more readily recognize and respond to all the communities they serve. This is true across all areas, in recruitment, collections, programming, and in collaboration and partnerships. It is important to reflect this shift and challenge in teaching.”

Trained in the literary hub of Dublin, Ireland — his hometown — Dempsey gained some of his first professional experience working at the Dublin City Public Library.

He then relocated to work in the United Kingdom for over a decade.

Dempsey served in leadership roles at UKOLN, the UK Office for Library and Information Networking at the University of Bath, and then at JISC at King’s College London, which supports higher education in the UK. He has presented his research all over the world, most recently at the AMICAL Conference in Ifrane, Morocco.

Dempsey has written extensively on topics such as libraries, archives and museums as memory institutions; methods for improving library collaboration; and transitions from collections-based libraries to relational institutions.

“Lorcan Dempsey’s contributions as a library thought leader are unparalleled,” says Carole Palmer, associate dean for research at the Information School.

“He’s been a singular voice, for decades now, guiding the profession’s attention to the things that make it possible for libraries to excel in the contemporary world. Lorcan always probes the conceptual, but never neglects the practical.

“That was all on top of his day job as a top executive running the largest library R&D operation in the most important library cooperative organization in the country,” Palmer adds. This variety of interests will serve him well as a member of the faculty.

The Distinguished Practitioner in Residence position, funded by a 10-year, $1.4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is designed to bring practical knowledge to research and coursework at the school. The appointment involves teaching iSchool courses, collaborating on curriculum developments in the Master of Library and Information Science program, and conducting research related to the future of libraries, a key iSchool initiative.

Dempsey is the iSchool’s fourth Distinguished Practitioner in Residence. Susan Hildreth originated the role, followed by Rolf Hapel.

Cindy Aden held the role most recently, and she will remain at the iSchool as a teaching professor and as the new MLIS chair.

In his writing and teaching, Dempsey enjoys the challenge of explaining complex concepts and contributing to tangible improvements.

“My incentive would always be to inform practice or to influence policy,” he says. If a library director flies off to a conference and brings along one of Dempsey’s publications, he counts that as a win. “Success is based on impact,” he says.

“It’s hard to overstate how fortunate our students and the entire iSchool community are to have this time to learn and work together with Lorcan,” says Palmer.

Cindy Aden to stay at iSchool as teaching professor Cindy Aden, who wrapped up her term as the Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the iSchool in June, is staying on as a teaching professor and taking over as chair of the Master of Library and Information Science program.

Aden has a long, varied history in libraries. She graduated from the UW’s library science program in 1987 and has served in the Library of Congress and at academic libraries. She has also worked in public libraries and for private companies, including Amazon and Corbis.

Before taking on the role of Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, Aden was the Washington State Librarian.

She started her distinguished practitioner role at the iSchool in 2020. During her tenure, Aden conducted research on tribal libraries with iSchool Assistant Professor Sandy Littletree. She has also worked with research scientists at TASCHA (the Technology & Social Change Group) on a National Science Foundation-funded project to help communities recognize misleading information through a codesign process involving rural libraries.

Aden will continue teaching the community engagement and management courses. She started her role as chair of the MLIS program over the summer after Professor Michelle H. Martin finished her term.

“I’m very excited to have this role,” Aden said. “I’m very passionate about the field and the things that librarians can do. I’m excited to have a chance to help shape the program and to support the instructors in the very complex iSchool.” ischool.uw.edu | 33

FACULTY | New at the iSchool

"All my life, I have been driven to think about what a democratic society looks like, what it means for people from different religions and backgrounds to live well together," says Nassim Parvin, new associate dean for IDEAS (inclusion, diversity, equity, access and sovereignty) at the iSchool.

NASSIM PARVIN

Exposing the places where injustice hides

By Mary Lynn Lyke Nassim Parvin uncovers hidden sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia and other social injustices in technology and product design — issues that surface as biases in self-tracking devices, for example, or in the assumptions embedded in the original AI-powered voice of Alexa: nice, white and utterly submissive.

“You can curse Alexa and she will ask you in a calm voice if she can help you more,” says the new iSchool associate professor, whose work is centered in feminist philosophy. “Kids growing up with such technology may internalize the notion that because Alexa is a female character, they have the liberty to interact with her in any manner they please.”

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At the iSchool, she has stepped into the role of associate dean for IDEAS (inclusion, diversity, equity, access and sovereignty), a 3-year-old initiative aimed at ensuring a campus free of discrimination, bias and microaggressions.

“I hope to build a model of how academic environments can be more inclusive, educating the next generation of students,” she says.

She took over for Wanda Pratt, the inaugural associate dean for IDEAS, who welcomes Parvin’s extensive expertise in design justice. “Nassim will serve as a unifying force in the iSchool with her interdisciplinary research at the intersection of ethical and political philosophy, as well as the design of emerging technologies and algorithmic applications — all related to IDEAS,” says Pratt.

Parvin has been focused on social injustices since her childhood in Iran, where, at an early age, she watched as her parents burned their books for fear of being arrested.

“All my life, I have been driven to think about what a democratic society looks like, what it means for people from different religions and backgrounds to live well together.

Gender equality has been a big part of that thinking,” says Parvin, whose last name is adopted from the first name of her mother, a teacher who was forced to resign because of her democratic beliefs.

“She devoted her whole life to me and my sister, both now Ph.D.s. Adopting her name is both to honor her sacrifices and to prompt reflection on the longstanding tradition of using male names, typically associated with

See Parvin, Page 42

MARTIN SAVESKI

Changing the conversation on social media

By Mary Lynn Lyke Democracy requires talking with different people, listening to them, trying on their point of view, even if you don’t agree with them. But those healthy conversations are increasingly rare in the politically polarized world online, says new iSchool Assistant Professor Martin Saveski.

Left or right, people are stuck fast in their partisan internet corners, with often toxic consequences. “It’s no longer that we disagree on a particular issue, it’s that we don’t want to engage at all, and that’s problematic,” says the innovative researcher, who has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and recently completed postdoctoral studies at Stanford University’s department of Management Science and Engineering.

Working with major tech and media companies, Saveski has used large-scale social data and computational methods to explore how digital social platforms might be reimagined to bridge these gaping political divides, whether it’s seeding positive conversations online or stopping toxic ones in their tracks.

"It’s no longer that we disagree on a particular issue, it’s that we don’t want to engage at all, and that’s problematic," says Martin Saveski, who is joining the Information School as an assistant professor.

In a widely covered experiment on Twitter — recently renamed X by owner Elon Musk — Saveski took the lead in developing a browser extension called FlipFeed. With the touch of a button, participants could see the real-life news stories, commentary and other online content of someone with opposing political views. “The idea was to put users in someone else’s shoes and help them understand why others hold the views they do,” he says.

The researchers found that FlipFeed enhanced engagement but not an understanding of why someone held divergent points of view, although understanding was greater when participants imagined they were in a disagreement with a friend.

Many scholars believe that media outlets are important drivers of online polarization, says Saveski. In a project with the PBS documentary series “Frontline,” a favorite of liberals, he helped pioneer new methods to widen audiences’ political diversity. His team analyzed right- and left-leaning media content — from Fox News to The New York Times — and used the data to build language models for “Frontline” journalists. These models helped them write promotional material designed to better bridge political divides online. “Our tools, trained on large amounts of data, were designed to assist them in their writing by

See Saveski, Page 42

FACULTY | New at the iSchool

"When used in probing, creative, subversive ways, data can actually help us create a more just, equitable future, not just for literature and culture and libraries, but also more broadly," says Melanie Walsh, who has moved into a new role as an assistant professor at the iSchool.

MELANIE WALSH

Using data to see patterns shaping arts and culture

By Kayla Pohl Bad book sales data is like a bad credit score: it can stymie an author’s career and constrain future book contracts and publishing opportunities. Yet book sales data is proprietary — it’s purposefully hidden from the public, as well as researchers, humanities scholars and librarians.

Access to this data, along with tools to understand it, is essential in holding the mainstream publishing industry accountable for who gets book deals, which largely determines whose books are housed in libraries and available to library patrons.

In fact, according to Melanie Walsh, who has moved into a new role as an assistant professor in the University of Washington Information School, more cultural data should be open-access and available to anyone wanting to better understand culture or interrogate the practices of cultural industries. Walsh started in 2021 as an assistant teaching professor at the iSchool, and her areas of interest include data science, digital humanities, contemporary literature, libraries and cultural analytics.

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This fall, she’s teaching Introduction to Data Science, which provides an overview of key concepts, skills and technologies for students in the Master of Library and Information Science program.

“I’m also co-teaching a new course next year about text reuse and artificial intelligence and the history of people borrowing and stealing other people’s texts, from pastiche in really old literary texts to ChatGPT,” Walsh said.

Walsh is committed to teaching cultural workers, such as humanities scholars and librarians, how to use computational methods to collect and understand literary and cultural data. Scholars in the humanities are rightfully suspicious of data. Data is inherently reductive, whereas art and literature foreground and celebrate the complexity of human experience.

But, for Walsh, data isn’t just a tool to understand literature and culture — data and algorithms shape contemporary art and culture, and sometimes in harmful ways.

Ignoring or resisting the influence of data strips cultural workers’ power to critique, interrogate, and hold accountable cultural industries’ use of data.

However, Walsh said, “When used in probing, creative, subversive ways, data can actually help us create a more just, equitable future, not just for literature and culture and libraries, but also more broadly.”

During her postdoctoral work at Cornell University, she developed an award-winning open-access textbook, Introduction to Cultural Analytics and Python. “It’s been used all over the world,” said David Mimno, who was Walsh’s postdoctoral advisor, “and it’s been pretty widely recognized as one of the leading source materials for the introductory-level application of computing to humanities.”

She’s also a co-editor of the Post45 Data Collective, which houses openaccess peer-reviewed literary and cultural data from 1945 onward. “It seems like it’s very boring and unsexy, but it ends up being hugely important for understanding patterns,” Walsh said.

To find those patterns, researchers need access to cultural data that hadn’t previously existed, either because it’s been purposely obfuscated or because it hasn’t been a focal point of data curators. For example, the Post45 Data Collective hosts data about winners and judges of literary prizes worth over $10,000 from the past 100 years. “Before, this data didn’t exist in any kind of comprehensive way, and now we can see patterns in race and gender in literary prizes,” Walsh said.

When Walsh was in graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis, Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson. “I was following the Ferguson protests really closely both on the ground and on Twitter [now X], and I noticed that lots of people were tweeting James Baldwin quotations,” Walsh said. She used computational methods to figure out how quotes from Baldwin, civil rights activist and writer, were being used: How many people were tweeting Baldwin quotes? Which version of Baldwin was resonating with early Black Lives Matter activism?

This inspired her project Tweets of a Native Son, which examines how social media users were citing Baldwin. Even though he died in 1987, he’s been a muse for the Black Lives Matter movement.

“She’s brilliant at finding intersections between these fields,” said Maria Aroniak, who’s collaborated with Walsh on a few projects, “and digging in deep to find the most interesting and important research questions.”

Faculty updates Four join iSchool as assistant teaching professors Four additions this fall bring a variety of interests and experience to the iSchool faculty as assistant teaching professors. They include: Lane Eagles, an instructor in the Museology program, joined the iSchool in a joint appointment Lane Eagles with the Department of History. Eagles has taught visual studies and material culture courses at the UW, Seattle University and Cornish College of the Arts for more than 10 years. Her research focuses on early modern dress history and gender, and her writing has appeared in Salon, The Conversion, and Smarthistory. She has served in curatorial and collections roles at the Henry Art Gallery, Museum of Pop Culture, and Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

Samuel Otim specializes in data management and database systems. In his previous faculty Samuel positions at Douglas Otim College in British Columbia and Central Washington University, Otim has served as a faculty advisor for student internships and co-op education engagements. His research interests revolve around leveraging data and information to influence individual and organizational outcomes. Otim has supported industry partners and organizations including World Vision, the Burnaby City Council (British Columbia) and Vancouver City Credit Union to advance policies and practices that streamline operations, improve workplace safety and strengthen executive leadership.

Sara Sanford is the founder of GEN and the architect behind the GEN Sara Certification, the Sanford first gold standard for intersectional equity in U.S. businesses, which has expanded to certify businesses globally. She is also the author of “Inclusion, Inc: How to Design Intersectional Equity into the Workplace.” Sanford has managed the discovery, launch and change management processes for products and programs in a range of dynamic environments, including fintech, software development and legal tech. Her current work focuses on the intersection of equity, ethics and data, partnering with businesses to audit algorithms for bias and optimize their product development processes with inclusive customer journey frameworks.

Spencer Williams specializes in online science communication, leveraging mixed Spencer Williams methods to better connect the public with diverse topics like computing, vaccines and nutrition. Through this work, he seeks to boost the positive impact researchers have on the world by making their insights more accessible and usable for domain non-experts. As a teacher, his work focuses on human-computer interaction, emphasizing research methods, design methods, science communication and social media topics. In his teaching, he highlights the professional and ethical issues related to class topics, weaving together rigorous theoretical grounding, practical considerations and a thoughtful approach to the unintended consequence of research and design choices.

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Alumni updates Where are you now? Let us know at ischool.uw.edu/alumni/updates.

Ria Antony, ’23, is pursuing her master's in information management and systems at UC Berkeley.

Rebecca Brothers, ’15, was promoted to Librarian II in her position as a research & instructional services librarian at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where she has been working since 2017.

Rohan Aras, ’17, finished his doctorate as part of Stanford's Urban Informatics Lab and moved to Washington, D.C., to work as a data scientist at the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology Laboratory.

Susan Castelin, ’12, retired as an assistant librarian from the Pierce County Law Library in 2021. She reports: "I had a great experience working with a dedicated staff. Now, I'm spending time with family and grandchildren."

Jacky Yiu Chung Cheung, ’22, started working as a UX designer I at Amazon Alexa.

Maile Chung, ’23, moved from Seattle to Los Angeles to work at the UCLA Libraries in its Preservation & Conservation department. She works in the audiovisual area with all types of formats, including tape cassettes, open-reel audios and VHS tapes.

INFORMATICS

Juliane De Los Santos, ’22, works as a business intelligence specialist II at Aya Healthcare.

Thomas Gerber, ’22, is working as a software engineer on AWS’s IoT Device Services team.

Jiani Huang, ’23, started as an MS student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Shaarika Kaul, ’19, is an analytics leader for Visa’s Acceptance Solutions Marketing team. She is also pursuing her MBA at the UW Foster School of Business.

Trinity Martinez, ’23, started working full time for AWS. Ezra Park, ’13, moved to work at Google in 2023 as a product manager after several years at Microsoft.

Abigail Quinsay, ’22, moved to Arkansas immediately after graduating to start as a technical project manager in Walmart Global Tech. She went through many organizational changes and ended up transitioning to a dream job: UX designer working on HR products that serve Walmart employees.

Brandon Ta, ’21, started a full-time position as a software development 38

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Tara Wilson, ’18, celebrated her marriage to Luis Naranjo, Informatics, ’17, in May 2023.

engineer at AWS. Satvik Vats, ’20, was promoted to senior product manager at GoDaddy payments.

MLIS / M.LIB Paige Andrew, ’86, concluded an almost 37-year career as a maps cataloger.

He worked at the University of Georgia Library for more than eight years, then at the Pennsylvania State University Libraries.

He was named Distinguished Librarian in 2018.

Arthur Aguilera, ’13, is an assistant professor, collection development & assessment librarian at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Bethany Black, ’12, is working as a librarian at Glacier Middle School (Highline Public Schools).

Karli Cotton, ’21, is working as an online learning librarian at the University of Montana.

Claire Davies, ’10, earned a Doctor of Education from University of Southern California Rossier School of Education. Her dissertation, titled “Shelf Awareness: Public Librarians and Diverse Collections," aimed to bring to life how the values and beliefs of librarians influence collections.

Riley Dudley, ’14, is the assistant director of prospect management and research at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. She creates strategic briefs on major gift prospects and builds tools and reports for fundraisers to track their work.

Hiran Eskeets, ’22, is enrolled at Saint Martin's University in its leadership studies Ph.D. program.

Austin Foglesong, ’22, joined a doctoral program in cognitive diversity in education at Bridges Graduate School in Studio City, California, studying

twice-exceptional education. In August 2023, Austin joined NCW Libraries as a supervising librarian II in Moses Lake, Washington.

Tracy Foster, ’14, is working as a knowledge management partner at Meta.

Emma Fredgant, ’23, moved to New York to work as a taxonomy specialist at NBCUniversal.

Stella Haynes Kiehn, ’22, is in her second year at the UW Law School.

Beth Jarrell, ’19, was promoted to adult services coordinator at Sanibel Public Library in Sanibel, Florida. She was also named a member of the American Library Association's Emerging Leaders class of 2023 and was an interviewee for a forthcoming book by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann, "The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians."

Eve Kausch, ’23, started as the outreach librarian for archives and special collections at Kenyon College.

Christine Lavra, ’77, changed professions to civil engineering after graduating with a BSCE in 1992 and is now retired.

Michelle Li, ’21, accepted a position at UCLA as a humanities and social sciences librarian.

Rachel Martin, ’23, is working for Pikes Peak Library District.

Korissa McGlocklin, ’15, is the director of extended learning at Spokane Community College. She oversees library circulation and the non-credit ACT 2 program (education for those ages 50 and older).

Caleb Mechem, ’21, is working as a print collection strategist at the University of Virginia Library. He is coordinating the move of 1.2 million books into UVA's renovated main library, scheduled to open in spring 2024.

Christine Malinowski, ’13, is the data governance lead for the Nature Conservancy. She previously spent 10 years as a research data librarian, most recently at MIT. Alene Moroni, ’94, moved from head of

reference to head of technical services at the Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Liz Morris, ’16, started working as the outreach and access coordinator for the Network of the National Library of Medicine at the University of Washington Health Sciences Library.

Michael Mungin, ’10, wrote a chapter of the ALA Editions book “Hopeful Visions, Practical Actions: Cultural Humility in Library Work." His chapter is titled “Reflections on Culturally Humble Practice in Bibliography, Scholarship, and Readers’ Advisory: A Case Study.”

Hollis Near, ‘92, was awarded the status of Director Emerita of Library Services from Cornish College of the Arts.

Katelyn Pugh, ’22, went back to work as an archivist for LucasFilm Games.

Valerie Rollins, ’23, works as a cataloging, acquisitions, and ILL manager at Sno-Isle Libraries.

Megan Rosenfeld, ’22, works for the City of Seattle as a legislative information specialist.

Gregg Sapp, ’85, has completed six books in his “Holidazed“ series of satirical novels. Previous books include “Dollarapalooza“ and “Fresh News Straight from Heaven.“ Mike Showalter, ’92, recently retired after five years at UCLA's Continuing Education of the Bar, where he first led the launch of its new legal research platform and then later led sales and revenue operations.

Shelby Shipley, ’23, is working as the instruction and assessment librarian at Utah Tech University.

Kathleen Sidwell, ’78, is retired. She reports: “Thanks to the UW iSchool (in my time the Library School) for giving me the skills that helped me stay employed with interesting jobs.“ Shannon Smith, ’19, joined University of Wyoming Libraries as a student success librarian in March 2023.

Sarah Willadsen, ’13, was promoted to lead librarian of adult services at Prescott Public Library in Prescott, Arizona.

MSIM Emily Bajet, ’20, is a senior technical program manager at IMDb. She helped launch the “IMDb What to Watch” Fire TV app, which sorts through IMDb's 12 million shows and movies to help customers find what to watch.

Urvi Chaudhary, ‘23, started her first fulltime job as a data scientist at Lumen.

Jonathon Colman, ’13, moved to Ireland, where he works as a senior design manager a content design practice lead at HubSpot.

Swagatika Dash, ’22, recently joined the Texas Department of State Health Services' Immunization Unit as a research specialist.

Riley del Fierro, ’23, started a company called Pricesmith that specializes in creating software solutions to help distribution businesses manage their pricing at scale and improve rates of customer retention.

Pamela Kilborn-Miller, ’06, is collaborating with national partners on a nonpartisan campaign to combat misinformation in the 2024 election.

Valerie Kim, ’22, is working at Amazon as a software engineer.

Manasi Kulkarni, ’19, is working with Acorns, a fintech company, in roboinvesting as a senior analytics engineer.

They have also worked with Epic Games as a senior analytics engineer on its Rocket League and Fortnite games.

Michael Loy, ’09, started as a principal solution architect for ZScaler’s Technology Alliance Partnership Business Development.

Susanna Manaloor, ’22, is a technology development analyst at Accenture in Seattle, working on a SAP data migration project.

Parth Oza, ’23, started a full-time job as a security GRC senior analyst at Salesforce Inc., based in Bellevue.

Shekhar Parkhi, ’15, was promoted to a people manager role, running a team of 5-6 solutions engineers as part of PayPal's Professional Services Organization. ischool.uw.edu | 39

Saurabh Patil, ’23, is working at PayPal as a product manager 3.

Achievements

Umang Sehgal, ’19, was promoted to senior product manager at Microsoft.

Oktavianus Sinaga, ‘11, is a senior business analyst at the Department of Digital Innovation Development in the Central Bank of Indonesia.

Jesse Velasquez, ’22, is working as a data scientist at Newton Energy Group, an SaaS company.

Xinyi Yang, ’21, is working as a big data engineer at AWS.

Five iSchool MLIS students received American Library Association Spectrum Scholarships. The program seeks to increase the number of racially and ethnically diverse professionals in the field of library and information science.

This year’s awardees include (above, from left) Maria Fernanda Arteaga Cuevas, Gabrielle Garcia, Judy Low, Emily Valdez, and Sherese Card (not pictured).

Wenpei Zhang, ’21, is working at an asset management firm in New York City.

MUSEOLOGY Bri Gabel, ’21, moved to Sitka and is the first Sustainability Coordinator for the City and Borough of Sitka and the only full-time sustainability professional for a municipality in Alaska.

Jana Greenslit, ’15, is the director of program assessment at iMentor.

Jerry Smith, ’15, finished their first year as associate collections manager at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.

Emily Sparling, ’11, began studies at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis. She is a scholar in the law school’s Robina Public Interest Scholars Program.

PH.D. Bryce Newell, ’15, was awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of associate professor at the University of Oregon, where he is a member of the Media Studies faculty within the School of Journalism and Communication (SOJC). He has also been appointed to serve as the director of the SOJC's undergraduate Honors Program.

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• Professor Chirag Shah was named a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest and most prestigious association of computing professionals. Distinguished Members are those who have achieved significant accomplishments or have made a significant impact on the computing field.

• Women in AI Ethics named Assistant Professor Aylin Caliskan among its 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics for 2023. The list recognizes rising stars and pioneers in the field.

• Dean Emeritus Harry Bruce was named a Distinguished Member of the Association for Information Science and Technology. The distinction recognizes those who have demonstrated excellence in the information science field through sustained educational pursuits and a track record of service.

• 2023 Ph.D. graduate Prerna Juneja was the recipient of this year’s UW Graduate School Medal for her research on misinformation. The medal is awarded to just one student each year.

• Second-year Ph.D. student Jesse Brisbois has been selected for Health Policy Research Scholars, a leadership program supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Brisbois’s research is focused creating a culture of health for Native communities through the utilization of both western research methodologies and Indigenous knowledge systems.

• Professor Hans Jochen Scholl was awarded IFIP Fellow status. The award from the General Assembly of the International Federation for Information Processing recognizes Scholl’s outstanding academic contributions and his standing in the field of information processing.

• Assistant Professor Mike Teodorescu was named one of MIT Technology Review’s 2023 “Innovators Under 35 Europe,” an award that honors “exceptionally talented young innovators whose work has the greatest potential to transform the world.”

BOOKSHELF

Young, from Page 25

New from iSchool scholars: “Technology’s Child: Digital Media’s Role in the Ages and Stages of Growing Up” (MIT Press) by Associate Professor Katie Davis, explores how children engage with technology at each stage of development, from toddler to twentysomething, and how they can best be supported. Drawing on her expertise in developmental science and design research, Davis describes what happens when child development and technology design interact, and how this interaction is complicated by children’s individual characteristics and social and cultural contexts. The book identifies the qualitative distinctions between different ages and stages of children’s engagement with technology, and it offers invaluable guidance for parents and teachers navigating the digital landscape and for technology designers charting the way.

“Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions About What to Believe Online” (University of Chicago Press) by iSchool Research Scientist Mike Caulfield and Stanford Professor Sam Wineburg, is a guide for telling fact from fiction on the internet — often in less than 30 seconds. This illustrated toolkit shows how to identify red flags, get quick context, and make better use of common websites like Google and Wikipedia. “Verified” will help students and anyone else looking to get a handle on the internet’s endless flood of information through quick, practical and accessible steps.

“A Hands-On Introduction to Machine Learning” (Cambridge University Press) by Professor Chirag Shah is a textbook designed to teach machine learning in a way that is easy to understand and apply. Packed with real-world examples, industry insights and practical activities, it assumes only a basic knowledge of technology, making it an accessible resource for students and professionals. All the necessary topics are covered, including supervised and unsupervised learning, neural networks, reinforcement learning, cloud-based services, and the ethical issues still posing problems within the industry.

“Changing Tides” (self-published) by Research Scientist Rachel Moran-Prestridge, Ph.D. candidate Sarah Nguyễn and collaborators from other programs is an illustrated booklet (zine) based on Facebook data and focus group discussions. In this choose-your-ownadventure story, written in both English and Vietnamese, the protagonist, Mai Phung, and her young nephew are divided over whether a local building should be saved.

She gets caught in the ebbing currents of information and must ask herself whom she can rely on the most in her search for the truth.

each moving part of this massive project is key, said Wedlake.

“We’re trying to share ideas and make it so that these resources aren’t siloed after development and can instead be in conversation with each other.”

Young is adept at bringing people together in collaborative and ethical research partnerships, said Jowaisas. “I think that’s why he works with such a wide variety of people. He makes everybody around him better, and that’s one of the most effective things that a leader can do.”

The commitment to collaboration that informs his research is also what’s at the forefront of Young’s plans for TASCHA. As the new director, Young will focus on integrating the center further into the iSchool so that research scientists can work in community with faculty and students, sharing expertise and experience.

“There’s a real opportunity to come into TASCHA and have these exciting, critically minded conversations around research questions that resonate across the iSchool,” Young said.

He has plans, for example, to implement a research cluster initiative, in which faculty, students and research scientists can come together to have reading groups and conversations around research logistics and funding, ethical research partnerships, and methodologies and design. “It would provide a lot of opportunities for TASCHA researchers to teach and bring in examples from our research and our successes,” he said.

Young says he doesn’t want to radically change the identity of TASCHA. “We have a lot of strengths that I want to carry forward,” he said. “But I’m also excited and it’s really important to me that the future is collectively determined by everybody that is a part of TASCHA.” ischool.uw.edu | 41

Parvin, from Page 34 fathers and husbands, as a default.”

Parvin intentionally defies stereotypical images of scholars and intellectuals. Her dark curly hair is streaked with blue and green. She wears eye-catching deep red lipstick.

“In the classroom last year, I shared an artwork centered around women’s lipstick. I noticed a few men laugh and whisper dismissively, indicating that it was insignificant and superficial. That gave me an opportunity to talk about the politics of self-expression; how in Iran women can be arrested for wearing lipstick. That’s a big deal.”

Parvin earned a B.A. in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran, the first time she’d been in a co-ed class.

After moving to the United States, she earned a master’s degree in information design and technology at Georgia Tech and a Ph.D. in design from Carnegie Mellon University. She returned to Georgia Tech as an assistant professor and established the Design and Social Justice Studio, an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students who investigate and build products and services centered on social justice.

Her studio projects included the development of games and educational materials tailored to the challenging subject of quantum mechanics, which has historically presented obstacles for students with limited access to quality teaching and resources.

Such structural injustices have a way of hiding in plain sight, says the researcher. A step-tracking device built to able-bodied standards can leave differently abled users feeling physically inadequate. People who post guides to public transportation may not take into consideration varying literacy levels of users. Heavy surveillance in minority neighborhoods leads to racially skewed data on national crime.

“We create these surveillance devices in the name of safety, and those most harmed are people who have been historically excluded and marginalized in society — people of color, people who dissent against their government, people who may not have money or a place to sleep at night,” she says.

Parvin is a widely published author 42

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and an editor of “Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience,” an innovative journal in the field of feminist technoscience. Her current collaborative book project, titled “Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen,” probes the issue of surveillance and related concerns by engaging with a wide range of technologies that include smart homes, smart forests and smart dust.

Greater awareness of the political, ethical, philosophical and historical roots of problematic presuppositions is a critical first step toward more democratic design, she says. Another important step is making the creation of products and technologies more inclusive and representative. Parvin encourages participatory design

“We need to ask who gets to design technology and what are the conversations that give rise to it.” practices that involve diverse users in the development of technologies that affect them.

“We need to ask who gets to design technology and what are the conversations that give rise to it,” she says.

A celebrated instructor who has been honored with multiple teaching awards, Parvin is looking forward to investigating these ethical questions in her classrooms at the iSchool. “It’s important to introduce the ideas early in students’ education,” she says. “It shapes the courses they will take and the questions they will ask going forward.” iSchool Dean Anind Dey describes Parvin’s work on a range of real-world problems as incredibly impactful. He is excited to see her in her new dual roles. “Nassim is committed to dealing with all forms of social inequity. Her focus on creating a community where belongingness is centered will be a wonderful fit for our IDEAS work.”

Saveski, from Page 35 giving them immediate feedback on whether the content they wrote would be engaging to audiences across the political spectrum,” he says.

Saveski’s work is as challenging as it is critical. In an early experiment with Twitter, Saveski and MIT collaborators used data visualization tools to expose a sample of tweeters to their own left- or right-leaning political bubbles in the aftermath of the 2016 elections.

Were they surrounded online by people who thought just like them?

Did they realize it? Did they care?

Their awareness changed from the bird’s-eye exposure; their behavior not much, to Saveski’s disappointment. “Many participants said, ‘Yes, I know that my connections are homogeneous, and I’m not interested in seeking out more diverse political connections or consuming more politically diverse content.’ They were just happy to stay in their echo chamber.”

Not everyone is stuck, however.

Working with researchers at Facebook, Saveski started looking for people who initiated healthy online conversations. “We were inspired by the people in our offline lives who were great party hosts, those who are particularly good at bringing people together and prompting conversations among them. We wondered if such people also existed online.”

They do. The researchers call them “social catalysts” — social media users who bring people together and spark positive, meaningful conversations. Studying their behavior is important to Saveski’s goal of minimizing the harm and maximizing the benefits of social media platforms.

The iSchool assistant professor says he is ready to explore new directions in his research at the UW. “I’m excited to think more broadly about embedding democratic values in the design of social media platforms and the algorithms that power them.”

Andrews, from Page 21 American Indigenous Knowledge, was a Ph.D. student while Andrews was in the MLIS program. She supported Andrews and Jessica Humphries, another Indigenous student.

Together, Andrews and Humphries presented a paper at the 2016 International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) World Library and Information Conference.

Andrews continues to present often, including at the upcoming International Indigenous Librarians Forum.

Littletree said Andrews’s presentations are an important part of her work in librarianship. “I’ve seen her present, and that’s when I’ve really seen how she’s making a big impact on the field. You can feel it in the room.”

Littletree and Andrews are still working together, including recent research for a paper on Indigenous information literacy along with Jessie Loyer, a librarian at Mount Royal University. “I think it’s great that she’s gotten this recognition,” Littletree said. “I think she provides a really good perspective in helping people to think through ways that we can do the work better. She’s someone I’m not afraid to turn to for advice or help.”

After graduating from the iSchool, Andrews was a North Carolina State

Kuhn, from Page 8 research are complex and have to be carefully considered throughout the research process, from first developing the research questions through choosing a dissemination plan, Kuhn said.

“Building relationships over time is essential, along with ensuring that research benefits Tribal communities, risks are understood and minimized, and important issues such as privacy, consent and data sovereignty are considered,” she said.

It can be challenging to do communityengaged academic research, which needs to be careful and deliberate, in such a fast-moving environment like social media.

University Libraries Fellow and earned a Master of Indigenous Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Andrews’ research on how Indigenous peoples can experience historical trauma within libraries was called the first research of its kind.

In 2019, she was hired at the University of San Francisco as the instruction/first-year experience librarian. After two years at USF, she was excited to be offered a role working with open access and education.

“I really thought open education presented a stretch and a new challenge and an opportunity to really advocate for students’ success,” she said.

Her role is varied, but a big part of it is making open-access materials easy for students and faculty to use.

Andrews is serving as the university’s liaison for a $1.5 million grant for four colleges to develop open-access textbooks. The hope is to create 12 textbooks or learning modules, which will make learning material more accessible, particularly for lowincome students.

“San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities to live in,” Andrews said.

“I have seen how our students have had to make choices to attend a private college in a prohibitively expensive city.

Anything we can do to help them, and to help them sustainably, is something I can really get behind.”

“There’s so much happening on social media that affects our Indigenous youth and communities, and there are relatively few Native scholars in the United States focused on these topics,” Kuhn said. “It’s really important to me that my work aligns with what our Indigenous health organizations and our communities want to know.”

Kuhn is now collaborating with NPAIHB’s adolescent health team to understand more broadly Indigenous health communication on TikTok and the different ways that Tribal health organizations and Indigenous influencers are leveraging the platform.

For Kuhn, who earned her BS in Informatics in 2019, the focus on Native North American Indigenous Knowledge was a key factor that brought her to the

Bias, from Page 27 and language models more in the future.

“It’s a complex problem, and there are no trivial solutions,” Caliskan said. “But there are various things we can do at the technical level, societal level, and public policy level.”

Fereidooni would like to see better training data used in machine learning for AI and language models, rather than just “scraping the most readily available, quickest, easiest data to access,” which are usually from Western media sources.

Ghosh agrees, saying that ChatGPT doesn’t make these mistakes because of faulty code or faulty data. “It’s not that it’s broken, it’s that the data is low quality because the efforts in collecting it have been Western-skewed,” he said.

“For instance, you could run these tests with an English-to-Spanish translation and you’d be just fine.”

Hodel worked on a paper, still under review, with Caliskan and iSchool Associate Professor Jevin West, on assessing biases across language models. He thinks understanding these biases and their extent are crucial to using these tools in the future. “We have to know about these biases because depending on the application, they matter a lot,” Hodel said.

“Without knowing actually the biases, it’s definitely not ethical to apply such language models in a social context.”

iSchool. She is grateful to have other Indigenous Ph.D. students and faculty at the school and on her supervisory committee, including her advisor, Assistant Professor Clarita Lefthand-Begay. Kuhn intends to stay in academia as faculty after she completes her Ph.D., and she’s taking the next step toward that.

“I am excited to bring all these experiences and collaborative work together as I complete my dissertation proposal this year,” she said. “I’m very honored to work with our partner, NPAIHB, and I’m learning so much from this collaboration that will positively impact me and my scholarship, my relationships, and my future goals.

Everything is so interconnected in Indigenous research, especially as a Native scholar.” ischool.uw.edu | 43

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