iNews | Autumn 2024

The Information School || Autumn 2024

BALANCING ACT

Student-athletes’ dedication shows in sports, in class / 16

PUSHED TO THE LIMIT

With program at capacity, Informatics demand soars / 20

WORKING FOR WASHINGTON

Special report inside: How iSchool supports Washington families, communities, workforce

No problem too heavy

Bit

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, Samantha Herndon, Maggie Foote, Shanzay Shabi, Jim Davis, Kayla Pohl, Mary Lynn Lyke, Michelle Dunlop, Jessi Loerch, Kristin Baird Rattini, Robin Blomster, Curran Nielsen

Design: Katie Mayer

ON THE COVER

Clockwise from upper left: Sam Buechler, MLIS ‘20; Krystal Liang, Informatics ‘20; Thomas Serrano, Informatics ‘22; Mark Jupiter Jr , MSIM ‘23; Nicholas Pace, MSIM ‘23; Kira Walters MacPherson, Museology ‘21; Jeeyoung Kim, Informatics ‘20, all photographed by Doug Parry

Copyright 2024 University of

School’s growth is a mark of how much more it has to offer

TheiSchool will surpass 2,000 students next quarter, a milestone that reflects the growing urgency of an education in information science. Students see the value of programs that blend technology and liberal arts and put them on a path to a rewarding career.

This academic year, we will admit close to 600 students into Informatics, bringing the total to more than 1,000. Informatics is now one of the largest majors at the University of Washington, and it’s easy to see why: It sets students up to succeed as well-rounded information technology professionals. Graduates are problem-solvers and leaders who can communicate well with others and work as part of a team. They move on to high-paying jobs in the public, private and nonprofit sectors or to master’s degrees or doctorates in fields such as data science, computer science and human-computer interaction.

Technology constantly evolves, and the Informatics program evolves with it. As generative artificial intelligence reshapes the industry, we are educating students to use it to analyze and structure information and to wield it as a tool for sound decision-making. The industry is seeking to diversify; meanwhile, we are building on our long track record of recruiting women, underrepresented populations and first-generation college students, demographics that are sorely

needed across all sectors. More than 50 percent of our Informatics students are women, compared to just one in four tech workers in Washington.

Not surprisingly, our graduates are in high demand, and the vast majority stay and join our state workforce after they graduate. Employers will continue to seek skilled tech workers in the coming years, and job creation will outpace Washington’s STEM graduates by the thousands. Our state should give its young people every chance at those jobs, and the more Informatics students we graduate, the more we can help bridge that gap.

We’ve more than doubled the size of the program since 2020, yet Informatics remains one of the most competitive majors at the UW, and we still turn away many more qualified students than we can admit. Our low admittance rate isn’t something to celebrate; it’s an indication that we’re falling short of our goals as a school and our promise as a public university.

Ideally, the iSchool would have no constraints on our capacity to educate every student who deserves to major in Informatics, but the reality is that we are already beyond the limits of what we can do with our current resources. We are the only school or college at the UW without a dedicated home building and are instead scattered across five of them. To meet the demand for hundreds more students, we need faculty and staff to support them, and we need places where they can work. We need classrooms, computer labs, and gathering places to foster collaboration and innovation. And we need support from state policymakers and industry leaders to make that happen.

In the coming months and years, we need the UW to make us a funding priority. We need industry leaders to help advocate for us, we need financial support from business leaders and alumni, and we need state lawmakers to understand the value of Informatics and information science. The iSchool can be instrumental in educating the state’s tech workforce and meeting the demand for skilled tech workers. As members of the iSchool community, it’s up to all of us to make that case.

— Anind Dey, Dean and Professor Fall 2024

Black students invest in each other’s success

BY SHANZAY SHABI

For Informatics students Thomas Emnetu and Ahmed Ghaddah, the search for belonging and community on campus led to something greater than themselves. In fall 2023, they co-founded Black in Informatics (BINFO), a student organization dedicated to fostering the professional, academic and personal development of Black students in the iSchool’s Informatics program. Within just a year, BINFO has grown to around 100 students and expanded to attract participants from across

various programs, including Computer Science and Human-Centered Design and Engineering.

The idea for BINFO came to Emnetu during a vulnerable time in his college experience. The lack of Black students both in his Informatics classes and across campus left him overwhelmed with selfdoubt and imposter syndrome. A pivotal conversation with his mentor from the UW Brotherhood Initiative, Paul Metellus, shifted his perspective. Metellus encouraged Emnetu to channel his feelings into action, inspiring him to address the strug-

gles he was facing and ensure that others would not have to go through the same isolating experience.

“I experienced things that made me question if I belonged,” Emnetu shared. “I realized I wanted to do something to make sure others didn’t experience what I had. I wanted to provide a community and safe space for Black students at the iSchool to feel like they belonged.”

To lay the foundation for BINFO, Emnetu conducted initial research, interviewing faculty, staff and students to better understand the needs of Black students within the program. In his outreach, he connected with Ghaddah, who also shared a commitment to uplifting and providing resources for other Black students at the iSchool.

“I want to inspire people from marginalized communities like mine to be able to come into the Informatics program,” Ghaddah said. “Finding out this major existed when I came to the UW really changed the trajectory of where my future ended up going. I hope to show that your environment doesn’t define you and that’s why I’m driven to provide value and give back to students from underserved backgrounds.”

With support from the iSchool, including Diversity Programs Advisor Cynthia del Rosario, Emnetu and Ghaddah have established a support system to ensure that current and future students don’t have to struggle to find the resources they need. BINFO’s events, such as resume workshops and networking sessions, have done just that. Students have received candid advice about the hiring process, helping them navigate college and career paths.

“It has been an honor to support this incredible group of students in launching

See BINFO, Page 43

Alumni spotlight: Quentin Christensen, ’08

For me, it was a choice between becoming a stand-up comedian or joining the family fuel, lubricants and propane distribution business I figured the latter would be more fun, so here I am At Christensen, we develop in-house software and data visualizations to help employees and customers For example, we provide data to track progress toward sustainability goals Outside of work, I’m active in angel investing, focusing on sustainability technology startups

From left, inaugural Black in Informatics (BINFO) co-presidents Ahmed Ghaddah and Thomas Emnetu and 2024-25 co-presidents Saara Uthmaan and Amanual Ayalneh.

NOW: VICE PRESIDENT OF TECHNOLOGY, CHRISTENSEN, INC.

Community beyond the classroom

BY SHANZAY SHABI

When Spencer Naar joined the iSchool’s Master of Library and Information Science program remotely during a career transition, he was undecided as to which aspect of librarianship to pursue. Lacking prior experience in libraries, he hoped to gain additional insight into the field. That’s when iSTAMP (Student-to-Alumni-Mentorship Program) stepped in, pairing him with a mentor who not only helped him navigate the challenges of his new academic journey but also became a lifelong friend.

“It was invaluable to have a space to continue classroom conversations one-onone with an experienced librarian,” said Naar ‘23. “My mentor, Johanna Jacobsen Kiciman, provided so much insight into the profession and expanded my understanding of what a career in information science could be. Our discussions covered a breadth of topics and her passion and past experiences really sparked my curiosity in new aspects of the field.”

Naar’s story is just one example of how iSTAMP bridges the gap between theory and practice by pairing MLIS students with professionals in the field. Now in its fifth year, the program fosters meaningful connections that support students’ personal and professional growth. Since its launch in 2019, iSTAMP has matched more than 250 students with mentors, creating a community that extends far beyond the classroom.

The idea for a mentorship program specific to MLIS students came about in discussions between faculty and student representatives in the MLIS Program

“I wanted to nurture connections with current students as a way to give back to the iSchool and stay current in the field, all of which has been incredibly rewarding.”

—

Johanna Jacobsen Kiciman (right) who was an iSTAMP mentor for

Spencer Naar (left)

Committee. The co-founders of iSTAMP, both MLIS students at the time, were Sam Buechler ‘20 and Dovi Mae Patiño-Liu ‘20.

“We felt there was a need for formal mentorship in the program,” said Buechler, now a library director at Washington State University, Vancouver. “As an online student, I felt I had little control over the

Alumni spotlight: Dan Ray, ’17

program and little input in many ways, so being able to directly impact one gap that was present at the time felt really meaningful.”

iSTAMP has grown each year, connecting students with mentors from across the country.

“From the start, we knew we wanted this program to focus on DEI and program retention,” said teaching professor and iSTAMP faculty advisor Helene Williams. “We have had many students tell us they have stayed in the MLIS program because of their mentor, despite the obstacles they encountered in their academic journey. This program has led to the formation of some great friendships and provided fieldwork opportunities for students.”

For Naar, now a digital asset librarian at Arthrex, iSTAMP offered crucial guidance and support during his transition into the MLIS program. Three years later, he and his mentor still keep in touch, and their connection has blossomed into a meaningful friendship.

iSTAMP also offers a valuable learning experience for alumni mentors.

“I wanted to nurture connections with current students as a way to give back to the iSchool and stay current in the field, all of which has been incredibly rewarding,” said Jacobsen Kiciman, MLIS ‘17 alum and head of research services at UW Tacoma Library. She has mentored Naar and two other MLIS students over the past three years. “I’ve learned as much if not more from my mentees as they did from me.”

If you are interested in becoming an iSTAMP mentor, visit ischool.uw.edu/ istamp.

NOW: MUSIC METADATA LIBRARIAN, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

I was recently promoted to Librarian II at UVA, where I catalog scores and recordings for the music library In addition, I have been involved with our Subject Access Enhancement Initiative, making changes to subject headings to address bias in our catalog Last year, I retired from the National Guard after 23 years of service, most recently as trombonist and librarian for the 257th Army Band in Washington, D C

AI reshapes business — and the MSIM

BY MAGGIE FOOTE

Artificial intelligence is disrupting and reshaping organizations around the world, affecting how businesses work, how people perform their jobs, and, ultimately, the skills in demand from hiring managers charged with attracting talent to lead their organizations into the AI era. These are exactly the type of complex business and organizational problems graduates of the Information School’s Master of Science in Information Management (MSIM) program are taught to solve.

“Information management professionals make change by understanding the capabilities and ethical considerations of technology, how organizations work, and how to motivate and support people,” says David Hendry, associate professor and MSIM faculty chair. “An MSIM professional makes other people’s jobs better. It’s a service orientation, in many ways just like a librarian.”

Fittingly, iSchool leaders are taking an information management approach, embracing advances in technology while focusing on the people it affects, to ensure MSIM graduates remain effective leaders.

This fall, the program introduced a set of elective courses focused on the ethical design and management of AI tools and technologies within organizations. MSIM students can specialize in AI by completing at least three of the five courses on offer this year.

Hendry emphasizes that all MSIM students, regardless of their participation in the new AI-focused electives, will learn

about artificial intelligence’s capabilities and potential impact on organizations.

“We are continuously changing and keeping our courses up to date with what’s happening in society and what’s happening in technology,” says Hendry. “Our attention right now is focused on AI, because that is the most important thing that’s happening.”

This attention has resulted in new learning outcomes, class readings, projects and tools related to AI, integrated throughout MSIM’s curriculum, and more changes are expected as AI research advances. The iSchool has a number of faculty who are on the leading edge of research on responsible AI systems and experiences. For example, Assistant Professor Aylin Caliskan, who is teaching the MSIM elective on ethical AI this fall, was recently awarded more than $1.6 million to identify,

Alumni spotlight: Kenny Lee, ’15

measure and reduce bias in AI.

“We want to be bringing that research into our educational work,” says Hendry. He is quick to point out that iSchool students and partners have emphasized the urgent need for MSIM to offer a path toward AI proficiency.

“AI is just a massive development,” says Hendry. “We have seen tremendous demand from our advisory boards and from our students.”

Hendry is collaborating with colleagues to respond to this demand with new AIfocused courses and offerings for students in the MSIM program and beyond.

“Our goal is to enable professionals across the corporate world, the public sector and nonprofit world to learn about artificial intelligence and bring it into their organizations in a responsible, value-sensitive manner,” he says.

Through the iSchool’s iMentorship program, I’ve had the honor of guiding three mentees, all of whom secured positions aligned with their career aspirations As a mentor, I leverage my diverse background, including my experience building a comprehensive cybersecurity program for TixTrack from the ground up, achieving critical certifications like SOC2 Type 2 and UK Cyber Essentials within one year These milestones both strengthened security and significantly shortened the company’s sales cycle

Students attend a graduate-level class on generative AI ethics in October. (Doug Parry photo)

NOW: VICE PRESIDENT OF CYBERSECURITY, TIXTRACK, INC.

Museology was the path to dream job

BY SHANZAY SHABI

When Anne Longman was offered her dream job, she wasted no time.

“The week after graduation, I packed up my car, put my pet goldfish in a Home Depot bucket, and floored it 4,000 miles to Maine,” she said.

Shortly after graduating from the Information School’s Museology program, Longman was offered a job by the National Park Service as a visual information specialist at Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. Working within the Interpretation Division, Longman creates graphics that make the park experience educational and enjoyable for the public.

Longman first came to the UW in pursuit of a career that would allow her to combine her interests in the great outdoors, museums and graphic design.

“The iSchool Museology program just felt like the perfect fit,” said Longman, who is originally from the Midwest. “After taking a tour of the school, I immediately felt drawn to the amazing people here, not to mention the abundance of state and national parks in the Pacific Northwest compared to other places in the U.S.”

During a field trip to Seattle’s Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park with her Exhibit Development class, Longman fell even more in love with the idea of working for a national park. She reached out to Lissa Kramer, a Museology alum working at the Klondike, to hear more about her experience in the field. What started as an informational chat led Longman to learn of an opportunity to get involved as an exhibits assistant, leading her to an internship with the Klondike National Historical Park.

“Interning was a wonderful experience,” said Longman. “I’ve always just wanted to get my foot in the door somehow, and this played a pivotal role in me securing my job in Maine.”

The practical experience Longman gained from her internship, in addition to her Museology background, made her well-equipped for the visual information specialist position. She found the interpretive work in her Museology classes especially helpful for her job, in which she synthesizes information and presents it in a way the public can understand.

“This is all very fulfilling work,” said Longman. “I appreciate that I can very clearly understand the vision of what we’re doing and how it positively affects the public. Having a very strong sense of purpose in what we’re doing really makes the work fun.”

Alumni spotlight: Andrea Mulanix, ’09

NOW: OPERATIONS MANAGER, LIBRARY JUICE ACADEMY

I love to support so many practicing and future museology and information science professionals through Library Juice Academy’s continuing education academy I helped pilot our alumni program, and in 2024, implemented significant updates to the website and course platform Particularly this year, much of my free time has been spent on political organizing as the captain of Sister District Puget Sound, which works to elect Democratic state legislators in purple districts

Anne Longman works at Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. (NPS/R. Wang photo)

Adaptive apps may find use in cars

BY JIM DAVIS

Each year, more than 3,000 people in the U.S. die in distracted-driving accidents as they fumble with the navigation system, send work texts, or try to multitask in other ways, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Another 400,000 are injured.

Now a team of UW researchers at the is working with the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) to create touchscreen dashboard displays that could lower the risks of driving while distracted.

“When you’re driving, we all know that we probably shouldn’t be looking at the phone or attending to something else, but the reality is that no matter what, people will always do that, people will always multitask,” said Junhun “Judy” Kong, a Ph.D. student at the iSchool.

Kong is the lead student on a team that has been working on a project called the ability-based design mobile toolkit, which provides developers with code to build apps that can adapt to people’s individual abilities and situations. Other members of the team include iSchool Professor Jacob O. Wobbrock and Professor James Fogarty of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

TRI was interested in exploring how the UW team’s research could be incorporated into dashboard digital displays in future cars and trucks, so it entered into a research collaboration with the UW team.

“We were talking to the TRI people about our toolkit and they were excited about its potential for the driving scenario,” said Kong, who is pursuing her

“When you’re driving, we all know that we probably shouldn’t be looking at the phone or attending to something else, but the reality is that no matter what, people will always do that.”

—Junhun “Judy” Kong, lead student on a team designing a toolkit for creating adaptive apps

doctoral work in information science with a focus on human-computer interaction under Wobbrock’s supervision.

The UW team has been working on the toolkit for more than two years to help developers create mobile apps that adapt to the user. Apps are in many ways inaccessible to people with disabilities or who face

Alumni spotlight: Beck Tench, ’22

other hindrances, Wobbrock said.

“If you design an app that is easier to use for a person with one arm, for instance, it can also be useful for a person who is carrying a bag of groceries or holding a baby,” Wobbrock said. “When you make designs more accessible for people with disabilities, you often make better designs for everyone.”

App developers may not always have time to focus on accessibility. So, the UW team worked on the toolkit, which provides behind-the-scenes code that developers could apply to their own projects. The challenge for the UW team was to create a framework for how to make apps more accessible for all.

“It takes some work to organize the universe of incoming data, reasoning about abilities, and adapting user interfaces,” Wobbrock said. “We know what we want to achieve — we want to make it easier for developers to create mobile interfaces that are responsive to a user’s abilities and situations.”

What they developed is code that allows apps to interact with the user based on factors such as touch, gesture, physical activity and attention. From there, the code attempts to understand the behaviors and the situations of the user and then accommodate for those conditions. Part of this capability stems from earlier work published by the UW research team at ASSETS 2022, which revealed correlations between a set of touch metrics and specific fine motor challenges such as tremor.

See Apps, Page 43

SENIOR RESEARCHER AND DESIGNER, CENTER FOR DIGITAL THRIVING, HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

My work aims to give young people more agency in how technology affects their lives We’ve recently released a playbook on engaging youth in research, as well as studies on teen pressures and social media’s impact and insights on teen use of generative AI Moving forward, I’ll collaborate with educators, designers and youth to co-create a framework for schools to involve young people in developing AI policies

Associate Professor Katie Davis (left) speaks at the National Attorneys General Presidential Initiative Summit in September in Portland, Oregon.

“Legislation is absolutely needed to compel companies to really consider young people’s well-being when designing,” Davis says, but she stresses that policies developed by officials must be guided by evidence rather than fear.

When kids and tech collide

Katie Davis’s work on young people’s digital experiences provides guidance families can trust as they navigate difficult issues

BY MICHELLE DUNLOP

To post, or not to post? That is the question. Or rather, that is one of many questions facing young people, their parents and their teachers in today’s fast-paced digital world.

For educator Melissa Chittenden, who has worked at multiple elementary and middle schools, the list of questions she hears is long: When should young people post online? Which social media sites are suitable? Which apps are safe for young children or teens? How much screen time is OK?

“Families are seeking advice,” Chittenden said. “At every school I’ve worked, everybody is looking at how to navigate this.”

Chittenden’s go-to for advice? The research of Katie Davis, an associate professor at the iSchool.

Instead of discouraging social media or even discussion of it in schools, Davis’s first book, “The App Generation,” focused on what it means to be a digital citizen, Chittenden said. That prompted Chittenden to consider what kind of skills students need to respond to online bullying or to know when and what to post online. She and others put together seminars for parents and faculty and lessons for students about digital citizenship.

“Her work was really revolutionary,” Chittenden said. “Katie’s work moved people from not responding to responding mindfully.”

Davis, who began her career as an elementary school teacher, started researching young peo-

“Teens blame themselves for not being able to control their social media use; parents blame themselves for not knowing what limits to put in place for their children or how to enforce them. But a lot of these challenges are created by the tech companies.”

ple’s use of technology in 2005. While working on her doctorate at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Davis examined teens’ use of social media, primarily MySpace and Facebook. Her research was used in “The App Generation,” which she co-authored with Howard Gardner, and which also draws on the research of their colleagues on the Good Play Project.

After joining the faculty in the UW iSchool in 2012, Davis began looking into how the design of different technology affects young people. Her most recent book, “Technology’s Child,” advocates for technology companies to change the way they design social media sites, games and applications to consider the well-being of young people.

“There is so much underlying individual blame surrounding this topic,” Davis said. “Teens blame themselves for not being able to control their social media use; parents blame themselves for not knowing what limits to put in place for their children or how to enforce them. But a lot of these challenges are created by the tech companies.”

In “Technology’s Child,” Davis identified several aspects of tech design that have negative effects on teens. “The most popular social media sites are designed to keep people on them,” Davis said. “That’s not ideal.”

Since social media companies make money by selling users’ information to advertisers, their sites employ several “dark patterns” or design features aimed at keeping a user online or prompting them to re-engage with the site or app, she said. These include functions like infinite scroll on social media or notifications from a game or social media site to entice a user to return.

Davis concludes that good child-centered design should be self-directed, allowing young people to set their own pace rather than having technology dictate it.

“The young person should feel like they are in the driver’s seat,” Davis said.

The other key component of child-centered design is community-supported, which involves the broader contexts of youth’s digital experi-

ences. These may include support from parents, teachers, older siblings and peers.

These two elements of child-centric tech design — self-directed and community-supported — can be beacons for both parents and teachers as they try to support young people’s positive digital experiences.

“There isn’t one set of rules for this that will apply to all kids,” Davis said. “There are individual factors, social factors and design or technology factors at play.”

Davis explains that her research explores those factors and their effects on youth’s digital experiences by using a variety of methods, including interviews, surveys, focus groups and ecological momentary assessments (EMAs). With EMAs, for instance, young participants will receive a notification sometime during their use of a social media site, such as Instagram, and will be asked to answer questions about their experience.

“It’s really important to do this work in collaboration with researchers coming from different backgrounds with different approaches,” Davis said. She works with researchers in the fields of computer science, education and psychology.

One of those collaborators is Lucia MagisWeinberg, a professor in the UW’s psychology department. Magis-Weinberg was familiar with Davis’s research before joining the UW in 2022 and had incorporated some of Davis’s work from her time at Harvard and Project Zero into her own intervention work with youth beginning in 2019. She notes that Davis was one of the first researchers in the field of education and technology.

“Katie is a pioneer in our field,” MagisWeinberg said.

Magis-Weinberg has collaborated with Davis on three projects, including co-authoring a chapter in the “Encyclopedia of Adolescence.” They launched a project last year looking into

See Davis, Page 42

Seeing is feeling

In project co-led by Jaime Snyder, citizen scientists’ sense of place will influence design of new training materials

BY KAYLA POHL

When Tahlequah made headlines across the globe in 2018 for carrying her stillborn orca calf around the Salish Sea for 18 days, she was not just seen as another sign of climate change. She was a mother, and her devastating tour of grief captivated the public and stood as a stark reminder of the similarities between humans and marine mammals.

ic Northwest coastal communities feel toward marine mammals and how this should affect the design of visual materials to facilitate citizen participation in scientific research.

metric for assessing marine health. “They have done a fantastic job developing visual materials to support data collection by people not trained as scientists,” she said.

For Jaime Snyder, an associate professor at the iSchool specializing in visualization studies, images of Tahlequah’s plight revealed a larger opportunity for research. She teamed up with Julia Parrish, a professor in the UW College of the Environment, to explore the emotional connection Pacif-

A recently awarded three-year, $900,000 National Science Foundation grant supports their work to create a new marine mammal module for the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST). Directed by Parrish and based at the University of Washington, COASST is a citizen science project that trains volunteers to walk West Coast beaches and collect rigorous data on beached seabirds.

According to Snyder, COASST is well known for the quality of its data on beached seabirds, which turns out to be a useful

The new marine mammal module is based on the Grounded Visualization Design methodology that Snyder developed to involve non-experts in the process of designing visuals related to their lived experience. “We know that visual representations of information support narrative and sense-making in a profound way,” said Snyder. Emotions such as wonder, excitement and anger also play a critical role in our cognitive processes.

Researchers call this “epistemic affect,” and it refers to the immediate emotional responses we feel as we are engaged in learning or creating knowledge. The data collection on beached seabirds, for example, was affected by the emotional toll on COASSTers when they encountered mass death events. “When you see a single dead bird on the beach,” Parrish said, “most of the time you’re just involved in

See Seeing, Page 43

A member of the Coastal Obser vation and Seabird Survey Team walks a beach, collecting data on beached seabirds, a measure of marine health.

Jaime Snyder

New center unites often-siloed work

BY DOUG PARRY

More than two dozen Information School faculty and Ph.D. students are exploring diverse systems of knowledge and how they are produced, collected and accessed. Their work contributes to how libraries, museums and archives adapt to serve their communities. Since scholarship involving these cultural institutions is so wide-ranging, it can sometimes happen in siloes when collaborations would be more fruitful. A new center housed at the iSchool intends to bring that work together.

The Center for Advances in Libraries, Museums and Archives (CALMA) is charged with creating a community around research related to those institutions and amplifying the work. Through outreach and engagement with working

professionals, it aims to bridge research and practice.

“CALMA is distinctive in its focus on three critical institutions that share a lot in common and will benefit from collaborations among both researchers and practitioners,” said iSchool Senior Principal Research Scientist Chris Coward, who teamed with Professor Carole Palmer to establish the center.

Funded in its startup phase by the Gates Foundation, CALMA seeks to showcase interdisciplinary research and attract students to professions in libraries, museums and archives. The center aims to bring positive attention to the societal importance of those institutions.

“We want it to be highly visible, and it’s the first of its kind,” said Sharon Streams, the center’s director of strategy and operations. “There’s no other university that has

a center focused on any of those institutions, let alone all three.”

Some ongoing projects that align with CALMA’s goals include a study on psychological well-being in art museums; a project exploring the past, present and future of tribal librarianship in Washington; and a nationwide information literacy training program to help library staff navigate misleading or false information.

Its first research roundtable, held earlier this year, was on the topic of well-being — both that of professionals working in these cultural institutions and that of their communities. It was the kind of topic the center will prioritize because it resonates with professionals, Streams said.

“Practitioners know what well-being is. It’s not academic jargon,” she said. “When they hear about this, that can spark really interesting conversations.”

CIP’s work featured at September event

Information School Associate

Professor Emma Spiro (left) and Ph.D. candidate Sarah Nguyễn discuss their work at the Center for an Informed Public on Sept. 11 at Town Hall Seattle. The researchers discussed rumors, mis- and disinformation, and election integrity before a crowd of about 300. They were joined by Kate Starbird, CIP outgoing director and professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering; and NPR correspondent Shannon Bond. Spiro took the helm as faculty director of the center this fall.

Toward a fairer AI

Caliskan receives NSF award to measure biases in AI systems and assess their impact

BY MICHELLE DUNLOP

Imagine losing out on your dream job due to bias in AI tools used in the resume screening process or having your health care compromised for the same reason. Those are the disturbing scenarios that Aylin Caliskan, an assistant professor in the iSchool, is dedicated to thwarting. Caliskan was recently awarded a $603,342 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award for her project titled, “The Impact of Associations and Biases in Generative AI on Society.” She is planning to develop computational methods to measure biases in generative artificial intelligence systems and their impact on humans and society. Caliskan says her goal is reducing bias in

AI and human-AI collaboration.

“Hopefully, in the long term, we will be able to raise awareness and provide tools to reduce the harmful consequences of bias,” said Caliskan, who became a co-director of the UW Tech Policy Lab earlier this year. Her research in computer science and artificial intelligence will also provide empirical evidence for tech policy.

Caliskan noted that AI is used in a variety of places that many people don’t realize. Companies often use AI to screen job applications; some colleges use it to screen student applications; and health-care providers use AI in reviewing patient data.

But because AI is trained on data produced by humans, it learns biases similar to those found in society. Women and people of different ethnicities are

more frequently discriminated against in AI than white males, Caliskan said. She cited an example from health care, where African American patients may receive less effective or lower-cost medications when prescribed through AI than patients of European descent.

Caliskan’s work was among the first to develop methods to detect and quantify bias in AI. One of the difficulties she faces is that AI doesn’t work or “think” exactly like humans, despite being developed by them. However, AI is being used on a large scale and is helping to shape society.

Another challenge for Caliskan is that not all AI is the same. Many companies have their own proprietary AI systems that they may or may not be willing to allow researchers like Caliskan to study.

One of the keys to reducing bias in AI is understanding the mechanisms of bias and where the bias originated, she said. Some bias is cultural, societal or historical. Figuring out what is “fair” in a specific context and task isn’t trivial.

“There are many fairness notions,” Caliskan said. “We don’t have simple, straightforward answers to these complex open questions.”

Since coming to the UW, Caliskan has been invited to speak at AI-related events at Stanford University, Howard University, the Santa Fe Institute, and the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence. Her paper rigorously showing that AI reflects cultural stereotypes was published in Science magazine.

Caliskan’s NSF grant will last for five years, but she doesn’t see her work on the subject ending then. Late last year, she was awarded a $1,043,249 grant from NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, for a similar project, “HumanAI Bias Interaction in Decision Making.”

“I see this research going on my entire life,” she said. “Since bias cannot be entirely eliminated, this is a lifelong problem.”

However, Caliskan believes that identifying, measuring and reducing bias can help align AI with societal values and raise awareness.

“I don’t think eliminating bias entirely in AI or people is possible,” she said, but “when we know we are biased, we adjust our behavior.”

Research updates

Professor Amy J. Ko is the co-director of the newly launched Center for Learning, Computing and Imagination The center will work to close the computing education gap in Washington, where only 8 4 percent of high school students took a computer science class last year, according to state data The center will foster collaboration among faculty, students, K-12 educators, policymakers and industry

Associate Professor Marika Cifor was awarded a $850,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to develop a community archives internship program that will fund 15 iSchool MLIS students over the next five years The students will work at Densho, Community Archives Center for Tacoma, National Pinoy Archives, Black Panther Party Digital Newspaper Archives, and Khmer Community of King County

Ph.D. student Megumi Kivuva co-led a study in which UW researchers taught a group of high schoolers to code using an approach called computational embroidery The team combined cultural research into various embroidery traditions — such as Mexican, Arab and Japanese — with a coding method that lets users encode embroidery patterns on a computer through an open-source coding language called Turtlestitch Their work earned a Best Paper Award at the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Associate Professor Hala Annabi released a new edition of her Neurodiversity@Work Playbook, adapted and updated for the federal employer landscape The “Federal Edition” walks hiring managers through U S government guidelines and policies as they develop more inclusive workplaces

The Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded more than $1 3 million

in grants to iSchool researchers working on five projects that build on scholarship in libraries and museums and support their roles in communities Among them is a $326,495 award for a two-year project led by Associate Professor Jason Yip supporting youth ages 10-15 in digital civic engagement The research team will co-design a flexible tabletop role-playing game with librarians and youth for democratic digital learning in libraries

Associate Professor Miranda Belarde-Lewis was an invited curator at the exhibition opening of “Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight” at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art This was the fifth installation of the exhibition on a national tour

The iStartup Lab, co-founded by Information School faculty members Mike Teodorescu and Jeremy Zaretzky, has awarded its first micro grants under a new program designed to support student entrepreneurship The program offers $500 to student teams to assist with the initial costs of starting a business, such as forming a corporation, purchasing domains and web hosting The grants are funded by gifts from iSchool donors

Ph.D. candidate Tessa Campbell was a commentator in a documentary film about missing and murdered Indigenous women titled “Missing from Fire Trail Road,” which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival In the film, Campbell shares the archival history of Native American Boarding Schools

Associate Teaching Professor Heather Whiteman was the lead and co-panelist for the panel “The Future of Humans & Machines — The Economy, Human Well-Being & The World” at Ai4, one of the world’s largest professional conferences dedicated to AI

Marika Cifor

Amy J. Ko

Hala Annabi

Megumi Kivuva

Jason Yip

Tessa Campbell

Miranda Belarde-Lewis

Heather Whiteman

Teens on Instagram mostly feel bored, researchers find

Social media harassment and bullying rightly get a lot of attention as threats to young people’s mental health, but iSchool researchers found something more insidious: boredom

Research led by iSchool Ph D student Rotem Landesman found that while some teens experience negative feelings when using Instagram, boredom is the dominant feeling They open the app because they’re bored Then they sift through largely irrelevant content, mostly feeling bored Then, eventually bored with what researchers call a “content soup,” they log off

The study tracked the experiences of 25 U S teens moment by moment as they used the app The researchers used their results to make a few design recommendations, including prompts to cue reflection while using the app or features that clarify and simplify how users can curate their feeds

School year starts off in style

Rather than welcoming students with the traditional round of formal speeches, the iSchool started the 2024 school year with a celebration Incoming students had a chance to mingle with faculty and staff and learn about how to get involved in student groups at the inaugural iCarnival on Sept 16 They also scored food and swag, spun the big wheel for prizes, and flashed their smiles in the photo booth

Alexia Lozano illustration

MLIS team documents impacts of censorship on youth

Books Unbanned is a wildly popular initiative that offers any teenager or young adult in the U S a library card granting free access to libraries’ digital collections The program, which now includes the Seattle Public Library, originated at the Brooklyn Public Library, where Amy Mikel, MLIS ’12, is director of customer experience When going through young people’s applications, she found so many compelling stories about the effects of censorship that she had to find a way to share them . She turned to a team of iSchool MLIS students . For their Capstone project, Marissa Fischer, Meghan Foulk, Danette Jasper and Jessica Roellig combed through 855 of the nearly 10,000 submissions and found that even before recent censorship campaigns, young people did not have equitable access to the books that matter to them Their report, called “In Their Own Words: Youth Voices on Books Unbanned,” received widespread media exposure and helped draw attention to the program

Informatics students investigate options for AI therapy chatbot

Thirteen Informatics students were among more than 1,200 from across the UW who took part in the annual Undergraduate Research Symposium in May One of the sessions included a poster presentation by firstyear Informatics student Isabel Amaya and her group titled “iCare — A More Accessible Solution to Mental Health ” Amaya and her research group examined user comfort and challenges with the development of artificial intelligence therapists They hope to create a live chatbot application that can understand mental health issues and provide relevant advice and suggestions to the user

Trio part of the Husky 100

The iSchool was once again well-represented in the Husky 100, with three students on the UW’s annual list celebrating those who have demonstrated excellence both inside and outside the classroom by showing a commitment to leadership, engagement and community impact This year’s award recipients include continuing Informatics student Thomas Emnetu (top right); JP Lopez Garcia, Informatics, ’24 (center); and Adrian Lavergne, MSIM ’24 (bottom)

Martin a judge for Kirkus Prize

Professor Michelle H Martin is one of two jurors for this year’s Kirkus Prize in young readers’ literature This rare honor includes reading the finalists, judging them on their merits, and attending the awards ceremony in New York City in October The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Martin said “I feel very honored ” She is the iSchool’s Beverly Cleary Professor for Children and Youth Services

BALANCING ACT

iSchool student-athletes put in long hours and

a lot of

STORY BY SAMANTHA HERNDON

BY UW ATHLETICS

When you cross the bridge from the main campus of the University of Washington to the athletic complex east of Montlake Boulevard, you can enter a different world. Past the lush leaves that flank the Burke-Gilman trail, the arched stone walkway known affectionately as the Hec Ed Bridge takes student-athletes from the academic portion of their day to the part focused on achieving in their sport.

iSchool student-athletes and alumni describe it as a gauntlet of academic work and athletic competitions. They will all tell you that combining iSchool studies with high-

performance sports requires balance, focus and excellent calendar management — and that the endeavor is worthwhile.

Gymnast Taylor Russon recently completed her Informatics degree, and is now pursuing a Master of Science in Information Management degree as well. She said that the Informatics program’s focus on project-based work over exams and flexibility was helpful to balance her schedule.

“There were so many options within Informatics,” Russon said. “It really sets you up to go in any direction within the tech world.”

Going to bed early and sticking to a specific routine helps Russon stay on top of training

PHOTOS

of focus to excel in their classes as well as their sports

and assignments. “I make sure that I’m getting everything done ahead of time, so that when I’m at practice I don’t have to stress about school,” she said.

That focus pays off. This past spring, Russon helped lead UW Gymnastics to one of their best floor scores in program history. She also completed her senior year as a Women’s Collegiate Gymnastics Association Scholastic All-American.

Tennis player Nedim Suko, Informatics ’25, spoke from Tunisia, where he spent the summer playing in the international Futures Tournament. To juggle sports and school, he prioritizes going

to office hours and being present for group projects, and he shares the travel letter that includes the dates he will need to miss class for away games early on in the academic quarter.

“It’s important to me to build good relationships with the professors and teaching assistants,” Suko said.

Having a supportive community of fellow athletes helps, he said.

“We’re really lucky at UW – our athlete community is really tight,” Suko said. Everyone kind of knows each other, and it’s super nice, because people will come and support your matches, who play completely different sports.”

ABOVE, FROM LEFT: Basketball player Emma Grothaus (MSIM ‘24); gymnast Taylor Russon (Informatics ’24, MSIM), and tennis player Nedim Suko (Informatics ‘25).

Basketball player Emma Grothaus, MSIM ’24, saw dual benefits in continuing her education with a graduate degree as well as additional time to play her sport.

“The goal is to be efficient with our time when we’re on the court,” Grothaus said. Team practices can be flexible around class time, but players make up weightlifting sessions on their own time.

Her competitive approach enhanced her academics; Grothaus and her Capstone team earned an IDEAS Award for their project optimizing equity-centered work environments, on which they worked with faculty member Sara Sanford.

“The iSchool is great, because the professors are really understanding and they were interested in what I was doing on the court. It was great to be supported by them and by my coaching staff,” she said.

PART OF THE CLUB

While many student-athletes play for UW Athletics teams, other iSchool students compete

in Registered Student Organization (RSO)-based sports and activities. One of them, current Informatics student Lydia Sorbo, is part of the UW figure skating team, which travels to compete against universities nationwide.

Sorbo enjoys her team’s approach, welcoming everyone from Olympic hopefuls to skaters who are newer to the sport. “It’s really open and inclusive to all skill levels and experiences,” she said.

Taiga Hijikata, ’24, who played on the UW men’s club soccer team, said his sport was a good outlet for him, with evening practices that allowed him to prioritize his studies in Informatics and other on-campus involvement. Club sport players take a leadership role in managing their sports’ games, publicity and travels. Hijikata said he has learned skills that will help him as he pursues a career in data science, AI and project management.

“I hope club sports can be more recognized,” he said. “I was able to play with really talented, athletic, ambitious soccer players at UW.”

Some iSchool athletes have more than the usual uniform gear. Ryan Fournier, an Informatics minor who graduated in spring, worked as a Harry

the Husky mascot as well as a Dubs wrangler for UW Athletics. The role requires a variety of skills, and a level of dedication on par with other UW sports. Portraying Harry led to opportunities to help represent the university at the 2024 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans and the championship game in Houston.

“What you put into something is what you get out,” Fournier said. “Being Harry for so long, I put in so much work in the beginning, and it honestly paid off. I’ve had experiences I would never trade.”

PRIORITIZING MENTAL HEALTH

Student-athletes deal with challenging, stressful situations that can put a strain on their mental health.

“It’s a hard topic, so intricate,” Grothaus said. “There are many different ways student-athletes can have struggles with mental health, whether it’s being away from home, performance anxiety,” and other reasons.

Suko said he has seen how the day-to-day stress can weigh on athletes who are under pressure to perform in their sport as well as their classes.

“There’s stress there. There’s anxiety,” he said. “And then on the weekends when you have games and stuff, not only are you thinking about getting homework assignments done, but you’ve got to basically put up results in your sport as well.”

Mental-health resources for athletes have expanded in recent years at the UW and beyond. Sports psychologists are available to NCAA student-athletes, and time off is allowed for therapy, whether mental or physical.

Suko points to therapists as one of several helpful resources. “I feel like the UW in general has been doing a much better job of promoting that there is help for any mental health issues. There are a lot of resources that you can access and a lot of people you can talk to,” he said.

Athletes like Sorbo in club sports face challenges balancing the load as well, but do not have the same level of access. “It can be stressful trying to compete, and to complete all your assignments at the same time,” she said. “It would be nice to have directed resources regarding mental health for RSO sports.”

NEW HORIZONS

Student-athletes have to deal with new challenges this year with the move to the Big Ten athletic conference, a seismic shift for the UW. Continuing iSchool athletes are optimistic about the change.

“I’m so excited,” Russon said, noting that though she loved the Pac-12, the opportunity to compete against a wider variety of schools will be good for competition.

Grothaus said that for student-athletes, having less time at your home base can be hard. “How you travel is important, so I think more emphasis will be put on preparation, recovery and academics on the road,” she said.

After their collegiate careers have ended, some athletes find ways to stay with their sport. Hijikata joined the semi-professional soccer team Bellevue Athletic FC. His new team placed first in its league and recently competed in the U.S. Open Cup.

Some parlay their passion for athletics into a career. Fournier now works for the Seattle Storm and the Seattle Mariners. Grothaus has fielded job offers and noted that her experiences in athletics helped her to become better at networking.

Their time as Huskies is fleeting, but athletes said the friendships they make are one of the lasting and enjoyable benefits of their time suiting up in purple and gold.

“It’s a really uplifting environment,” Sorbo said of her time on the figure skating team, calling it “a huge part of my college experience.”

“It’s fun to have the competition, and all the friends and team bonding,” she said.

“What you put into something is what you get out. Being Harry for so long, I put in so much work in the beginning, and it honestly paid off. I’ve had experiences I would never trade.”

Ryan Fournier (Informatics minor, ‘24, shown at left), who worked as both a Harry the Husky mascot and as a Dubs wrangler for UW Athletics. (Photos courtesy of Fournier)

STORY BY JIM DAVIS

THE LIMIT OF SUCCESS

Student and business demand for Informatics skills is off the charts.

State and industry support for the program isn’t keeping pace.

The phone buzzed the same moment the email arrived last spring. Vikram Puri answered the call first.

Puri had landed a prized summer internship in software development at SanMar, an Issaquah-based company that is the largest supplier of wholesale imprintable clothing in the U.S.

Then, Puri opened the email from the Information School. He received his second — and final — rejection from the Informatics program, a major that he had set his heart on since arriving at the UW.

Above, an Informatics student works with high schoolers during the 2024 Hack for Social Good. The event is among the iSchool‘s efforts to increase diversity in the Informatics program by raising awareness of it in high schools and encouraging students to apply for direct-to-major admission.

“It was so bittersweet,” Puri said. “Knowing that I can’t apply again just leaves you defeated. Like you can’t do anything about it. I feel like getting an internship should be harder than getting into a major.”

Informatics is one of the most competitive programs on campus. Fewer than one in three students who apply for the undergraduate program are accepted due to space limitations. Hundreds of students who would succeed in

the program and later in their careers are left on the outside, leaving students as well as faculty frustrated.

In academic year 2023-24, the Informatics program received 680 applications from freshmen, or first-year direct to major, but was able to accept only 191 students, or 28 percent. The program also received 1,176 applications from current UW students as well as transfer students. Just 360 of those applications were accepted, or 30 percent.

Rayyan T. Cunningham was among the fortunate ones. She dropped out of high school in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, struggling to learn with the transition to online-only courses.

“I was only a sophomore,” Cunningham said. “I was like 15 years old. I’m like, ‘Oh my God, my world’s crashing.’ But I knew that I wanted to pursue higher education.”

She put herself back on track, heading to Renton Technical College to finish her high school equivalency diploma, then to Green River College in Kent for college prerequisites and finally to the UW in winter quarter 2023.

The stress had only begun. She spent months writing and rewriting her essay with hopes of getting into the Informatics program. She was accepted on her first attempt in fall 2023, but those months were filled with anxiety.

“I had to contain my excitement (about being at the UW) — I had to remind myself this isn’t it,” Cunningham said. “You’re still not in a major. It’s like you’re on a life raft, but it’s gonna deflate soon. You have to get on the real boat.”

GROWING DEMAND

Informatics is the study of inventing ways of combining technology, data and people to solve problems. There’s good reason why so many people want to enroll in the program.

People with an Informatics degree can pursue a host of in-demand careers, from software development to product management to cybersecurity. The tech industry employs nearly 360,000 people working directly for tech companies or in technology roles at other companies, according to the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA).

The trade association expects Washington state to add more than 15,000 tech jobs this year, a 4.2 percent increase. The estimated salary for tech workers in Washington was $129,618 in 2022, 139 percent higher than the state median wage.

Demand is so high that Microsoft and Amazon both boosted salaries two years ago. Microsoft increased meritbased pay for employees and middle managers, while Amazon more than doubled the base cap for corporate and tech employees from $160,000 to $350,000, according to Geekwire. “I think students are right to see all of that demand in the labor market and to see all of those high salaries and to say, ‘Maybe I’ll do that,’” said Amy J. Ko, an iSchool professor, associate dean for academics and former Informatics chair.

It’s also an exciting time to work in the tech industry, especially as artificial intelligence reshapes everyday life, said Jaime Teevan, chief scientist and technical fellow

UNMET DEMAND FOR INFORMATICS

Number of applications to the program

Number of accepted students who enrolled

at Microsoft. “AI is going to transform how we work, and people are going to shape the way AI evolves,” Teevan said. “The iSchool’s Informatics program is critical for companies like Microsoft. Now more than ever, tech companies are looking for graduates who can think like a scientist and build with humans at the center of technology.”

Jenny Abdo was in the first cohort of students in the Informatics program. She was casting about for a major when she read about Informatics in The Daily. She felt it would be a good fit. She’s now a senior leader at Amazon’s generative AI go-to-market program.

From her perspective, the iSchool offered both handson independent work and collaborative projects that build vital teamwork skills. “If you want to be a software developer, computer science is probably the right choice,” said Abdo, who earned a B.S. in 2002. “But there’s so many other career options that you just don’t know about or think about when you’re an undergrad that this could prepare students for. It’s helped to make me into a Swiss Army knife.”

Washington’s six public universities aim to meet industry need. For instance, 88 percent of Informatics graduates went to their first job in Washington, while just 11 percent went out of state and 1 percent left for international jobs, according to an iSchool survey of 2022 graduates.

It’s not enough, Ko said. The Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering produces about 600 undergraduates each year, the iSchool about another 400,

and programs at other institutions produce even fewer.

“Most of the people that are taking those jobs right now in our region are coming from elsewhere in the country and elsewhere in the world,” Ko said.

ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY

Informatics is among many majors at the UW that are “capacity-constrained,” meaning that admission is not guaranteed. Students must apply. The reason is the university doesn’t have either faculty or classroom space to handle demand.

When it was founded in 2000, the Informatics program accepted 35 students. In 2023, the program accepted 453 students. While that’s sizable growth, the number of people applying to the major has far outpaced the number of available seats. In the first year, 87 students applied, compared to 1,856 applicants last year, an increase of 2,033 percent.

The iSchool is the only school or college on campus that doesn’t have its own building. Instead, the iSchool’s 75 faculty members share office and classroom space in five buildings spread across campus, including in windowless basement offices of the forestry building and the UW Tower, a long walk from campus.

“It’s actually been a huge part of our retention challenges, too,” Ko said. “The faculty here feel like they just barely have the resources they need to survive in contrast to the elite schools.”

Ko helped build the model for growth for the Informatics program when she chaired the program from 2017-2023. She thinks the program has reached the limits of what it can do with its current resources.

“I think that answer is almost certainly a combination of state and industry support,” Ko said. “At the moment, neither of them have stood up and said that it is their responsibility.”

MUSICAL CHAIRS

The iSchool is doing its best to handle the overwhelming demand. Five years ago, the school started accepting direct-to-major students who are accepted as first-year students into the university and the major at the same time.

In the last year and a half, the iSchool instituted a policy to allow applicants only two attempts at getting into the Informatics program. Administrators found students were jeopardizing financial aid and academic careers when they

INFORMATICS SNAPSHOT

23% of Informatics students are Pell-eligible

29% of Informatics students are first-generation college students

“The faculty here feel like they just barely have the resources they need to survive in contrast to the elite schools.”

Amy J. Ko, iSchool associate dean for academics and former Informatics chair

repeatedly applied to the packed program.

Most of the students who apply to the iSchool are from Washington state. Last academic year, 53.2 percent of all iSchool enrolled students were Washington state residents. For the Informatics program, this rose to 67.8 percent.

Faculty members as well as student reviewers comb through the applications, reading all the essays, which are weighted more heavily than grades. The reviewers look for “concrete examples of why they want to be here and what they have done in their past and what they’re looking forward to in their future,” said Christine Noyes-Williams, the iSchool’s associate director of admissions.

“It’s draining to know that there are students who are well-qualified, who would succeed in your program, and you just you don’t have capacity,” Noyes-Williams said.

Admission has been so competitive that students seek any edge. The iSchool found that students, for instance, created a black market registering for Informatics prerequisite classes and then selling the spots for as much as $800 on Reddit, a violation of university policy.

A couple of well-known influencers — one a current student and another an alum — offer online tips and meetups to help with applying and writing essays.

“We have quite a few students who have entrepreneurial spirits, so I was not surprised at all to see them take a next-level approach,” Noyes-Williams said. “College prep coaches have existed for high-income families for years and years; I don’t see it as anything particularly different.”

Where 2022 grads reported going in their first jobs: Washington Out of state International

Where students enrolled in 2023-24 came from: Washington Out of state International

DIVERSE WORKFORCE

It’s no secret that the technology industry tends to be white and male. The tech industry in Washington is even more so than the U.S. overall. Just one out of four Washington tech workers are women, while half of the overall workforce is women, according to CompTIA.

Just 3 percent of all tech workers in the state are Black and just 5 percent are Hispanic or Latino. Overall, the state’s workforce is 5 percent Black and 12 percent Latino.

The iSchool has made strides in narrowing this. Federal and state laws prevent the university from basing admission on race, gender, ethnicity or other demographic factors. But Noyes-Williams reviews demographic details after every admissions period to see how the current Informatics program measures against the state’s K-12 enrollment.

“What are we doing intentionally in outreach is to make them aware of the option and see themselves as UW students and as Informatics students,” Noyes-Williams said.

One of the iSchool’s big wins in the area occurred in the past year when the Informatics program reached gender parity. In 2023-24, the Informatics program had 52 percent female students compared to 39 percent five years ago.

And 6.7 percent of Informatics students are Black, double the percentage of the state’s current tech workforce and higher than the K-12 population of 4.6 percent. There are still areas for improvement. Hispanics or Latinos account for 25.2 percent of the state’s K-12 population, but just 3.7 percent of Informatics students.

There’s a problem with homogenous groups designing technology. They tend to design it for themselves.

“It is just very clear in research and in practice that people tend to solve the problems that they see,” Ko said. “And then it’s very hard for them to get them to solve the broad diversity of problems in the world.”

HEARTBREAKING DECISIONS

Nijeer Parks spent 11 days in jail in New Jersey in 2021 for aggravated assault, unlawful possession of weapons, resisting arrest and other charges. He didn’t understand why until after he was released.

Parks, a Black man, was misidentified by facial recognition software. While this technology has become increasingly accurate, research shows that it is drastically prone to error

when trying to match faces of darker-skinned people.

Cunningham pointed to this case as one the reasons she wants to get into the tech industry. She would like to bring a perspective of a woman of color to government policy around technology.

Since she joined the Informatics program, she’s also worked to help others get accepted into the program by reviewing prospective students’ essays prior to applying, posting tips on social media, as well as holding a position with the Women in Informatics student group, which hosts essay review sessions.

As she pursues her Bachelor of Science in Informatics, Cunningham calls it heartbreaking to see so many of her friends get rejected. “I understand the point of it being capacity-constrained,” she said. “We went to UW for a reason. This is what we signed up for, but I wish that the undergrad process had more equity within it.”

Puri, the student who received his final rejection from Informatics last spring, started at the UW in 2023 initially with the goal of attending the Allen School. Like Cunningham, he was a community college transfer, attending Bellevue College for a single year. He enjoyed software coding and knew he wanted to work in the tech industry.

But Puri learned about the iSchool from one of the social media influencers and fell in love with the school, pointing to the collaborative nature of the students and how everyone in the program was supportive. His parents wanted him to attend the Allen School, but once he showed them details on the Informatics program, they, too, were convinced.

When he was rejected the first time, he was with a group of iSchool students, and they comforted him. After his final rejection, Puri frets about what he wrote in his essay. He felt that he had a comfortable upbringing and didn’t want to be dishonest. Maybe he didn’t have enough stories of overcoming obstacles.

He still wants a job in the tech industry and is looking at options such as a statistics data science program. He doesn’t regret his time attempting to get into the iSchool.

“Every single person that I’ve met in Informatics tends to be extremely kind, extremely outgoing and just thoughtful and willing to help,” Puri said. “I wanted to be around these types of people who are willing to work together to raise everyone up.”

Informatics students in 2023-24 were women

DATA THAT COUNTS

University of Maryland Professor Eun Kyoung Choe (Ph.D. ‘14) designs health-tracking tools tailored to the needs and interests of people who are often overlooked

More than a third of Americans now use health-care apps and wearable devices, tracking everything from walking steps, heart rates, caloric intake and running speeds to daily moods, hourly medications and monthly fertility cycles. For users with disabilities — the blind person who cannot read a touchscreen at the gym or the older person whose slow gait is inaccurately recorded on a wearable device — the tracking tools can be a frustrating mismatch.

The dean of her college, professor Keith Ansel Marzullo, recruited Choe in 2017 and has watched her continue to break ground in the rapidly evolving health-care tracking field since. “She has become one of the intellectual leaders in this important and dynamic area,” Marzullo says.

STORY BY MARY LYNN LYKE

PHOTOS COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE OF INFORMATION

This year’s UW iSchool Distinguished Alumni Award honoree, Eun Kyoung Choe (Ph.D. ’14), is taking on these challenges, helping to design intelligent healthtracking tools that are more relevant and accessible to marginalized populations. “If we keep creating technology that is not accessible to all, we are only going to widen the health disparity gap that already exists in this country,” says Choe, a tenured associate professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information.

Choe, whose work has been funded by such distinguished institutions as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and Microsoft Research, has a long list of best paper awards and honors, including a prestigious NSF CAREER award. She received a bachelor’s degree in industrial design at the Korea Advanced Institute of

“I think being able to count and measure things is a very powerful skill that humans have. My research goes beyond the counting to connecting the numbers, making meaning out of the data so that people can reflect on themselves and set personally meaningful health goals.”

Science and Technology and a master’s degree in information management and systems from the University of California, Berkeley, before coming to the UW iSchool in 2008, drawn by what she describes as the UW’s “small but very vibrant and active” human-computer interaction community.

It was her own unhealthy sleep habits during that time that triggered her interest in tracking. As a graduate student at the UW iSchool, her sleep schedule fluctuated significantly and she often went to bed at irregular times. “I thought it was normal for work to drive my sleep,” she says. “Then I learned about sleep hygiene and realized having a consistent sleep schedule is really important for your overall health.”

She knew she had to change her sleep behavior, but how? “To do it, I had to understand my current sleep behavior, which required tracking. And that’s how all these things got started.”

Her early interest in tracking led to her research on the Quantified Self movement, which supports a global community of networked trackers whose motto is “Self Knowledge Through Numbers.” The devoted Q-Selfers Choe studied tracked such things as work productivity, body fat, panic attacks, blood glucose, smoking, snoring, allergic reactions, movie consumption, even the daily occurrence of puns. One took self-portraits every day for a year to check daily mood; another studied whether eating butter could increase cognition. Some built their own devices for tracking.

“I think being able to count and measure things is a very powerful skill that humans have,” Choe says. “My research goes beyond the counting to connecting the numbers, making meaning out of the data so that people can reflect on themselves and set personally meaningful health goals.”

The Q-Selfers she studied tended to be young, healthy, tech-savvy and able to afford pricey new tracking gear. “I didn’t

question any of that at first,” Choe says. “But over time I realized that those who could benefit most from health tracking are often the less healthy individuals and they have tended be marginalized from mainstream technologies.”

Choe decided to turn her research lens on these underresearched and typically overlooked populations. One focus was older adults, whose slower movements are significantly underreported in common tracking tools. “Older adults might walk slowly, or they may have different gait characteristics, or use a cane, a wheelchair, a walker. Existing technology is not attuned to track these different types of walking,” she says.

Nor does existing technology accurately reflect the lifestyle activities many older people care about, research showed. In a weeklong survey of adults ages 61-90, Choe and her team used a speech-based, easy-to-use Android Wear app they created called MyMove that allowed participants to verbally report their daily activities. Participants registered meaningful activities as not only biking, walking and swimming, but gardening, housework, hobbies, going up and down stairs, even moving room to room, making a cup of tea or pushing a grocery cart at the store.

“Older adults care a lot about health-related activities but the nuance of the activities is different than what you expect from younger people. While a young person may consider the more steps the better, an older person’s goal might be to not overexert themselves,” says Choe, whose team is using findings to finetune new tools for older adults.

Choe incorporates a wide range of voices in creating more equitable health-tracking designs. “I love her co-design and ability-based design approach, where technology is genuinely co-created and inspired by, with, and for the people who need it,” says Choe’s research partner JooYoung Seo, assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s School of Information Sciences. Choe initially brought Seo on board to collaborate on research in health-tracking challenges faced by blind and low-vision populations.

“I love her co-design and ability-based design approach, where technology is genuinely co-created and inspired by, with, and for the people who need it.”

JooYoung Seo, assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s School of Information Sciences and Choe’s research partner

Choe describes existing health and fitness technologies as heavily “vision-centric.” She points to treadmills that display workout data on a screen that visually impaired users can’t read. Some participants in her study worked around that problem by using external technologies compatible with a screen reader that reads text aloud. Such workarounds can be valuable for designers and researchers, says Choe. “The workarounds give us a lot of insight into what is not working in the existing technology and we can learn what might be possible by piecing out their approach.”

Stroke victims are another focus of her study. They often experience upper-limb muscle weakness or paralysis on one side of their bodies and need intense physical therapy to retain function in the affected arm. In collaboration with researchers at UMass Amherst, Harvard University and the manufacturing firm FormSense, she helped develop a finger-worn ring with sensors that monitors upper limb activity and gives users helpful feedback.

She’s now looking at how best to optimize that feedback.

“Some stroke victims may face difficulties with thinking, memory or perception, so it’s important to design representations of data that are accessible and understandable in a way that accommodates their abilities,” says Choe, who envisions a future where advanced health-tracking systems can be tailored to meet unique abilities and needs of individuals.

Choe came to the UW iSchool in 2008 as a self-described non-trained, naïve student and was transformed into a career researcher by her professors, including mentors Wanda Pratt, iSchool professor, and Julie A. Kientz, professor and chair of the UW’s Human-Centered Design and Engineering department. “She was my first Ph.D. student graduate and it has been thrilling to see how her career has flourished over the years,” says Kientz, who nominated Choe for this year’s Distinguished Alumni award.

Choe still remembers the words Kientz told her as she wrapped up her iSchool graduate studies. “Julie said: ‘You’ve become an independent researcher, now go out and train other people.’”

That is exactly what Choe has done, sharing her knowledge and skills with new cohorts of researchers. The proudest

moment of her career, she says, was the day her own first Ph.D. student graduated. The student’s name is Yuhan Luo and she is now an assistant professor in computer science at City University of Hong Kong.

Working with Choe was one of the most valuable experiences in her life, says Luo. “She taught me how to conduct research with high standards of honesty, thoroughness and rigor, eventually helping me grow into an independent researcher. She also equipped me with the confidence to foster a supportive and rigorous research environment for my own students.”

One valuable lesson passed along from the iSchool has been fundamental in Choe’s teaching: the need for researchers to be open-minded and open to change. She was, and she ended up unexpectedly writing a dissertation on sleep-monitoring, something she’d never thought she would do.

“If graduate students come to a school and focus exclusively on one research idea, they may be missing out,” Choe says. “The students are getting important input from their classes and their professors and if they don’t change from that whole process, then what is the point? They are meant to be changed.”

Eun Kyoung Choe (right) collaborates with University of Maryland colleagues Hernisa Kacorri (left) and Amanda Lazar.

moving mountains

In her role at the Gates Foundation, Ashley Farley (MLIS ’17) pushes for reforms in academic publishing, an industry notoriously resistant to change

STORY BY KAYLA POHL ● PHOTO BY DOUG PARRY

At her desk and in the gym, Ashley Farley is drawn to difficulty. She tackles intractable problems within the academic publishing industry in her role at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and her favorite weightlifting move is the notoriously technical and humbling snatch.

In both pursuits, progress is incremental. “I love the challenge of the snatch,” she said. “If you improve your lift by, maybe, one pound a year, you’re excited.”

This mindset drives Farley’s work at the Gates Foundation, where she advocates for accessible and freely disseminated scholarship. As senior officer of knowledge and research services, Farley crafts policies and oversees their implementation, and she also leads communication and marketing strategies for open-access advocacy.

The academic publishing industry, however, is a labyrinth, said Helene Williams, iSchool teaching professor and Farley’s mentor. Fine print and patriarchal norms support steep profit margins of publishers like Elsevier as well as inequitable tenure processes at universities. This

system has been able to resist robust reform, she continued, because “librarians have been told that academic libraries aren’t here to make change, that we’re just here to serve students. But actually, the way to serve students and faculty is to make change.”

Farley, MLIS ’17, has been recognized for her trailblazing efforts to transform academic publishing and create a model for sustainable open access scholarship with this year’s Graduate of the Last Decade (GOLD) Award, which acknowledges recent iSchool graduates for significant contributions to information fields.

Disrupting the status quo in academic publishing is as much a moral imperative as it is a professional challenge for Farley. Early in her MLIS studies, she developed an interest in library acquisitions and subscriptions, especially in the financial dynamic of nonprofit libraries dealing with for-profit publishing entities. “I learned that there’s such a need to completely overhaul that system. It’s so blatantly a drain on our resources, time and energy. Knowledge should not be a commodity,” she said.

For-profit academic publishing relies on paywalls — gatekeepers of critical information — and squeezes academic library budgets with exorbitant fees to access journals. But the problem spans further than that, according to Farley. The traditional peer-reviewed system is in crisis in part because it relies on unpaid labor from academics. The writing is dense and jargon-heavy, alienating broader audiences who have a right to the information. Many of the most prestigious and expensive publications suffer from issues with reproducibility and article retractions.

The data is also not openly or readily available in the peer-review process. COVID-19 created an urgent need for health-care research and data to be shared widely and quickly. But “the traditional publishing system really couldn’t adapt well to needs during the pandemic,” Farley said, “and we have many other crises in the world that feel very similar to the pandemic.” Climate change, for instance, presents an urgent need for research and data to be accessible as well as quickly and broadly disseminated in a way that the current system could not support.

“This is all constraining what we could actually accomplish in how we communicate and reuse information, and I’d love to see us transcend that,” Farley said.

But she admits a complete overhaul of academic publishing is not likely to happen anytime soon. Even though nearly 50 percent of research papers published now are open-access, remnants of a print- and prestige-based system impede progress. Some journals charge hefty fees for removing paywalls, shutting out those who can’t afford to pay to make their work freely accessible, said Farley.

As of 2025, the Gates Foundation will no longer pay these article processing charges. Furthermore, Gates-funded research papers must be published as open-access preprints as quickly as possible, and the underlying data must be immediately accessible.

This kind of forward-thinking work wouldn’t be possible without her MLIS training, Farley said, which emphasized the power that a single voice can have in an

See Mountains, Page 40

Ashley Farley, at the bottom of a snatch at her gym in North Seattle.

Williams has worked tirelessly for students

BY MARY LYNN LYKE

iSchool Teaching Professor Helene Williams asks a lot of tough questions. Who, she challenges Master of Library and Information Science students, are libraries serving? Importantly, who are they not serving? What can libraries do differently to accommodate unheard and underrepresented voices? How can you, as a librarian-in-training, help move the needle?

“She is a warrior for social justice,” says former student Twanna Hodge (MLIS ‘15), a Ph.D. student in the College of Information at the University of Maryland. “She endlessly disrupts and dismantles the white, heteronormative, patriarchal society through her teaching and service.” Williams, who retires in December after a 40-year career in academic and public libraries and college classrooms, is esteemed by students for her fearlessness,

fair-mindedness, humor and dynamic student-focused classes that begin with the question: “What do you expect from this class?” Though she’s considered a hard grader, her classes are packed. She has received two iSchool TEACH (teaching excellence and creative honors) awards, as well as an Outstanding Service Award.

Her goal, she says, is for students to “learn to learn,” whether they are going into academic, public, corporate or school libraries. For many years, Williams was the only working librarian on the iSchool faculty. Deeply connected with partners in the library world, she has consistently brought real-world library experiences and trends into the classroom, keeping content fresh and relevant. Students may study actual contracts to learn how to negotiate a million-dollar deal with a journal vendor or practice ways to handle bookban protesters gathered outside library doors. “Our students have to understand

what it is like on the ground, to be able to leave the classroom and go to work and not sit in a corner thinking lofty thoughts.”

An all-hours teacher, she meets weekends and nights to accommodate the needs of students, for example single moms juggling work and school or online students in different time zones. “It’s an equity issue. Every student should have access to someone who can help them when they need it,” she says.

Williams, a first-generation college student, graduated with master’s degrees in both English (Purdue University) and library science (Indiana University). She landed at Harvard University Libraries in 2001 as an English bibliographer for the humanities. She found the system stodgy and out-of-date and set about changing that, working with a colleague to buy things Harvard had never had on its shelves, including language tapes, graphic novels, chick lit, sci-fi, and DVDs of popular TV series like “Dr. Who.” “The catalogers just freaked out,” she says, with the easy laugh that often finishes her sentences.

The charismatic teacher was an early adopter of technology. At the UW, teaching

See Williams, Page 42

Helene Williams (center) shares a laugh with alumni (from left) Erika Bailey, ’19; Arielle Rodriguez, ’23; and Alaina Bull, ’15 during a recent meetup at UW Tacoma. (Doug Parry photo)

Del Rosario made iSchool a place of welcome

Cynthia del Rosario, UW alum ’94, M.Ed. ’96, and longtime staff member for IDEAS (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access and Sovereignty), recently retired after more than 17 years at the iSchool. To honor her time with the iSchool, we invited community members to share reflections on how Cynthia affected their educational journeys:

Levy brought contemplative view of tech

David Levy came to the UW iSchool in 2000 with a radical idea: What would it mean to look at technology from a contemplative perspective?

“I’ve spent more than 20 years trying to answer that question,” says the computer scientist and meditator who first introduced contemplative practices into his iSchool classroom in 2006.

AELYSHA SHARMA, INFORMATICS: “As a newcomer to the Informatics program and a part of the iQueeries team, Cynthia provided me with the warmest welcome into the community and brought endless excitement and passion.”

HARKIRAN SALUJA, INFORMATICS: “I worked closely with Cynthia as WINFO’s [Women in Informatics] director of diversity. Cynthia always advocated for students and it is clear that she thoroughly enjoys working with them. Her involvement in the iSchool at the department and student levels is the reason why the iSchool and its diversity initiatives are where they are today.”

ANNA MARSHALL, MSIM, PH.D.: “I enjoyed working with Cynthia and was thrilled to receive an invitation from her to attend a hackathon with my high school students in 2023. My students, all of whom are first-generation and many of whom had not stepped foot on a college campus before the event, felt welcomed, energized and excited about Informatics and coding.”

LOMASH SHARMA, INFORMATICS: “She brought incredible energy, warmth and enthusiasm to every single interaction and all events. Thank you, Cynthia, for helping me feel like I belong at the iSchool.”

KENEKA GARRETT, MLIS: “The time I spent talking to Cynthia on my visit to Seattle and the iSchool is what ultimately led to my decision to enroll. Her warmth and encouragement were critical to my success as a student.”

NICOLA KALDERASH, INFORMATICS, MSIM: “She was an ally for me and a place to turn to during some of the more difficult moments of my life in college. I appreciated all our conversations and she assisted me in being an AIMS [Association of Information Management Students] DEI officer.”

KELLI YAKABU, MLIS: “I’m forever grateful for her guidance, warmth, and unwavering support during my MLIS program. Her enthusiasm and commitment to IDEAS continues to be a model for how I approach both my professional and personal life.”

LISA DIRKS, PH.D.: “Cynthia was instrumental in helping me navigate the Ph.D. application process. She provided advice on my application materials and connected me with people that were important to my program acceptance.”

NAOMI BISHOP, MLIS: “Through my two years of grad school, Cynthia was my sunshine. She made me feel welcome and accepted in the LIS program and helped me navigate challenges in the curriculum. She made every day a joy at UW.”

Levy’s writings and lectures reveal how this info-overloaded world has left us distracted, fragmented, with little time to think, struggling with what he once termed “popcorn brain” — a mind flinging thoughts in all directions. His book “Mindful Tech: How to Bring Balance to Our Digital Lives” (Yale University Press, 2016) is a practical guide to living a healthy, attentive life in our buzzing hightech world.

“I am concerned that we are making too small a world for ourselves. The wrong things are prioritized and we no longer claim space and time for being over doing,” he says.

Levy retired recently to the role of professor emeritus and moved back to the Bay Area. Asked what he is most proud of over his years at the UW, the answer is simple and telling. “I am proud that I’ve stayed true to the spirit of inquiry that emerged 30 years ago, and that I have continued to cultivate it with and for others.”

Read more at ischool.uw.edu/david-levy

David Levy

‘free read freely’ people

‘Warrior librarian’ Tracie D. Hall joins the iSchool faculty

STORY BY KRISTIN BAIRD RATTINI, UW MAGAZINE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOUG PARRY

The star power at the Time100 Gala in New York City last October rivaled the bright lights of nearby Broadway. Luminaries from director Steven Spielberg to actor Angela Bassett to rapper Doja Cat took center stage at the magazine’s glittering annual celebration of the 100 most influential people in the world. The spotlight shifted from glamour to grit when honoree Tracie D. Hall, ’00, took the microphone. The widely acclaimed “warrior librarian” had earned national attention for her tenacious fight against censorship during her tenure as executive director of the American Library Association. In her toast, she honored her fellow librarians, her fellow warriors, who “despite bomb threats and threats of jail time are fighting to ensure that these words that stand as a vision of the American Library Association will always ring true: Free people read freely. Free people read freely. Free people read freely.” As she closed her toast with a

fourth exhortation of those four powerful words, the A-List audience responded with a standing ovation.

Those four words remain Hall’s rallying cry as she continues her crusade defending libraries as the bulwark of democracy, vital for enhancing learning for all and instrumental for unleashing the intellectual and social potential of patrons, especially young ones. Her passion for working with young adults and for advancing her field has brought her back to the iSchool as a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence. In her courses and research, she is providing the next generation of librarians with the real-world context necessary to better serve an increasingly diverse public in the face of ever escalating challenges. “I hope I can be a source of the same kind of inspiration and learning that I experienced at the iSchool,” Hall says.

The power of libraries

Hall discovered the magic and power of libraries at the side of her grandmother, Bessie Marie Sanders-Scott,

who had a limited education while growing up in the rural South and was awed by all that libraries offered. The pair frequently walked together to their local Watts branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, where Hall occasionally crashed storytime for younger children by acting out the plot lines and found herself transported to far-off places in the books she read. “The library was a place where my grandmother encouraged me to roam free, to leap in and discover,” Hall recalls.

It was in one such far-off place that Hall first experienced the harsh impacts of censorship: at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, where she studied abroad as an exchange student at the University of California Santa Barbara. Due to tight government controls, Hall and her classmates in her African literature class had to search for their assigned books at Nairobi’s contraband market. Whoever found a book passed it around so everyone could write out chapters, like scribes.

“That’s where I really understood how dangerous censorship was, how it stifles potential, intellectual development and the lifeblood of democracy,” she said. “It contributed to my belief that intellectual freedom has to be the core of all education and the foundation of librarianship.”

After earning a master’s degree in international studies from Yale University, Hall returned to California to work in Santa Monica as a director of a shelter for unhoused youth. She introduced the shelter’s residents to the wide array of services and materials available at the local library branch, not just for reading pleasure but for educational advancement.

“I saw how welcoming the librarians were to our unhoused youth,” she says. “I saw them doing the same work as I was, but through books and reading. That spoke to my curiosity and has everything to do with why I went from just loving libraries to really setting a life goal to work in them.”

The iSchool ‘changed me’

When the shelter closed, Hall’s experience there positioned her perfectly for leading a youth outreach program for the Seattle Public Library. There, she was encouraged to consider applying to library school by visiting American Library Association staff member Satia Orange, who told Hall about the then-new Spectrum Scholarship Program, which recruits and provides scholarship to students from underrepresented groups to help them obtain a graduate

degree in library and information sciences and land leadership positions within the profession and ALA. Hall applied to the UW’s iSchool and graduated two years later with her master’s degree.

The iSchool “changed me,” she says. “I was elated my entire time there. Everything I learned felt new. I knew it wasn’t just conceptual. I could see how what I was learning could make a difference not only in my life but in the lives of the people I’d worked with previously, people in the neighborhood where I’d grown up.”

Hall thrived under the mentorship of the late Spencer Shaw, a beloved longtime professor of library science at the iSchool, a nationally recognized storyteller and advocate for children’s reading. “Having someone like Spencer Shaw as

“What speaks to me most in any job opportunity is the size and intensity of need. There has to be some sense of high stakes attached. … If the work to be done intimidates me a bit, I know it’s right.”

showcased artwork by local artists. She offered free computer courses six nights a week. She transformed the Albany branch from having some of the lowest visitation and circulation numbers in the library district into a showpiece where patrons would proudly bring visitors and politicians would kick off campaigns. In recognition of Hall’s achievements, in 2003 Hartford’s mayor declared Feb. 13 “Tracie Hall Day.” “I’d learned from librarians like Spencer Shaw, Anwar Ahmad and Satia Orange,” Hall said, “and I wanted to honor the precedent they’d set.”

Problem-solver

Hall was recommended for the executive director role at ALA, in part, because of her significant contributions from 2003 to 2006 as the association’s director of what’s now called the Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. Her co-authorship of “Diversity Counts,” ALA’s first racial and ethnic census of the profession, galvanized the library field. “It gave us the necessary data to do something about the gap between who worked in libraries and made decisions about library services and who used them,” she says.

To help close that demographic gap, she secured grants to permanently endow and expand the Spectrum Scholarship Program that had enabled her to attend the iSchool. The program has now supported more than 1,300 students nationwide. Hall also led the design of and secured the funding for the initial Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship, created to diversify the LIS professorate.

your visiting lecturer shows you the caliber of instruction at the iSchool,” Hall says. “It was like having Fred Astaire as your dance instructor.

“He set a high standard,” she continued. “The first area I worked in was young adult services, and I approached it with a sense of gravity and professionalism. Not just because children’s and young adult literature is what caught my own attention, but because Dr. Shaw had stressed the role children’s literature can play in the development of children’s intellectual and social development.”

Hall followed in Shaw’s footsteps after graduation by taking a position at the Hartford (Connecticut) Public Library, where Shaw had been the first-ever Black librarian hired and eventually manager of the same Albany branch that Hall took charge of. She fully embraced her title of community librarian by embedding herself in the library’s surrounding African American and Afro-Caribbean neighborhood to better understand and respond to residents’ informational needs. “I began to feel a personal responsibility for supporting every family, every resident, every student in our service area,” she says.

She launched free summer science and photography camps. She hosted poetry readings and talks by Caribbean authors including Rosay Guy and Edwidge Danticat. She

Hall’s career path during the 14 years between her two tenures at ALA drew on not only her formidable community building and librarianship skills but also her artistic interests as a poet, writer, artist and curator, and development as a sought-after organizational strategist. She worked in corporate social responsibility for Boeing, as vice president of strategic planning and organizational development at the Queens Library and as assistant dean of the LIS program at Dominican University. “To meet someone like Tracie who looks like me, was around my age and had an administrative role was so inspirational for me,” says Joslyn Bowing Dixon, a Dominican LIS graduate and library administrator for whom Hall remains a mentor. “It meant that I could do it, too.”

Hall also served as deputy commissioner for Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and as director of the culture program of the Joyce Foundation, a $1 billion philanthropy advancing racial equity in the arts as well as economic mobility in the Great Lakes region.

“What speaks to me most in any job opportunity is the size and intensity of need,” she says. “There has to be some sense of high stakes attached. The setting doesn’t matter to me. There’s not much difference, really. Government agencies, nonprofits and Fortune 500s are all run by people. It’s about the problem to be solved. If the work to be done intimidates me a bit, I know it’s right.”

Fighting dual epidemics

The stakes could not have been higher after Hall became the first Black woman to lead ALA and its 50,000 members since its inception in 1876. A mere month after she took office in February 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “It posed an existential threat not just to the association but to libraries in general,” Hall said. “Librarians were very much on the front lines. Even as libraries began to close, we couldn’t stop providing library services.” Librarians sprang into action to reduce the digital access divide that disproportionately affected patrons in disadvantaged communities.

Hall soon faced surges in an equally alarming threat: censorship. Starting in 2020, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom documented a precipitous rise in attempts to ban book titles in schools and public libraries, with books by LGBTQIA and BIPOC authors the predominant targets. In 2023, there were efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles, a 60% increase from the year before. In Florida alone, 2,672 titles were challenged in schools and libraries in 2023.

ALA responded by creating the Unite Against Book Bans campaign. “It’s a playbook for standing up against censorship, preserving our democracy and ensuring that policymakers and the public do not fall sway to that very

small, politicized minority that sees in book banning a way to wrestle some political ground or status for themselves,” Hall explains.

National organizations, from the Author’s Guild to the Human Rights Campaign to the American Federation of Teachers, joined the initiative. Hall became the resonant voice speaking out against censorship, rallying new recruits to the “Free People Read Freely” cause. “Tracie is one of the greatest spokespeople we’ve ever had in the library world,” says Chris Brown, commissioner of the Chicago Public Library. “She was able to reach out beyond our field and connect with Americans about the importance of libraries, of freedom of speech and our First Amendment rights.”

This fall, she’s continuing her ongoing research on the connections between censorship and low literacy, teaching information management and has introduced a course on the Black information future.

She’s invigorated by students’ spirit of potential. “Most of them are at a point where it’s all about potential and possibility,” she said. “They are willing to experiment. They haven’t ‘done it all before.’ Exploring, experimenting has been my entire approach to life, so I find working with students especially gratifying.”

Searches for meaning

Ben

Lee

uses computational tools to enable new kinds of digital access to collections in libraries, archives and museums

BY JESSI LOERCH

Benjamin Charles Germain Lee has a wide background of work — astrophysics, work with archives, machine learning, writing for popular magazines like The New Republic — and he is now bringing those skills and diverse research interests to his new role as an assistant professor at the iSchool, where he will launch the Lab for Computing Cultural Heritage.

The lab will adopt an interdisciplinary approach — one of Lee’s strengths — to work with libraries, archives and museums to address challenges facing digital access. The lab will bring together work on machine learning, data science and human computer interaction to support interdisciplinary research and

solve real-world problems.

“We’ll be looking at how to apply artificial intelligence or computational approaches to digital collections,” Lee said. “How do we understand the limitations? How can we be more critical? How can we understand the ethics of datafication, especially when working with archives with difficult histories?”

As Lee builds out the lab, he’ll be particularly interested in working with web archives, which are an increasingly important part of understanding our world.

“It’s a huge challenge of scale,” he said. “How do we manage petabytes of archive data and how do we search it effectively?”

He’s also looking at the role of artificial intelligence in public libraries and collaborating with the Digital Public

Library of America.

“Above all else, I hope that the Lab for Computing Cultural Heritage will help us to understand how digital approaches can be used to benefit patrons and those whose stories are contained within collections and exhibits — not in a performative way, but in a way that deeply engages with and advances the missions of these institutions,” Lee said.

Dan Weld, professor emeritus at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, was Lee’s Ph.D. advisor. He says that a wide set of interests and skills is one of Lee’s biggest strengths.

“He is extraordinarily talented and multifaceted,” Weld said. “A true polymath is what I wrote in his letter of recommendation. … He’s superb with algorithms and theory, but his heart is drawn to the social and informational sciences.”

Beginning winter quarter, Lee will also be teaching an MLIS course on search and discovery for digital collections.

“It’s an opportunity to teach students about digital collections — and how we

make those digital collections available to wide audiences,” Lee said.

Lee’s higher education began at Harvard College, where he doublemajored in astrophysics and mathematics. While working on his undergraduate degree, he got interested in Holocaust studies, to which he has a personal connection through his grandmother, who survived Auschwitz.

After graduation, he was the first digital humanities associate fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. While there, he worked with the International Tracing Service archive, which preserves material related to the Holocaust. The archive was set up for tracing individuals, but wasn’t as well suited to other research. Lee used machine learning to help make the archives more easily searchable to different users.

That fellowship’s interdisciplinary aspect, combining humanities with science, is something Lee has continued to enjoy in his work. While working on his Ph.D., he was an innovator in residence at the Library of Congress and created Newspaper Navigator, a machine learning-supported system to help users search images in 16.3 million historic newspaper pages. Last academic year, he was a Kluge Fellow in Digital Studies, also at the Library of Congress.

From his prior work at the UW, Lee already had connections with many people in the iSchool. It’s one of the things he enjoys about the University of Washington, that different programs aren’t siloed off from each other.

“We are so lucky to have recruited Ben to the iSchool,” said Nic Weber, an iSchool associate professor. “He’s a perfect fit with his computational skills and his deep knowledge of humanist reasoning and culture.”

Weber says that Lee combines the strong technical skills of a computer scientist with a deep understanding of the humanities. He also thinks Lee’s experience communicating about his ideas to a broader audience — including for publications such as Wired, Gawker and Current Affairs — shows what a strong thinker and communicator he is.

“His students are just as lucky as his research colleagues,” Weber said. “Ben’s knowledge is very diverse and he has an impeccable ability to explain abstract concepts in very concrete terms.”

Faculty updates

Four instructors have taken on new roles as assistant teaching professors at the iSchool:

Steven Gustafson

Gustafson is an experienced computer scientist specializing in applied artificial intelligence solutions During his career, Gustafson has served as an R&D scientist, startup co-founder and advisor, and technology leader across diverse areas and organizations An experienced guest faculty member and lecturer, Gustafson is passionate about education and mentoring He holds multiple degrees in Computer Science from Kansas State University and a Ph D in Computer Science from the University of Nottingham

Mara Kirdani-Ryan

Kirdani-Ryan applies techniques from sociology and social work to surface, deconstruct and challenge dominant cultural norms Their goal is to create cultural shifts to move computing from a force that magnifies societal oppression to a force for collective liberation Kirdani-Ryan holds a Ph D in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Washington and a master’s and bachelor’s in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University

Nam-ho Park

Park has been teaching at the iSchool since 2015, guiding students in designing digital products Having lived and worked in London, Seoul, Hanoi, New York and Washington, D C , before moving to Seattle in 2011, he draws from a lifetime of learning and exploring how we relate to technology and harness it for good As the principal of digital strategy firm PLAIN Strategies, his professional practice focuses on design and technology to support nonprofits and impactdriven organizations Park holds a Master of Architecture degree from Columbia University

Carson G. Miller Rigoli

Miller Rigoli applies his pedagogical and scholarly experience to developing educational materials and programs that bridge data literacy, social understanding and moral reasoning As an educational professional, he has created and instructed courses covering a wide range of topics in the cognitive and information sciences for students from pre-collegiate through doctoral levels Most recently, he served as a teaching assistant professor at Arizona State University Prior to his work at ASU, Miller Rigoli received a Ph D in Cognitive Science from University of California San Diego and a bachelor’s in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley

Gustafson

KirdaniRyan

Park

Miller Rigoli

Alumni updates

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

INFORMATICS

Drew Before, ‘17, was promoted to principal front-end engineer at Nintendo

Peter Corroon, ‘24, is a UX designer at Oracle

Connor Fink, ‘24, is starting his MS in Business Analytics at the University of Notre Dame

JD Gonzalez, ‘15, has been working as a senior software engineer at Costco He has quickly taken on leadership within the IT organization and was recently featured in Costco’s National Hispanic Heritage Month spotlight He reports, “Being able to represent my heritage in my workplace and serve as a role model for others has been incredibly rewarding ”

Rona Guo, ‘19, did a spring co-op with a climate tech company that wants to decarbonize the power grid Rona also was doing a fall co-op with Disney

Yasmine Hejazi, ‘19, is a data scientist III at Rover

Nasise Jira, ‘16, is in her home country, Ethiopia, where she serves as the minister of tourism Prior to that, she served as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary

Catherine Johnson, ‘17, is working at Khan Academy as a senior front-end engineer

Angelina Lum, ‘22, is working as the lead UX designer at Amplify, where she led a team in developing math lessons for teachers and engaging, interactive materials for K-5 students Angelina reports, “We strive to make learning both fun and impactful for young students ”

Christopher Mathews, ‘12, is working as head of product at Lexion, which raised

Series B fuding in 2023 Christopher reported plans to get married in October

Philip Phung, ‘10, is a senior solutions engineer at Disney for the Ad Platforms Technical Operations team He focuses primarily in front-end web development utilizing his knowledge in UX design, data visualization and QA testing

Harkiran Saluja, ‘21, is a product researcher at Coursera

Nancy Tran, ’18, is a senior product designer at Carina, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization partnered with home care and child care unions, government entities and home care agencies

Xiaobing Xu, ‘23, is obtaining their master’s in Applied Data Science from the University of Chicago

MLIS/M.LIB

Nikki Atienza, ‘23, became the first teen services librarian at her branch in the Pierce County Library System She was recognized as employee of the month for July for the whole library system and she attended her first ALA Annual this past summer

Audrey Barbakoff, ‘10, published her debut picture book, “The Schlemiel Kids Save the Moon,” in April 2024 Kirkus Reviews called it “an enjoyable, rollicking read ” Foreword Reviews deemed it “a multicultural winner” and selected it as a Pick of the Day

Sarah Bavier, ‘15, is the digital asset manager at Wieden+Kennedy Previously, she was the visual resources librarian at Reed College

Aric Bishop, ‘20, accepted a position at the West Des Moines, Iowa, Public

Library as a circulation assistant He was also working toward his Doctorate of Education in Leadership at Drake University

Bethany Black, ’12, is in her third year as a teacher librarian at Glacier Middle School in the Highline School District

Laura Blazyk, ‘16, is working as an adult and teen services librarian at the Queen Anne Branch of the Seattle Public Library

John Cole, ‘63, received the 2024 Trask award from the Society for History in the Federal Government in recognition of “his innumerable contributions to federal history over the course of his 55-year career at the Library of Congress ” Before becoming the library’s first official historian in 2016, for more than four decades he served as director of the Center for the Book, which initiated activities such as the National Book Festival and the Library of Congress Literacy Awards

Charlotte Daugherty, ‘20, is working at the U C Berkeley Law Library

Kathleen Delaurenti, ‘08, published an open textbook about research, copyright and publishing for professional musicians

Patricia Devine, ‘79, is the director of community outreach for HEALWA, an online library for health-care providers in Washington

Nic Dobbins, ‘13, is an assistant professor and assistant director of education at Johns Hopkins University, Biomedical Informatics & Data Science Section

Britannia Douglas, ‘22, started a new position as an adult services librarian for the Pierce County Library System

Maggie Dull, ‘11, was promoted to assistant dean for scholarly resources and

curation at the University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries

Christopher Erdman, ‘06, is working as the head of open science at SciLifeLab in Sweden

Lola Estelle, ‘00, is a senior implementation consultant for FOLIO services at EBSCO

Eric Flores, ‘23, is an archivist at the National Archives and is teaching an archives class at the UW in the Textual Studies program

Brian Keith, ‘18, became the dean of library services at Eastern Illinois University Brian also published “Liberatory Librarianship: Stories of Community, Connection, and Justice,” which seeks to document and advance the roles of information professionals and libraries in advancing social justice

Grove Koger, ‘74, recently published his poetry book “Not” with Finishing Line Press His article “Staying On: Paul Bowles’ Later Years in Tangier” appeared in the 2024 edition of “The Limberlost Review,” and his short story “That Bittersweet Taste” was included in Boise’s 2024 Writers in the Attic anthology “Tart ”

Cassandra Kvenlid, ‘00, was appointed dean of the University Libraries at the University of Wyoming in March 2024

Joe Lollo, ‘24, is working as a contract research and instruction librarian at Seattle University

Catherine McMullen, ‘08, was certified by the Oregon Association of County Clerks as a Certified County Clerk in August 2024 She was elected by voters in 2022 and has served as the Clackamas County Clerk overseeing elections, recording and records management since January 2023

Katharine Macy, ’14, is the interim associate dean of scholarly communication and content strategies at Indiana University Indianapolis

Nichole Maiman Waterman, ’12, is the student and academic services operations and advising specialist with the Food Systems, Nutrition, and Health Program in the UW School of Public Health

Rebecca Pixler, ‘74, is retired and living in Bellingham, where she volunteers at the Northwest Regional Branch of the Washington State Archives She also finished writing a collection of her adventures on public transportation, titled “Outbound to Wonderland ”

Lori Ricigliano, ‘79, retired after dedicating four decades to the University of Puget Sound as the associate library director In retirement, Lori serves as the managing editor of a scholarly journal, contributes as a board member to a local nonprofit, and coordinates a community garden’s food bank efforts

Evan Robb, ‘07, is a digital repository librarian at the Washington State Library, where he co-coordinates Northwest Digital Heritage, a Digital Public Library of America service hub aggregating records from more than 250 institutions in Washington, Oregon and Idaho

Amy Schaaf Massey, ‘91, retired after serving as a branch librarian at NCW Libraries/Leavenworth Public Library

Sonja Sutherland, ‘08, serves as the teen services librarian with Sonoma County Library

Danielle Trierweiler, ‘14, is a technical SEO analyst Danielle reports, “I use my MLIS skills to collaborate with engineering and product teams, manage thousands of pages of web content, and ensure web best practices ”

Karen Turner, ‘07, retired after 27 years at KUOW Public Radio

Meg Westbury, ‘98, received her Ph D in 2020 Since then, she has been a part-time lecturer in the MA in Library and Information Studies program at University College London Meg also is the managing editor of the Journal of Information Literacy

Sara White, ‘10, became a youth services librarian after graduating, serving kids ages 0-18 at the Olympia Timberland Library, where she worked for nearly 11 years In 2021, she became the youth services consultant at the Washington State Library, where she supports people around the state who serve youth in public, tribal and school libraries

Tess Wilder-Cervantes, ’15, is working as the assistant managing librarian in the Children and Teen Services Department at SPL’s Central Library in downtown Seattle

MSIM

Shruti Dixit, ‘22, works at Amazon as a Business Intelligence Engineer

Andy Herman, ’17, is the governance, risk, and compliance lead at Meta, focusing on regulatory risk management for content safety He recently started a role as a guest faculty at the iSchool and is teaching INFO 310 in autumn 2024

Tejas Karangale, ‘18, is working as a program manager in the Shopping Experience team at Expedia Group

Jay Kuo, ‘24, is a production control planner at TSMC

Proshonjit Mitra, ‘19, is working as lead UX researcher/strategist at Lucid Motors

Yanjie Niu, ‘24, was a volunteer as a judge for the Technovation Girls program In this program, Yanjie evaluated and provided feedback on projects from young talents from around the world Yanjie reports, “Its mission resonates with my aspirations: empowering young innovators to harness technology for societal betterment ”

Aditya Ramnathkar, ‘23, is working as a product marketing manager at Microsoft

Robin Wixom, ‘23, started a job at Boeing as a procurement agent for Boeing Commercial Airplanes

Mason Wrolstad, ‘13, is at Plaid as a data engineer

PH.D.

Jeff Hemsley, ‘14, is the interim dean at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University

Patricia Katopol, ‘07, has been retired for a few years and recently moved to Wisconsin to be near her grandchildren She states that she is “looking forward to experiencing winter in the land of cheese ”

organization. It also wouldn’t be possible without the visibility and resources of the Gates Foundation. Farley’s connections in the online MLIS program are what afforded her the opportunity for a Gates Foundation internship during her studies. She then drew up and successfully submitted a full-time employment proposal, essentially building her current role.

Jennifer Hansen, the director for open data policy and strategy at Microsoft, worked with Farley during her internship at the Gates Foundation. She recalled Farley’s intrepid approach. “Ashley was not a wallflower,” said Hansen. “She didn’t ask, ‘Can I do this?’ Instead, she approached the work with determination to move it forward in an actionable and meaningful way. She has a steel backbone, and she believes in what she’s doing.”

Williams and Hansen echoed each other as they described the work of going up against a system that is resistant to meaningful change: It’s grueling and can be demoralizing. But Farley thrives because of her ability to absorb obstinacy or even animosity from some publishers and researchers. She operates with grace, and she sees herself as an educator prioritizing relationships and collaboration.

“Often policy gets a bad rap,” said Farley. “It could be seen as heavy-handed, forcing somebody to do something they don’t want to do. So I try to take an educational standpoint for our openaccess policy compliance and carefully give justification and emphasize benefits.”

In addition to directing open-access policy and communication at the Gates Foundation, Farley writes and peerreviews scholarly articles, runs the foundation’s library services, and remains connected with the MLIS community at the iSchool. She gives talks, sits on panels, and contributes to podcasts. She is mindful, though, of the pressure that younger professionals feel to throw themselves into their work and outpace their peers.

“While I feel really passionate and love the work,” she said, “it shouldn’t be my sole identity. Doing CrossFit and getting out and enjoying the beautiful world that we live in — that balance is really important.”

Achievements

• The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) recognized Nicholas Belkin, M Lib ’70, with its inaugural ASIS&T Fellow Award The award recognizes individuals who have made substantial and sustained contributions to ASIS&T and the broader field of information science A longtime professor at Rutgers University, Belkin has authored or co-authored more than 200 journal articles, conference proceedings and book chapters

• Professor Chirag Shah was given the ASIS&T Research in Information Science Award, which recognizes a scholar or team each year for their contributions to the field

• Four 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 Melissa McCall, Erica Owan, Jet To and Sandra Martinez

• Professor Amy J. Ko was named among the Distinguished Members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for her innovative contributions to the field The ACM is the world’s largest computing society It recognizes up to 10 percent of its worldwide membership as distinguished members

• Library Journal selected Huda Shaltry, MLIS ’18, and Monnee Tong, MLIS ’12, as Movers and Shakers in its annual celebration of up-and-coming leaders in the library field Shaltry is a branch manager at the Boise Public Library’s Hillcrest branch and the legislative chair of the Idaho Library Association Tong is the supervising librarian at the San Diego Public Library and was recently appointed to the Advisory Committee for the California Civil Liberties Program

• Dean Anind Dey and three co-collaborators received the 2024 AAAI Classic Paper Award, a 15-year impact award recognizing their paper “Maximum entropy inverse reinforcement learning,” which was published in Proceedings of the 23rd national conference on Artificial intelligence

• The Computing Research Association’s Committee on Widening Participation in Research named Martez Mott, Ph D ’18, as the recipient of the 2024 Skip Ellis Early Career Award for his research and service to the computer science community Mott is a Senior Researcher in the Ability group and Human Centered AI Experiences team at Microsoft Research

• Associate Teaching Professor Heather Whiteman received the UC Berkeley Haas Case Series Top 3 “Best Case Award” for “Org1: In Invitae? Or Out?” This annual award is given to the author of the case published in the preceding calendar year that has made the most important contribution to management education

Nicholas Belkin

Monnee Tong Huda Shaltry

New from iSchool scholars:

“Zaatari: Culinary Traditions of the World’s Largest Syrian Refugee Camp” by Professor Karen Fisher explores the rich and resilient food culture that emerged in Zaatari, a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan housing more than 80,000 refugees Despite limited resources, the refugees have preserved their traditional dishes, using food as a way to sustain community bonds and cultural identity Fisher worked with more than 2,000 people to collect the 130 recipes featured, along with stories and photos that capture life inside the camp Most of the women learned their recipes from their mothers and had never written them down Fisher, who has spent significant time working at Zaatari since 2015, emphasizes the power of food in preserving cultural heritage during times of crisis

In “Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix,” Ph D candidate Katherine Cross argues that social media has limited political value and suggests that sometimes logging off is the best solution By examining movements like the Arab Spring and #MeToo, Cross found that after the initial media attention faded, little substantive change occurred She argues that social media, originally intended to bring people together, has instead led to what she describes “a fallen world of social media’s political promises ” She contends that social media creates the illusion of collective action and power but often fails to achieve lasting goals Cross concludes that to foster meaningful change and shift one’s perspective, people should spend less time on social media and more time engaging with their communities

“Photostories: Applications of a Participatory Photography Methodology for Social Science Research” by Professor Ricardo Gomez explores photography as an innovative tool for conducting qualitative research This pioneering resource is valuable for researchers, educators and practitioners, offering a participatory method that enables participants to document their own experiences through photos, creating visual narratives that complement traditional data Gomez emphasizes how this approach amplifies marginalized voices and fosters a deeper understanding of complex social issues He argues that by integrating photography into research, scholars can gain more nuanced insights and enhance inclusive storytelling The book includes case studies demonstrating the successful application of this methodology in various communities

IN MEMORIAM

Mike Katell ‘brought a warm wisdom to everything he did’

Mike Katell, Ph.D. ’20, passed away recently in London. Katell was a valuable member of the Tech Policy Lab, contributing to projects including “Designing Tech Policy” and publishing papers on privacy and value sensitive design.

Co-Director Ryan Calo, a professor in the iSchool and School of Law, partnered with Katell during his time at the Lab.

“I worked with Mike Katell on several projects and served on his committee,” Calo said. “Mike brought a warm wisdom to everything he did. This community feels his loss deeply.”

At the Tech Policy Lab, Katell was part of a team that interviewed thought leaders in law and computer science on why technology policy fails. His papers accepted for publication included “Do Privacy and Privilege Converge? Thoughts on the Coming Storm of Privilege-Based Privacy Affordance,” which was part of the 2015 Amsterdam Privacy Conference; and “The Personal Information Exchequer Rights and Restitution Engine,” which was included in the 2015 Critical Alternatives Workshop on Value Sensitive Design.

Before joining the Tech Policy Lab and the Information School as a Ph.D. student, Katell spent 10 years in IT at the legal aid nonprofit Columbia Legal Services.

iSchool Professor Adam D. Moore was Katell’s Ph.D. advisor.

“I met Mike Katell in 2012 when he was a graduate student,” Moore said. “He was always interested in ethics, justice and progressive ideas. Over his graduate career, from the master’s program through the Ph.D., Mike demonstrated initiative, analytical clarity, and the passion to give and receive arguments. He was a pleasure to work with as a colleague, student and friend. Aside from spending time discussing various theories of justice, we also connected as musicians … Mike was an excellent guitar player! He will be missed.”

Katell

how young people’s emotions are affected by social media. That project included interviewing 70 youths on their social media use and asking them to reflect in daily diary surveys about the granular impact of these platforms on their emotions. Their most recent project together, which began over the summer, is launching the UW Digital Youth Lab Youth Advisory Board, where 10 teens learn about research, give feedback to scientists, and help guide research projects in ways that are meaningful to youth.

“It has been a wonderful opportunity to work together with her,” Magis-Weinberg said. “She has been an incredible mentor to me.”

Magis-Weinberg stated that Davis’ book, “Technology’s Child,” is well-regarded by a wide range of people. She believes Davis is uniquely placed to speak with authority from different roles including that of a researcher, a professor, a mother, and an elementary school teacher, she said.

Magis-Weinberg noted that Davis’s classes fill up quickly and that they frequently feature guest researchers like herself as speakers. “She’s just generally very supportive,” Magis-Weinberg said. “I feel very grateful to work with her.”

Likewise, educator Chittenden, who currently works as the learning resource specialist at St. Alphonsus Parish School, has reached out to Davis for support and advice at both her present and past schools.

Chittenden suggested that her school principal seek Davis’s expertise when staff members were considering how to partner with families around student technology

use and the idea of joining the nationwide “Wait Until 8th” movement, which encourages parents to hold off on giving their children smartphones until after eighth grade.

“Katie is so personable,” Chittenden said, noting that within two weeks of reaching out, Davis met with the principal and donated some of her books as a resource.

Claire Goldsmith is a fan of both the “Wait Until 8th” movement and Davis’s work. Goldsmith works as a consultant for independent schools, non-profit organizations and technology companies. From 2016 until 2022, she served as the executive director of the Malone Schools Online Network and has written about artificial intelligence in education and smartphone policies in opinion pieces for the Wall Street Journal.

As a mother of two, Goldsmith finds that she and Davis are aligned in their approaches as parents with regard to digital use. “As a parent, she has really reinforced for me what’s right and what’s not in my own decision making,” Goldsmith said.

Davis doesn’t offer a one-size fits all solution for how parents should deal with technology and their children. Parents’ decisions about technology should take into consideration the child’s age and social situation. Davis stresses the “good enough” digital parent, who considers the key components of technology but allows for downtime or trial and error.

“Not all technology is wonderful; not all is bad. It’s how it’s used,” Goldsmith said.

Goldsmith appreciates that Davis’s work is nuanced and believes it gives power back to parents as well as educators. Like Davis, Goldsmith emphasizes modeling good habits and behavior with technology in front of children. “It’s important — what kids see

and they end up doing,” Goldsmith said.

In her consulting work, Goldsmith has referenced Davis’s work while encouraging change by tech companies. She sees a need for legislation to force companies to consider children’s well-being in their designs.

Davis notes there has been legislation aimed to make tech companies keep children’s safety in mind. Social media companies like YouTube have introduced privacy settings for individuals under 18. Instagram introduced its “screen smart” initiative and, more recently, Teen Accounts; and others have added parental control functions.

“There are a lot of people who are trying to do good,” Davis said.

She indicates the measures don’t go far enough, reporting that parental control settings on some apps and sites are difficult to find and cumbersome to use.

“Legislation is absolutely needed to compel companies to really consider young people’s well-being when designing,” Davis said. Otherwise, tech companies are financially motivated to continue their efforts to keep young people on their sites as long as possible.

Davis states that whatever policy that legislators come up with needs to be evidence-based. “There’s a lot of fear and concern behind knee-jerk policies,” she said.

Davis is doing her part to prevent that by speaking at recent state and national conferences of attorneys general to provide her research and knowledge, similar to what she has done with schools like Chittenden’s.

“The thing that makes Katie’s work different is the acknowledgment that we have a responsibility to help kids be online,” Chittenden said. “We have to show them how to do it.”

graduate research methods courses in the English and Comparative Literature Department, she had English majors learn HTML and build their own websites, long before programs like WordPress existed. “Students exited that class information literate,” she says. “All of them landed a job right out of school.”

Williams has been tireless inside and outside the classroom, serving on national library committees, editing journals, plan-

ning conferences. At the iSchool, she was a member of the MLIS Program Committee for years and worked to increase student diversity as a member of the Admissions Committee. “Right now, the library profession is 87 percent white,” she points out. “How do we bring in people of color, people from different backgrounds?”

A self-described “matchmaker,” she pairs students and libraries in the MLIS Directed Fieldwork program and helped create the iSTAMP mentorship program, connecting students with program alumni. “Helene has devoted herself to making sure

the MLIS program has excellent, informed graduates who are ready to step into positions and make a difference in the library field,” says iSchool Teaching Professor Cindy Aden.

When she began teaching at the school, Williams had a question for herself: “Would I be one of those instructors to avoid or would I look forward to the opportunities this class provides?” Now, as she winds up her time at the iSchool, she can happily answer that, yes, students eagerly sought out her classes, and, truly, “there has never been a dull moment.”

Williams, from Page 30

Davis, from Page 9

Seeing, from Page 10

figuring out what it is. When you see a beach littered with dead birds, that’s a completely different feeling. You’re overwhelmed. There’s no way you can process all of that.”

People from coastal communities tend to form stronger emotional connections to marine mammals over seabirds. Marine mammals are also larger than seabirds, so, according to Snyder, “The experience of encountering a beached marine mammal is more intense than what we would associate with beached birds.” In fact, Parrish added, “If you really want to look at the interplay between emotion and science and how to create materials to support that learning, dead marine mammals is the way to do it.”

The project is in its first phase, which involves Snyder conducting hour-long interviews with COASST volunteers. “They are amazingly fun,” she said. “I ask volunteers to take me to a place in nature that means something to them and for them to walk me through and share with me what they

see when they are there. The goal is for me to see this place and how it has changed through their eyes.”

This data will help researchers understand COASSTers’ sense of place and how the connection with their beach communities will affect their participation in the research process. In phase two, they will co-design visual materials, including training manuals and field guides, and develop protocols to support the collection of data on beached marine mammals. A co-design model leverages and centers local expertise alongside more formal science practice, which is key, said Snyder and Parrish, especially in a citizen science project where researchers feel a close connection with the place and objects under study.

In phase three, the prototype phase, scientists and COASSTers will evaluate the efficacy of the new materials. “We need experts to help us tell the difference between a California sea lion and a Steller sea lion,” Parrish said. “And we need COASSTers to tell us if it won’t be too gross to pick up flippers, brush the sand off and measure how far back the claws are.”

BINFO. I deeply admire their passion for giving back to their communities and empowering their peers,” said del Rosario. “Their openness in sharing their own journeys and their commitment to showing students that we’re here for them is at the heart of what BINFO stands for. They’re here to ensure that you have a community, and if you fall, there are people ready to lift you up.”

One of the highlights for student group members such as Informatics student Amanual Ayalneh was a resume workshop led by the BINFO board.

“They split us up into groups based on what field we were interested in, like program management or cybersecurity,” Ayalneh recalled. “I was able to get direct one-on-one help from the upperclassmen, which actually allowed me to land an internship at Amazon.”

Ayalneh’s experience has inspired

him to take on a more active role in BINFO this upcoming school year, as he joins the board as co-president.

Along with professional guidance, the personal connections built within BINFO have become just as valuable both for the board and its general members.

“Some of my favorite BINFO memories are just staying back after meetings and events to talk with students about their experiences and answer questions about how to build their careers,” Ghaddah said.

BINFO has already made a significant impact in the iSchool community. The organization has hosted sponsored events, including one with Deloitte, with more in the works with major tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon.

“It’s been so rewarding to help students dealing with the same struggles I once faced and to demystify the whole college and internship process,” Emnetu reflected.

“You can say it in three verbs — observe, reason and adapt,” Wobbrock said. “Observe user behavior, reason about user behavior, and then adapt to user behavior.”

Maybe the code could make buttons and text larger on the phone for someone who is visually impaired. Or maybe the code could help the app account for jostling when someone is walking down the street and trying to type a message.

“Let’s say, for example, you want to know a user’s touch abilities and you turn on the touch observer as a developer,” said Kong, who is working in an internship in Redmond this summer. “What happens is this toolkit captures every single touch trace in the background while a user is using the app. Then you can ask the toolkit if tremor is evident in the user’s touch.”

Scott Carter, a senior staff research scientist who is the project lead for TRI, said the research aligns well with the organization’s goal of making cars safer.

“This collaboration spans two divisions at TRI — human-centered AI and human interactive driving — and is a perfect expression of their goals: using data-driven techniques to build models of human behavior that can help humans make decisions that lead to collective well-being,” Carter said. “We are especially excited to work with the UW team as their expertise in adaptive user interfaces is a natural complement to our work in behavioral modeling, driving simulation and interaction.”

The principles used for creating better, more accessible apps may make touch displays more useful and adaptable to drivers. While it would be ideal if drivers stayed focused, Kong said, the research team would like to provide as much support as possible for those who multitask.

“There are so many things going on in the car,” she said. “You might have messages coming in, or you might have music on, or you might be adjusting the navigation system. A better interface may create a better driving experience — safer, more comfortable and less stressful.” Apps, from Page 7

BINFO, from Page 3

Information School

University of Washington

Box 352840

Mary Gates Hall, Suite 370

Seattle, WA 98195-2840

Having a completed estate plan in place helps to protect the people and causes you love. Making the iSchool at the University of Washington a beneficiary of your will, trust or retirement account will help unlock future opportunities for our students, faculty and researchers. Contact the Office for Planned Giving today to discover how your legacy can make a world of difference for generations to come at the iSchool.

Office for Planned Giving 206-685-1001 • giftinfo@uw.edu • uw.edu/giving/planmygift

STATE IMPACT REPORT

Information School helps power Washington’s workforce

Supporting our state’s workforce

AT WORK IN WASHINGTON

Most Information School alumni stay to work in all corners of the state; meet a few of them

MARK JUPITER JR.

MSIM ’23 | Seattle

Mark is a distinguished U.S. Navy veteran who serves as a public key infrastructure administrator and integration specialist at The Boeing Co. In this role, he manages the security of Boeing’s global infrastructure, ensuring the seamless operation and protection of X.509 certificates for applications, devices and servers.

SONALI MISHRA

Ph.D. ’19 | Seattle

JEEYOUNG KIM

Informatics ’20 | Seattle

As a software engineer at Amazon, Jeeyoung develops and supports automation for the marketing and sales of Amazon devices. Her responsibilities include implementing automation services, reviewing peers’ work, and writing design documents for features, with a focus on enhancing efficiency and driving global growth.

SAM BUECHLER

MLIS

’20 | Vancouver

KIM NEHER

MLIS ’15 | Wenatchee

Informatics ’22

Thomas is a data who helps accelerate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory software solutions helps create data and ETL pipelines alongside lab instruments allow researchers vast amounts of create. 5 6 4 2 3

As principal UX researcher in the Data Science Lab at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Sonu collaborates with scientists, developers, trainers and others to design and evaluate tools for bioinformatics researchers. Her work helps researchers do their work more efficiently and reproducibly in the race against cancer.

Sam is the library director at Washington State University Vancouver. In their role, they oversee the day-to-day and longterm operations of the library. This includes stewarding a team of library workers and mentoring faculty through tenure and promotion. Sam also does liaison work such as teaching and collection development.

NCW Libraries provides 30 libraries, a bookmobile, and mail order service for 280,000 people in a rural five-county service area. As deputy director, Kim oversees public services including branch operations, programs, collections, outreach, marketing and facilities, leveraging each department to meet the region’s critical needs.

THOMAS SERRANO

SERRANO ’22 | Richland

data engineer accelerate research Northwest Laboratory by creating solutions in labs. He data dashboards pipelines that reside instruments that researchers to tame the data they

LIVING AND WORKING IN WASHINGTON 7 8

KIRA MacPHERSON Museology ’21

| Pullman

Kira joined the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Washington State University in 2022. As the director of development, she communicates with museum friends and donors, creating connections between people and their interests in the arts, while fundraising for the museum’s programs, exhibitions and operations.

NICHOLAS PACE MSIM ’23 | Spokane

As an operations specialist, Nicholas is part editor, part reporter, and part analyst for Engie, an energy consultancy that partners with commercial organizations to reduce greenhouse gases and improve energy efficiency. He analyzes clients’ utility bills so that the data is accurate, complete, up-to-date and beneficial.

Information School alumni have skills that are in demand among public, private and nonprofit employers, particularly in STEM fields. Percentages who are in Washington:

Based on self-reported last known addresses from all living alumni.

ALEXIA LOZANO

Supporting vibrant communities

BRIDGING INFORMATION, TECHNOLOGY & PEOPLE

Information School research makes an impact across the state, supporting access to trusted information and a more just, healthier future

Promoting information literacy

MisinfoDay is an annual event bringing high school students, teachers and librarians to university campuses to learn how to navigate complex information environments and make informed decisions about what to believe online. It features interactive workshops and learning activities, including a misinformation-themed escape room game. The annual event, which originated as a project led by then-graduate student Liz Crouse and Professor Jevin West, is co-hosted by the Information School’s Center for an Informed Public and Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication. The high school students shown above were among more than 1,000 Washington students, teachers, librarians and other educators who participated in 2024.

Protecting kids from dark patterns

Companies use “dark patterns” in their interface designs to manipulate user behavior and increase profits. Their software encourages kids to disclose data about themselves, make purchases, and stay online longer than they otherwise would. Associate Professor Alexis Hiniker identifies dark patterns and what makes them problematic. She shares these patterns with industry and policymakers, who are increasingly receptive to measures curbing the harmful effects of technology on children. Hiniker’s research was used to inform a Federal Trade Commission report on dark patterns.

Supporting public health

Scientific papers can be daunting, with convoluted findings, baffling jargon and key takeaways buried in a blur of details. Assistant Professor Lucy Lu Wang uses artificial intelligence to make these documents more accessible and usable, bringing advances to patients more quickly. For example, Wang and her team were quick to respond to the wave of scientific documents after COVID-19 broke out. They helped other researchers create a text-mining database to dig up nuggets of relevant information for those trying to keep up. The database evolved along with knowledge about the virus.

Educat ing the public about AI

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are creating new challenges and opening new frontiers in public policy. Professor Chirag Shah has become a leading expert voice for fairness and responsibility in AI. He testified before the Washington State Legislature in support of bills to boost AI accountability and combat algorithmic discrimination; has presented to judges this year in Walla Walla, Yakima and Tulalip; and gave a talk titled “AI Promises, Perils, and Paths” at the Washington State Superior Court Judges Conference. He also gave a keynote talk at TEDxUofW on the topic.

Closing the digital divide

The digital divide in Washington is a significant barrier to equal opportunity and economic growth. Many residents lack access to high-speed internet and the digital skills necessary to thrive in today’s digital economy. Teaching Professor Cindy Aden is among the state’s leading voices for bridging the divide. She and her colleagues, a group known as Washington Digital Equity Partners, are calculating the true cost of providing digital skills training around the state and drafting proposed legislation for a device tax to address these costs.

Promoting AI fairness

Artificial intelligence is used to screen job candidates, review college student applications, and make health-care decisions. But because AI is trained on data produced by humans, it learns biases similar to those found in society. It discriminates against women and people of different ethnicities more frequently than white males. Assistant Professor Aylin Caliskan is dedicated to thwarting these effects. She was awarded $603,342 from the National Science Foundation and $1,043,249 from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to identify, measure and reduce bias in AI.

Expanding access to computing education

Less than 10 percent of students in Washington public and tribal high schools took a class in computing last year due to a lack of qualified teachers or a belief that courses are not “for them.” Professor Amy J. Ko, an advocate for state funding to make justice-focused computer science education available to every student, is bringing together researchers, K-12 teachers, policymakers and private companies to tackle these challenges. Her efforts are bolstered by a new collaboration at the UW called the Center for Learning, Computing and Imagination.

STUDENTS FLOCK TO INFORMATICS

More than ever, the Information School’s undergrad program attracts diverse cohorts and strengthens the state workforce

Informatics students at the University of Washington gain a deep understanding of information in society while creatively imagining more equitable and just information technology and systems. The major is in high demand because it produces well-rounded information and technology professionals who land satisfying, good-paying jobs — most of them in Washington.

Informatics grads can be found across public, private and nonprofit organizations as software engineers, web developers, user experience designers, usability engineers, project managers, and in many other roles.

Informatics students come from

Krystal Liang, ’20, is a customer success coach at Microsoft, working with startups and partners to identify product market fit and build innovative solutions. Microsoft is where the largest number of Informatics grads report landing their first jobs.

As with the rest of the UW, the majority of in-state students in Informatics hail from

Where they are now 84%

of Informatics alumni live in Washington, based on last reported addresses. The program adds talent to the state workforce every year.

TOP TALENT SEEKS OUT INFO MAJOR

Each year, the Husky 100 recognizes students making the most of their UW experience inside and outside the classroom.

Informatics attracts students who are highly engaged in their communities and want to make an impact. Out of more than 60,000 UW students each year, Informatics has had an outsized number of honorees, with 28 since 2019.

By row from top left, 2019 recipients Andrea Chen, Oorja Chowdhary, Katie Goulding, Leanne Hwa, Shaarika Kaul, Nicole Kuhh, Chris Sofian. 2020: Simran Bhatia, Eddy Huang, Jenny Liang, Shruti Rajagopalan, Israel Sixto-Sanchez, Savanna Yee. 2021: Jack Lucas Chang. 2022: Lisi Case, Daniel Chen, Sam Jemuelle Quiambao, Wintana Eyob, Ethan Kuhn. 2023: Shreya Balaji, Sabrina Lin, Jax Morgan, Tina Nguyen, Kenny Pham, Roshni Srikanth, Gulsima Young. 2024: Thomas Emnetu, JP Lopez Garcia.

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON

The Information School has much to be proud of, but more progress is needed to fulfill its public promise and support Washington families, employers and communities.

Our priorities

 The school needs to align its Informatics enrollment with the high and rising demand among students applying to the major. Too many qualified students are denied admission simply due to a lack of capacity.

 Expanded high school outreach programs, especially in diverse communities across Washington, will help the school strengthen the direct-to-major pathway for Informatics and ensure its student body reflects the diversity of the state.

 Direct-to-major undergrads, many of them firstgeneration students, require additional support to adapt to college and succeed. More teaching capacity and advising staff is needed to ensure they not only enroll, but graduate and thrive in their careers.

 A home for the Information School on the UW campus will support collaboration and community building across all of its programs, foster interdisciplinary research, and help the school attract and retain top talent.

How you can help

The Information School needs state lawmakers and industry leaders to invest in its future. In the coming months and years, it will make its case to the university, the Legislature and the public for those investments. Alumni and friends can help by loudly and proudly supporting the school.