Each year, the School recognizes a group of outstanding students for their achievement in academics as well as a number of attributes that contribute to professional success. The following student awards were presented at the School's Convocation ceremony on May 15, 2016.
Bryce Allen Award for Reference Services
Presented to Jody Ford
Jody Ford has been an outstanding graduate assistant for Reference and Information Services at the University Library for the last two years and has taken on many challenging reference queries, ranging from complicated email reference questions that took several days, to a unique query that came in the mail as a handwritten letter. She’s always eager and excited to work at the reference desk whether in person or virtually, and relishes the challenge of helping the wide range of patrons that utilize reference services at the University of Illinois. She will be greatly missed, but we know that she will be an excellent reference librarian and a valued professional colleague.
Berner-Nash Memorial Award
Presented to Damian Duffy
The Berner-Nash Award is presented to Damian Duffy for his dissertation, “Educational Hypercomics: Learner, Institutions, and Comics in E-Learning Interface Design.” Duffy’s dissertation is a social semiotic analysis of multimedia interactive educational web comics. In making its award, the members of the Doctoral Studies Committee noted Duffy’s incisive analysis, skillful writing, and creative presentation. This dissertation has potential impact in a wide range of LIS and related fields, including multimedia pedagogy, interface design, and digital literacy.
Anne M. Boyd Award/Beta Phi Mu
Presented to Sierra Lynn Gregg
Sierra Gregg has been an outstanding student and exceptional graduate assistant in her work at the Help Desk and ITD, exemplary for her dedication to assisting students, staff, and faculty. She truly cares about helping everyone and goes above and beyond in doing so. She has a strong commitment to helping people with disabilities gain access to information. As her supervisor observed, we expect Sierra “will do amazing things wherever she goes!”
Edith Harris Camp Award
Presented to Tracey L. Vittorio
With her infectious creativity and dedication to public service, Tracey Vittorio exemplifies those qualities valued by Edith Harris Camp and her family. Both friendly and efficient, Tracey puts others at ease with her approachable demeanor, and improves every library where she works by inventing new ways to do things. Equally impressive in the classroom, Tracey chose an ambitious research project that used the Newberry Library’s special collections to analyze gender in postwar children’s alphabet books. Her tech savvy is just as impressive. Recently, Tracey piloted coding lessons and robotics for youth at her public library, where she will build on her success with summer tech programming and a teen tech club.
Jane B. and Robert B. Downs Professional Promise Award
Presented to Chung-Yi Hou
Sophie (Chung-Yi) Hou has many talents. The professors who nominated her for this award have seen how she has taken what she has learned at GSLIS and applied it to the practice of scientific data curation. She has an impressive focus combined with a voracious curiosity. She looks at theories, methods, and insights and considers how they might be used to make the sharing of scientific data better and less burdensome. This brings the sharing of ethos of librarianship to the very modern setting of twenty-first century global collaborative climate science research.
Entrepreneurial Promise Awards
Presented to Alexandra Budz
Alex played a key role in helping a small student-led organization on campus grow and become an international university program with more than one hundred and twenty student participants from Europe and Asia. She is a great example of demonstrating what GSLIS students can accomplish with entrepreneurial spirit.
Herbert Goldhor Award for Public Librarianship
Presented to Michelle Biwer
Michelle Biwer gets things done. Certainly, be impressed by her academic record and communication skills. Definitely, be delighted by her wry sense of humor and conversational aplomb. Absolutely, be confident that her curiosity and warmth are certain to make her beloved among her teen patrons. But when there’s a project that just won’t budge or an improvement just waiting to be made, watch Michelle get things done. From overhauling a weeding policy that’s hit an impasse, to nudging an instructor into a new teaching environment, Michelle has brought her enthusiasm, organizational skills, diplomacy, and graciousness to the table at GSLIS, and has made intractable problems move. And Michelle keeps her priorities in order: the test of a successful solution is always its benefit to a class, a researcher, a patron. At this very moment, the Urbana Regional Library in Frederick, Maryland may not be fully aware of the amazing teen programming and unexpectedly productive staff meetings that are about to happen. But we are. We know that the Herbert Goldhor Award winner, Michelle Biwer, is on her way.
Peggy Harris Award
Presented to Allison Thome
Allison (Allie) Thome combines outstanding academic performance with deep involvement in volunteer efforts with the school. In her first year as a student, she worked with the GSLIS Speaks! group to make sure that the voices of all students are heard, and she has continued this effort in her work as a master’s students representative to the Curriculum Committee. Allie led students in a review of required LIS courses 501 and 502 that has provided valuable input to their further development.
Health Sciences Information Management Award
Presented to Harathi Korrapati
Harathi Korrapati has demonstrated excellence in research in the fields of bioinformatics and health science. She has developed a major strength in designing and implementation of rigorous computational and statistical solutions to problem solving in these field.
Kathryn Luther & William T Henderson Award
Presented to Hailley Fargo
It is difficult to imagine someone who better models the motto Aliis inserviendo consumer, “Consumed in the service of others,” than Hailley Fargo. Hailley has consistently displayed a thoughtful civic-mindedness during her time at GSLIS, by serving our school, our field, our university, and our larger local community. Hailley serves as our School’s chapter president for the American Library Association. She is a resident hall library supervisor, where she builds her schedule around the work life of Illinois undergraduates, leading to many a late night in the library. She blogs for the Young Adult Services Library Association and Hack Library School, proactively sharing her perspective with the library community at large. She has also presented research to an international audience, contributing to community informatics scholarship. What is especially remarkable about Hailley is her deep understanding of how important respect and understanding are for the process of creating change. She recognizes the importance of sustained engagement as foundational to building relationships of mutual trust, thereby opening up possibilities for the development of shared vision of group strengths, opportunities, and aspirations for measurable impact. For example, Hailley began work with one community organization, the Urbana Neighborhood Connections Center, within days of stepping on campus; she will continue to be a key volunteer leader with this agency until the day she leaves for the next step of her career. Hailley’s efforts don’t just have depth—her work also has breadth through impacts on Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and the practice and scholarship of LIS. Hailley Fargo truly is consumed in the service of others, like the Hendersons, in ways that will be sustained through a long and fruitful career.
Information Systems/Technologies Award
Presented to Elizabeth Wickes
Already hired as a data curation specialist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Elizabeth Wickes is a stunning engine of creativity informed by the deepest understanding—she is bracing, direct, incisive, and relentless. A strong advocate for involving women in technology, she pours enormous energy into creating the means for everyone, regardless of background or preparation, to use powerful digital tools. She co-created the local Python user group and then transformed it into a multifaceted learning environment where anyone could find advice and help, whatever their level of experience, preparation, or interest.
Frances B. Jenkins Award
Presented to Jason David Harvey
Jason Harvey came to GSLIS with a BS in chemistry and the goal of becoming an academic science reference librarian. As a graduate assistant at the Grainger Engineering Library, he has gained a further understanding of emerging roles in supporting research and teaching. In his academic librarianship course he has demonstrated a strong commitment to professionalism and to engaging with issues of importance throughout higher education. In his science reference course he explored trends in library makerspaces and their contribution to innovation, creativity, and furthering entrepreneurship—all relevant goals for a future science librarian.
Library School Alumni Association Student Award
Presented to Jarrett Dapier
Jarrett Dapier came to GSLIS with a strong commitment to critical inquiry, social justice, and the value of libraries in communities. He recognized a need to better serve teens in diverse populations and pursued the master’s degree to be better equipped to accomplish this. Throughout his coursework he encouraged his classmates to think in better, harder ways about how we provide services and programs to young people in libraries and to diverse populations. Outside of his classes, Jarrett garnered national attention for his work in documenting via FOIA requests how the Chicago Public Schools mismanaged the removal of the book Persepolis from its classrooms. This work has earned him a forthcoming award from the American Library Association and recognition from groups including the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Jarrett’s passion and advocacy are already evident, and the profession will surely benefit from his future endeavors.
Alice Lohrer Award for Literature and Library Services for Youth
Presented to Kasonde Mukonde
Kasonde Mukonde came to our school with a strong commitment to youth services librarianship and he has demonstrated this commitment throughout his time at GSLIS. He has a deep and abiding dedication to improving access to library and education services for young people in his native Zambia, where he will be serving as program director for Lubuto Library Project (LLP). His interests include supporting the educational needs of young women, who often lack financial and family resources to continue education beyond the primary grades, and to expand nonbook library program opportunities for teens. In his time at GSLIS, Kasonde’s thoughtful engagement spurred his classmates to be better. Beyond the walls of GSLIS, he sought out opportunities to learn from local libraries and librarians, participated in national and international conferences, and honed his skills at reference and instruction. We have no doubt that the young people of Zambia will be well-served by Kasonde’s ideas and efforts.
Hazel C. Rediger Award
Presented to Nushrat Jahan Khan
Nushrat Khan has that unique balance of intellectual curiosity and academic accomplishment that makes her the perfect person to be awarded the Hazel C. Rediger Award. Since coming to Illinois, she has participated in a range of research projects, academic exchanges, and scholarly events. She was an important part of the “Repository Services for Accessible Course Content” project and made it all the stronger with her insightful contributions. Nushrat also collaborated with research partners at the University of Oxford as part of our Oxford-Illinois Digital Libraries Placement Program. Nushrat’s data modeling work from this exchange was short-listed for a best poster award at the 2016 iConference. These are but two examples of many where Nushrat has demonstrated an exceptional breadth of intellectual curiosity with a notable depth of accomplishment.
Joseph Rediger Librarian as Humanist Awards
Presented to Alfred Wallace
Renaissance humanists saw the study of language, literature, and history as essential for engagement in civic life and contributing to the welfare of one’s community. This year’s Joseph Rediger Award recipient, Alfred Wallace, has enriched classroom experiences and work in the library with a love of the human record and its stories that is in the best tradition of that philosophy and the spirit of this award. Faculty describe Alfred’s contributions in class as consistently thoughtful, insightful, and refreshing, often directing conversation toward new ideas. Outside of class, his projects have ranged from investigating the history of ice cream to collection development at Illinois' Rare Books and Manuscript Library, to creating a preservation plan for the Doris Hoskins Cultural Diversity Collection at Mahomet’s Museum of the Grand Prairie. In all these efforts, Alfred has pursued “the interconnectedness of disparate intellectual questions,” to quote one supervisor. The faculty are proud to recognize his achievements, and look forward to his continued service in our profession.
Social Justice Award
Presented to Sarah Butt
Sarah’s commitment towards inspiring, working with, and organizing teens—especially those at the margins of our society—has been an outstanding example of justice that is social in means as well as outcome. Her approach consistently prioritizes sustained relationship building across difference as an essential resource and foundation for any program development. For instance, Sarah brought this approach to the Champaign Public Library as a research assistant, helping to develop STEAM programming for teens. Her contributions have helped to create a contextualized initiative that is highly successful in attracting a diversity of youth. Sarah has also served as a mentor and advocate with local LBGTQ+ teen initiatives, and has been willing to thoughtfully take stands that put her at odds with fellow leaders on behalf of the youth with whom she engages. Her intelligence and wit serve to incisively guide her peers to approaches that care for all teens. As a result, whether in the classroom or in the field, Sarah regularly becomes a valued social justice leader.
Yingbo Zhou Award
Presented to Minhao Jiang
Minhao’s enthusiasm and passion for learning is truly notable. He demonstrates a remarkable ability to develop deep competencies in building and interpreting analytical models that will serve him well in the future. In addition, he remained fully engaged in the school and served as president of the GSLIS Chinese Student Group. Most importantly, his intellectual growth serves as an inspiration and proves that he will have a long lasting, positive impact on the GSLIS-Chinese LIS community, which is why he is most deserving of the Yingbo Zhou Memorial Award.