Each semester, GSLIS distance students come to campus for an intensive weekend where they meet on-campus students, connect with their instructors, and form professional relationships. LEEP weekend provides distance and on-campus students with the unique opportunity to attend lectures, networking events, and other professional developmental activities.
As part of this spring's LEEP weekend, the Special Libraries Association (SLA) student group at GSLIS hosted a career panel and networking event with alumni and current students. The event drew nearly 40 attendees and included a discussion with a panel of information professionals who work in a variety of settings. Participants spoke to current iSchool students about the diverse kinds of work they do and answered questions about their experiences. The panel included:
- Beth Watkins (MS '02) Spurlock Museum, Education and Publications Coordinator
- Taran Ley (MS '93), Illinois State Library, Outreach Coordinator
- Selso Martinez, Dow Chemical Company, Search and Analysis Services
- Karen MacKenzie (MS '96), Caterpillar, IT Supervisor
- Mary Shultz (MS '97), UIC Medical Science Library, Health Science Librarian
- Mary Tabion (MS '10), Boston Consulting Group, Data and Research Services Manager
SLA chapter president and MS student Courtney Busscher saw many students interact one-on-onoe with panelists. "We think it’s really important to connect students to professionals already in these fields so they can hear firsthand about the many opportunities that maybe they didn’t know about when they started at GSLIS," she said.
Alumni panelists spoke about the many ways in which they use the skills they gained at GSLIS in their current roles. Beth Watkins (MS '02), education and publications coordinator at the University of Illinois’s Spurlock Museum, cited her research expertise and the ability to work well with teams and across disciplines as important skill sets that she developed as an iSchool student.
Watkins encouraged students with an interest in her kind of work to visit museums, volunteer, and apply the knowledge gained at GSLIS to develop their careers in that direction. "Try it, ask questions, feel free to put yourself and what you have to offer forward, and someone will leap at it," she said.
As the supervisor for intranet learning and talent solutions at Caterpillar, Karen MacKenzie (MS '96) applies traditional library skills, such as the cataloging process and the reference interview, to work at the intersection of human resources and information technology. In her role as both an HR and information professional, and with the perspective of an alumna, MacKenzie knows that GSLIS graduates are well-prepared for careers in the corporate world.
"Think about your skills in a broader way than strictly the way that you have been taught to think about them," she advised. "There are a lot of very transferable skills with this degree."
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygq6tw88wRU]