Class Notes

Sarah Appedu (MSLIS '22) has been accepted into the 2024 ALISE (Association for Library and Information Science Education) Leadership Development Internship Program.

Emily Benton (MSLIS '20) will start her new position as the Prairie Research Institute (PRI) librarian and clinical assistant professor at the University of Illinois on September 3, 2024.

Jessica Yi-Yun Cheng (PhD '22), assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, has been awarded an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant for her project, "Storytelling Across Time: Building a Community Around Provenance (B-CAP)."

Becky Graham (MSLIS '20) is part of Gresham Smith's Learning & Development team, which was named a Top 50 team (globally) by OnCon as part of its annual OnCon Icon Awards. She wrote, "Part of our winning the award was the amazing work we did on transitioning to a new LMS—using all of the information science and instructional design skills I learned at the iSchool!"

Rebecca Greenlee (MSLIS '21) has been promoted to law librarian II and continues to manage her assigned law library as a solo librarian. She has also been appointed to the Connecticut Statewide Access to Justice Commission, where she will put her ideas about equitable access to justice to work.

Cordiah Hayes (MSLIS '22) has been selected as the recipient of the 2024 Beta Phi Mu Distinguished Member Award.

Ruth D. Nelson (MSLIS '14) has authored a new book, "Our Lady of the World's Fair: Bringing Michelangelo's Pieta to Queens in 1964," which was recently published by Cornell University Press-Tree Hills.

Olivia Palid (MSLIS '21) was recently promoted to senior coordinator, Chicago programs, at the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois.

Mary Pedraza (MSLIS '21) began a new role at the University of Illinois Chicago Daley Library Special Collections on September 30. She is excited to return to Chicago and serve Illinois students once again, and she invites fellow alumni to "come on down for some research!"

Anna Sielaff (MSLIS '23) is an associate member of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League [featured in the film "A League of Their Own"]. She has been doing research on former player Dottie Schroeder, who grew up in Champaign County. 

Erika Ternes (MSLIS '24) continues to serve her "tiny but mighty" rural library in youth services. She enjoys the variety of small library work, from conducting story time and editing MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) records to redesigning cash handling procedures and hula hooping on the library lawn.

Stephanie Dietrich (MSLIS '18) started a new position as educational programs manager for the Cancer Center at Illinois.

Mandi Goodsett (MSLIS '13) is the recipient of the 2024 Jay Ladd Distinguished Service Award, presented by the Academic Library Association of Ohio. This award recognizes someone who has promoted academic libraries and librarianship not only on their own campus but also within the state.

Mallory Jallas (MSLIS '12) started a new position as the head of information literacy and academic outreach and clinical associate professor at the University of Illinois Springfield in August 2024.

Courtney Moore (MSLIS '14) received the 2024 Young Adult Library Professional of the Year Award from the Illinois Library Association. 

A paper by Teresa Moreno (MSLIS '19) was named the winner of the 2024 Annual Library Juice Paper Contest. "Interrupting the Criminalization of Information in the Academic Library Classroom," which was published in the Canadian Journal of Academic Librarianship, was determined by the award jury to be the most excellent paper out of seventeen submissions. 

Joshua Newport (MSLIS '13), math and science librarian at Illinois State University, was featured in the Illinois Library Association's Member Spotlight for the week of December 9, 2024.

Julia Pollack (MSLIS '12), creative program manager for the University of Illinois Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, was featured in The News-Gazette for the poison dart frog artwork she created for the Dixon Graphics window in Champaign.

Jordan Ruud (MSLIS '12) has been appointed as the director of library services at Boreham Library at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith.

Laura A. Sheets (MSLIS '12) has been selected to guest-edit a special issue of Advances in Online Education: A Peer-Reviewed Journal. The special issue, which will be published in fall 2024, will focus on librarian collaboration with faculty in the development and delivery of online education.

After spending a year as interim assistant dean, Zack Stein (MSLIS '16) became the permanent assistant dean of technical services at University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He also received tenure and was promoted to the status of associate professor.

Elise Tanner (MSLIS '15) has started a new position as the digital asset manager at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Anna Trammell (MSLIS '15) recently started a new position as Community Archiving Program Manager at Internet Archive.

Katherine Villa (MSLIS '18) started her new position as arts, humanities, and social sciences librarian for Researcher Services at the University of California-Davis Library on March 1, 2024, and graduated with a PhD in philosophy from the University of Miami on August 2, 2024.

Amy Wildman (MSLIS '19) was recently promoted from assistant librarian to librarian at the Tolono Public Library.

Jamie Wittenberg (MSLIS '15), assistant dean for research and innovation strategies at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been elected as the new Board president of DataCite, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the visibility and accessibility of research, effective January 1, 2025.

Jennifer Asimakopoulos (MSLIS '07) received the 2024 Reader's Advisory Service Award from the Illinois Library Association.

Lora Del Rio (MSLIS '08) was featured in the Illinois Association of College & Research Libraries Forum (IACRL) Member Spotlight on September 26, 2024.

Joshua Finnell (MSLIS '07) was recently appointed as the Associate University Librarian and Director of Research & Scholarly Initiatives at Case Library and Geyer Center for Information Technology at Colgate University.

Leah Gregory (MSLIS '04) is the co-host of a new podcast called "Can't Shelve This!," which aims to entertain and educate everyone on the importance of school libraries.

Daniel Kraus (MSLIS '06) was interviewed by I Love Libraries, an initiative of the American Library Association, for Episode 11 of their podcast "How I Library."

Norma Linton (MSLIS '97, PhD '09) passed away on October 6, 2024.

Mary VanSwol (MSLIS '05) has been named the new director of the Park Forest (IL) Library. 

Jeffrey Carrico (MSLIS '97) passed away on May 13, 2024.

Chad Kahl (MSLIS '98) moved into the Data and Social Sciences position at Illinois State University's Milner Library on July 1. He has worked at Milner Library since 2003.

Bilal Salahuddin (MSLIS '92) retired as branch manager at High Meadows Branch of the Harris County Library System in Houston, Texas.

Frances Drone-Silvers (MSLIS '84) is the recipient of the Starfish Thrower Award from the Health Sciences Librarians of Illinois (HSLI). This award recognizes an HSLI member who has made a difference in the organization.

Molly Horio (MSLIS '89) is the recipient of the 2024 President’s Award from the Health Sciences Librarians of Illinois. The award recognizes an HSLI member who has made a lasting impact on the organization.

David Hunter (PhD '89) gave a lecture at the Clark Library at the University of California, Los Angeles. He said the lecture was part of the Karmiole Lecture series on the history of books and printing, "about which I learned so much from Prof. D.W. Krummel." 

Ruth Riley (MSLIS '85), librarian emerita, is the 2024 recipient of the Career Achievement Award from the University of South Carolina School of Medicine.

Ruth A. Riley (MSLIS '85) retired on June 3, 2024 and relocated to Concordia, Kansas.

Margaret Chandler (MSLIS '71) passed away on October 16, 2024.

Sue Ann Hamiter (Frizzell) (MSLS '72) passed away on August 14, 2024, in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Ann Marlow (MSLIS '73) passed away on October 24, 2024.

Patricia Fravel Vander Meer (MSLIS '77) coauthored Artificially Yours: A Tale of Uncanny Animals, a book of fiction based in part on her work as an academic librarian.

Delores (Thompson) Garrett (MSLIS '67) passed away on May 8, 2019.