FTRF and GSLIS at Illinois announce intellectual freedom course and scholarship opportunities

The Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) and GSLIS are pleased to announce a partnership to offer an online graduate-level course on intellectual freedom for library and information science (LIS) students around the country. The course, in its second year, will be taught by GSLIS faculty member Emily Knox and is a project of FTRF’s Judith F. Krug Memorial Fund.

“Intellectual Freedom and Censorship” is a two-credit course and will be held August–October 2015. It is open to any student enrolled in an LIS degree program. As part of the collaboration, FTRF staff and volunteers will lend their expertise as guest speakers, and FTRF and ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom archival materials will be made available to students.

To encourage students outside the University of Illinois to participate, FTRF is offering four half-scholarships ($700 each). Applications for the scholarships are due May 1, 2015. For more information and to apply for the scholarship, visit the Judith Krug Fund Education Project web page.

Students enrolled in programs affiliated with the WISE consortium will be provided course credit automatically upon completion of the course. Others will need to coordinate course credit with their home institution. Technical requirements associated with the course are available online.

“We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with the University of Illinois,” said FTRF Executive Director Barbara M. Jones. “Our first collaboration was, by all measurements, extremely successful. Knowing that new professionals have a strong grounding in professional ethics and intellectual freedom principles and practice is invaluable.” 

“Intellectual Freedom and Censorship is one of my favorite classes to teach,” said Knox. “It was a great honor to teach this course and to be ranked as excellent by my students in their course evaluations. I am looking forward to teaching it in collaboration with the Freedom to Read Foundation in the years to come.”

Jamie D. Carlston, Dominican University student and 2014 scholarship recipient, had this to say about last fall’s class:

“What truly made the class valuable were the guest speakers Professor Knox invited each week. Each had stories about their experience with intellectual freedom. Instead of just discussing the issues theoretically, we were able to learn from those who had lived through IF situations. I really feel that after the course, I now have a more nuanced understanding of intellectual freedom and if I run into an IF issue in my professional career, I will be prepared to manage the situation.”

For more information please contact: Linda Smith at GSLIS, lcsmith@illinois.edu or (217) 333-7742, or Jonathan Kelley at FTRF, jokelley@ala.org or (312) 280-4226.

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