Phelps to speak at Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology annual meeting

Doctoral student Kirstin Phelps will speak later this month at the 31st Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, which will be held on April 14-16 in Anaheim, California. The event includes research presentations related to industrial-organizational psychology; the scientific study of work at the individual, organization, and society levels; and the application of that study to workplace issues.

Phelps will present her paper, "Using SNA to Evaluate Effects of the LeaderShape Institute,” during a juried paper panel on the topic, “The Intersection of Leadership Development and Social Contexts,” on April 15 at 8:30 a.m.

Abstract: This paper will present initial findings from an evaluative study of leadership resource networks among student participants of a week-long leadership development institute. With estimates of over one thousand leadership education programs offered at college campuses, an important area of research is exploring the impact and influence of such programs on the development of student leadership capacities and outcomes. With the growing interest in network approaches to leadership, this study applied a combination of network methods with traditional survey and focus group methods to understand students’ leadership network development. Sociometric data was collected from fifty-eight participants prior to and after participation. Initial findings reflect an increase in friendship networks among participants while identifying differences in helping participants establish connections for other leadership resources. Implications for leadership development are discussed.

At GSLIS, Phelps focuses on research that addresses interactions and behaviors in online environments. Specifically, she is interested in understanding the leadership processes and practices in online spaces by exploring what environmental structures help or hinder the leadership process, the differences or similarities to online leadership practices as compared to real life practices, and general information behavior in groups.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Scholarship alleviates financial burden for returning student

During her time as an active-duty Naval Officer, Anna Hartman realized that she had a passion for helping others and building community. That passion, combined with a lifelong love of reading, led her to pursue an MSLIS degree at the University of Illinois. Hartman is receiving support for her studies through the Balz Endowment Fund, which was established by Nancy (BA LAS '70, MSLIS '72) and Dan (BS Media '68, MS Media '72) Balz to help make education more affordable for returning students.

Anna Hartman

Winning exhibits highlight evolution of music media and Uni High magazine

MSLIS students Monica Gil, Holly Bleeden, and Harrison Price were selected as winners of this year's Graduate Student Exhibit Contest, sponsored by the University of Illinois Library. Gil and Bleeden won first place for their exhibit, "Echoes of Time: The Evolution of Music Media," and Price won second place for his exhibit, "Unique-ly Illinois: Creative Writing from High School to Higher Education." The exhibits will be on display in the Marshall Gallery in the library through the end of March.

MSLIS students Monica Gil and Holly Bleeden standing next to their exhibit, "Echoes of Time: The Evolution of Music Media," at the Main Library.

Wei receives Amazon Post Internship Fellowship

PhD student Tianxin Wei has been awarded an Amazon Post Internship Fellowship, which will provide $20,000 in unrestricted funds and $20,000 in Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits to support Wei's research with his advisor, Professor Jingrui He. For the past two summers, Wei has served as an applied scientist intern at Amazon in Palo Alto, California. He has been part of a team that is working on search query understanding within Amazon apps and services, as well as developing shopping foundation models.

Tianxin Wei

iSchool participation in iConference 2025

The following iSchool faculty and students will participate in iConference 2025, which will be held virtually from March 11-14 and physically from March 18-22 in Bloomington, Indiana. The theme of this year's conference is "Living in an AI-gorithmic world."

Youth-AI-Safety named a winning team in international hackathon

A team of researchers from the SALT (Social Computing Systems) Lab has been selected as a winner in an international hackathon hosted by the Berkeley Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence. The LLM Agents MOOC Hackathon brought together over 3,000 students, researchers, and practitioners from 127 countries to build and showcase innovative work in large language model (LLM) agents, grow the AI agent community, and advance LLM agent technology.