Get to know Alison Rollins: master’s student, librarian, and poet

Alison Rollins

When iSchool master’s student Alison Rollins saw that Nerinx Hall High School had a job opening for a librarian, she jumped at the chance to work for her alma mater. She was hired in in August, bringing several years of experience in youth services for public libraries.

The new position has allowed Rollins to gain additional real-world skills while working on her MS in library and information science. She decided to pursue the iSchool’s top-ranked degree in order to give her a career advantage and expand her skill set to other areas of LIS.

“Because I have so much experience working in youth services, I try to take classes at the iSchool that are not focused on that area,” she said. Instead, she’s taking courses like Social Science Research in LIS (LIS 519), Museum Informatics (LIS 490), and Academic Librarianship (LIS 567). “I’ve tried to make my studies at U of I supplement my hands-on experience . . . . rather than repeat it.”

In addition to balancing a busy work schedule with classes and projects, Rollins has been able to make time to pursue her creative passion, poetry. She has always had a love for language and began writing poems in high school—and is now reconnecting with the teacher who first reviewed her poetry, who is a colleague at Nerinx Hall High.

“I think as a poet you’re able to use [words] for play, make them be experimental or surreal, and there are really no boundaries or rules. In that way, you can challenge the culture and the status quo, have a counter-narrative, or destruct what’s considered normative . . . . That’s what I hope my work does,” she said.

Rollins’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, River Styx, Vinyl, and elsewhere. This fall, the Poetry Foundation awarded her a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, which included a $25,800 prize to encourage the further study and writing of poetry. She also won second prize in the 2016 James H. Nash Poetry Contest and was honored as a Cave Canem Foundation 2016 Retreat Fellow. In June, she was recognized as a 2016-2017 American Library Association Spectrum Scholar.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Spectrum Scholar Spotlight: Zhaneille Green

Thirteen iSchool master's students were named 2022-2023 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. Zhaneille Green holds a BA in geography and history from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Zhaneille Green

Student award recipients announced

Each year, the School of Information Sciences recognizes a group of outstanding students for their achievement in academics as well as a number of attributes that contribute to professional success. Congratulations to this year's honorees!

Ly Dinh and Jessica Cheng

Ayorinde and Lopez receive CARLI Building Diversity Graduate Assistantships

The Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) is pleased to announce that Elizabeth Ayorinde and Victor Lopez are the recipients of the Building Diversity Graduate Assistantships for the 2023-2024 academic year. The assistantships will provide experience, mentoring, and networking to participants with the goal of increasing the number of staff members from underrepresented groups at Illinois' two and four-year public and private college and university libraries.

Liu wins iSchool t-shirt design contest

Last month, Leep student Hui Liu was selected as the winner of the iSchool's t-shirt design contest. Her design was based on the prompt, "The Power of Information," which is also the School's tagline. Participants were asked to submit designs that illustrated the tagline from a student perspective.

Hui Liu wears a t-shirt with her winning design

Spectrum Scholar Spotlight: Daynali Flores-Rodriguez

Thirteen iSchool master's students were named 2022-2023 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. Daynali Flores-Rodriguez holds an MA and PhD in comparative and world literature from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and BA in comparative literature from the University of Puerto Rico.

Daynali Flores-Rodriguez