Knox and Pintar named CITL Faculty Fellows

Emily Knox
Emily Knox, Professor
Judith Pintar
Judith Pintar, Teaching Professor

Associate Professor and BS/IS Program Director Emily Knox and Teaching Associate Professor Judith Pintar have been named Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning (CITL) Faculty Fellows. This new program, which is supported by the Office of the Provost, "draws upon Fellows' unique perspectives and academic interests to assist CITL staff in identifying faculty needs and reducing barriers to participation in CITL programs, workshops, and events."

Knox, the iSchool's 2019-2020 Centennial Scholar, serves on the boards of the Freedom to Read Foundation, Beta Phi Mu, Association for Information Science & Technology, and National Coalition Against Censorship. Her research interests include information access, intellectual freedom and censorship, information ethics, information policy, and the intersection of print culture and reading practices. She received her PhD from the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University and her MS from the iSchool at Illinois.

Pintar's research interests include digital storytelling, game studies, and the development of interactive and narrative AI. She serves as director of Games @ Illinois: Playful Design for Transformative Education, a project funded by the Provost’s Investment for Growth program; it is an initiative of Playful by Design, which began as an interdisciplinary research cluster of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities and is now sponsored by Informatics Programs. Prior to joining the iSchool, she served as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and as a visiting assistant professor in Sociology, where she earned her PhD.

The CITL Faculty Fellowship will run from September 2019 to August 2020. 

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Tibebu joins the School

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Haileleol Tibebu joined the faculty as a teaching assistant professor on January 1, 2025. His research and teaching interests include responsible AI, AI policy and governance, algorithmic fairness, and the intersection of technology and society.

Haileleol Tibebu

Spectrum Scholar Spotlight: Leslie Lopez

Twelve iSchool master's students were named 2024–2025 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. MSLIS student Leslie Lopez graduated from the University of North Texas with a BA in psychology.

Leslie Lopez headshot

Nominations invited for 2024 Downs Intellectual Freedom Award

The School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign seeks nominations for the 2024 Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award. The deadline for nominations is March 15, 2025. The award is cosponsored by Sage Publishing.

Rhinesmith joins the faculty

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Colin Rhinesmith joined the faculty as a visiting associate professor on January 1, 2025. His position will become permanent following approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. He previously served as founder and director of the Digital Equity Research Center at the Metropolitan New York Library Council.

Colin Rhinesmith

SafeRBot to assist community, police in crime reporting

Across the nation, 911 dispatch centers are facing a worker shortage. Unfortunately, this understaffing, plus the nature of the job itself, leads to dispatchers who are often overworked and stressed. Meanwhile, when community members need to report a crime, their options are to contact 911 for an emergency or, in a non-emergency situation, call a non-emergency number or fill out an online form. A new chatbot, SafeRBot, designed and developed by Associate Professor Yun Huang, Informatics PhD student Yiren Liu, and BSIS student Tony An seeks to improve the reporting process for non-emergency situations for both community members and dispatch centers.

Yun Huang