iSchool undergraduates selected as 2024 Community Academic Scholars

The Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute (IHSI), in partnership with the Center for Social and Behavioral Science and with support from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, has selected BSIS students Sophie Chiewtrakoon and Madisen LeShoure as 2024 Community-Academic Scholars. The 17 scholars in this cohort represent seven colleges and schools and encompass a diverse array of fields of study, from community health to education to industrial design.  

The cohort of scholars was selected from a competitive pool of applicants possessing the skills needed to work on their selected projects, their personal connections to and passion for the issues their projects address, and for the many ways they have already made an impact on campus and in the community. Many students work in labs across campus, volunteer in the community, and serve in leadership roles in student organizations.

Sophie Chiewtrakoon

Chiewtrakoon is majoring in information sciences and sociology. She is a James Scholar, president of the Rural Area Student Initiative, and a member of Phi Alpha Delta pre-law fraternity. After graduation, Chiewtrakoon plans to study law, with a focus on technology's role in the justice system and how it could be used to address societal inequalities. Chiewtrakoon is working with graduate student Anna Barkley, exploring how first-generation college students conceptualize college readiness. Her upbringing in rural Arkansas fuels her passion for providing educational opportunities and uplifting future generations. She will work with College of Applied Health Sciences Assistant Professor Meaghan McKenna and Danville Public Schools to introduce and evaluate a writing intervention for students kindergarten to second grade. Learn more about the project.

Madisen LeShoure

LeShoure is majoring in information sciences with a focus on data and society. She is a member of the Black Business Network and is currently interested in a career in information technology or as an information research scientist/data specialist. LeShoure is working on a research project with Associate Professor Anita Chan and the Community Data Clinic that investigates the social implications of Automatic License Plate Readers in Champaign County and on an independent study project with Teaching Assistant Professor Brandon Batzloff that examines the relationship between residential segregation and educational outcomes in Champaign-Urbana. LeShoure is also working with fellow scholar Eryck Wiles, Human Development and Family Studies and African American Studies Associate Professor Shardé Smith, and Driven to Reach Excellence & Academic Achievement for Males (DREAAM) to design a community strengths assessment (CSA) to inform the development of culturally relevant programs and services for Black youth and families in Champaign and Urbana. Learn more about the project.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Faculty receive support for AI-related projects from new pilot program

Associate Professor Yun Huang, Assistant Professor Jiaqi Ma, and Assistant Professor Haohan Wang have received computing resources from the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR), a two-year pilot program led by the National Science Foundation in partnership with other federal agencies and nongovernmental partners. The goal of the pilot is to support AI-related research with particular emphasis on societal challenges. Last month, awardees presented their research at the NAIRR Pilot Annual Meeting.

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.