Adjunct Lecturer Zachary Stier has been selected as the Early Career Award recipient of the 2025 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Excellence in Teaching Award. He will be honored at an awards presentation during the ALISE 2025 Annual Conference, which will be held from October 6–8 in Kansas City, Missouri.

The iSchool is proud to announce that nine faculty members have received new appointments. Anita Say Chan, Kate McDowell, and Dong Wang have been promoted to professor. Nigel Bosch, Jessie Chin, Melissa Ocepek, Matthew Turk, and Karen Wickett have been promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure. Associate Professor Rachel Adler has been granted indefinite tenure.

Doctoral candidates Yuanxi Fu and Lan Li have received Beta Phi Mu's 2025 Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship awards for their ongoing dissertation research at the iSchool. This prestigious award honors four doctoral students in library and information science, information studies, informatics, or a related field. Fellowship recipients are awarded $3,000.

Eight iSchool master's students have been named 2025-2026 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. Since 1997, the Spectrum Scholarship Program has assisted over 1,600 graduate-level students pursuing degrees in library and information studies through ALA-accredited programs. This year's scholars were selected based on their commitment to community building, leadership potential, and planned contributions to making social justice as part of everyday work in LIS. The highly competitive scholarship program received four times as many applications as there were available scholarships.

MSIM student Shravani Bhupal was honored for her internship performance at the 19th Annual Research Park Intern Awards ceremony on July 24. The University of Illinois' Research Park is home to over 120 companies and more than 800 interns. Bhupal, who served as an intern at COUNTRY Financial DigitaLab, received the Best Business Innovation Award for her work. 

Associate Professor Maria Bonn, Teaching Assistant Professor Haileleol Tibebu, and Assistant Professor Travis L. Wagner are among the twenty faculty from the University of Illinois System who were selected for the 2025–2026 cohort of the Public Voices Fellowship. The program is part of a national initiative led by The OpEd Project to help experts from underrepresented groups to be positioned as public thought leaders in their fields and contribute to the national dialogue around important issues.

Associate Professor Yun Huang has been named a 2025–2026 Linowes Fellow by the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois. She is also the recipient of a 2024–2025 fellowship, which "provides exceptionally promising tenure-stream faculty with opportunities for innovation and discovery using the Cline Center's data holdings and/or analytic tools."

Assistant Professor Jessie Chin has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award to support lifelong learning and foster information literacy. This prestigious award is given in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Chin’s project, “Search as a Mechanism for Learning,” will be supported by a five-year, $629,451 grant from the NSF.

PhD student Muhammad Hassan has been selected as an IAPP Westin Scholar Award honoree. The annual awards were created by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) to support students who are identified as future leaders in the field of privacy and data protection. 

iSchool Alumni Association (ISAA) is pleased to announce the recipients of its annual awards, which were presented at an alumni reception during the 2025 ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition.