The iSchool is pleased to announce that Yun Huang will join the faculty as an assistant professor in August 2019, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. She is currently an assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University.

Professor Emerita Selma Richardson passed away on July 10, 2019, in Urbana. An authority on school library media services, Richardson worked in a number of school libraries, including Oak Park and River Forest High School, before joining the University of Illinois in 1974. For over a decade, she was responsible for multiple editions of the American Library Association publication, Magazines for Children: A Guide for Parents, Teachers, and Librarians. She was also a historical children's book scholar whose research focused on public library services to children in Illinois. 

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Jessie Chin will join the faculty as an assistant professor in August 2019, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. She is currently a research assistant professor in biomedical and health information sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The iSchool Alumni Association (ISAA) honored its 2019 award recipients at the ISAA annual meeting and reception, which was held on June 23 during the annual meeting of the American Library Association in Washington, DC.

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Yang Wang will join the faculty as an associate professor in August 2019, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. He is currently an assistant professor and co-director of the Social Computing Systems Lab (SALT) in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University.

Affiliate Professor Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, professor and coordinator for information literacy services and instruction in the University Library, in collaboration with Kyle Jones, assistant professor in the School of Informatics and Computing at the Indiana University-Indianapolis (IUPUI), has been awarded a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for Prioritizing Privacy: Training to Improve Practice in Library Analytics Projects.

Associate Professor and BS/IS Program Director Emily Knox was recently appointed president of the Board of Trustees of the Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF), a nonprofit legal and educational organization affiliated with the American Library Association, and elected vice president/president-elect of Beta Phi Mu, the international honor society for library and information studies.

Provost Andreas C. Cangellaris has announced the appointment of Dr. Eunice E. Santos as dean of the School of Information Sciences, effective August 16, 2019, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. Santos currently serves as the Ron Hochsprung Endowed Chair and Professor, and department chair of computer science, at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

Associate Professor and MS/LIS Program Director Maria Bonn and colleagues in North Carolina and Kansas have received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (MS LG-36-19-0021-19) to fund their project, Scholarly Communications Notebook (SCN). Co-principal investigators on the project include Will Cross, director of the Copyright & Digital Scholarship Center at North Carolina State University Libraries, and Josh Bolick, scholarly communications librarian at the University of Kansas Libraries.

iSchool Career Services Coordinator Rebecca Hodson (MS '13) has coauthored a chapter in The Future Academic Librarian’s Toolkit: Finding Success on the Job Hunt and in Your First Job, a newly published book edited by Megan Hodge. According to the publisher (ACRL), this handbook will help readers add important skills to their professional toolkit, including advocating for themselves and their ideas, writing for publication, teaching effectively, connecting with faculty and students, and building their professional brand.