Four iSchool alumni—Kristine Hammerstrand (MS '79), Stacey Knight-Davis (MS '01), Heather McCammond-Watts (MS '95), and Brian Shepard (MS '05)—have been selected to receive awards from the Illinois Library Association (ILA).

Associate Professor and BS/IS Program Director Emily Knox has been named the iSchool's Centennial Scholar for 2019-2020. Endowed by alumni and friends of the School, the Centennial Scholar award recognizes outstanding accomplishments and/or professional promise in the field of library and information science.

After completing her MS/LIS degree, Lauren Camarillo would like to work in an academic library with first-year and/or first-generation students. She recently was selected to participate in the 2019-2021 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Kaleidoscope Diversity Scholars Program, which offers financial support as well as professional development opportunities. 

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Visiting Assistant Professor Melissa Ocepek will transition to the role of assistant professor, effective August 16.

Melissa Newell joined the iSchool on July 15 as director of undergraduate affairs. In this new position, she provides leadership and strategic direction for the administration of the Bachelor of Science in information sciences (BS/IS) degree, undergraduate student experience, and undergraduate recruitment and admission.

Twenty-seven iSchool instructors were named in the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for Spring 2019. The rankings are released every semester, and results are based on the Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) questionnaire forms maintained by Measurement and Evaluation in the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. Only those instructors who gave out ICES forms during the semester and who released their data for publication are included in the list.

Professor Emerita Linda C. Smith presented her research at two conferences this month, the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) UK Conference and the LibPMC: International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries.

Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner gave a keynote talk and presented a paper at the 5th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2), which was held July 17-20 at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. IC2S2 brings together academic researchers, industry experts, open data activists, and government agency workers to explore challenges, methods, and research questions in the field of computational social science.

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.