The iSchool Scholars-in-Residence program allows international researchers the opportunity to work with faculty and students on specific research projects, offer guest lectures, and participate in research activities at the iSchool and University of Illinois. Current scholars-in-residence include Ya Gao, Chul Wan Kwak, Han (Hannah) Liu, Jing Yuan, Xi Zhang, and Yigang Zhou.
Doctoral candidate Cheryl Thompson successfully defended her dissertation, "Data Expertise and Service Development in Geoscience Data Centers and Academic Libraries," on May 8.
Professor Emeritus Chip Bruce will return to the iSchool this summer to teach Inquiry-based Learning (LIS 590IBL). In this online course, students will examine the nature of inquiry and inquiry-based learning, engage in inquiry-based learning, and consider obstacles to learning, including those related to management, assessment, basic skills, cultural differences, and pedagogical goals.
Alumna Lizabeth (Betsy) Wilson (MS '78) will deliver the 2017 iSchool Convocation address. The event will be held on Sunday, May 14, at 9:30 a.m. For those who would like to watch the ceremony online, live video will be available as well as archived for future viewing.
iSchool faculty and students will participate in the University of Illinois Social Media Analytics Summit, which will be held on Tuesday, May 2, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. The event will take place at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) auditorium.
With a passion for making books accessible to anyone at any age, Justin Williams made it his mission to seek a career in a library that would allow him to connect with others and make an impact in their lives through the use of stories and information. Williams is set to graduate this May and has a job lined up at as a teen librarian for the White Oak Library District in Lockport, Illinois.
Master's student Ritse Adefolalu has received the Marilyn Kay Maynard Scholarship awarded by the Illinois School Library Media Association (ISLMA). The scholarship is designed to encourage students who wish to gain licensure to work in Illinois as a school librarian, with three scholarships awarded each year.
The iSchool and University Library are partners on a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The grant supports work to hold a national forum and develop a white paper aimed at simplifying scholars' access to in-copyright and access-restricted texts for computational analysis and data mining research.
Doctoral candidate Jinseok Kim successfully defended his dissertation, "The impact of author name disambiguation on knowledge discovery from large-scale scholarly data," on April 24.
Master's student Kortney Rupp has been selected by the Special Libraries Association (SLA) as recipient of the 2017 Marion E. Sparks Award. This award provides funding to attend the 2017 SLA Annual Conference, which will be held June 16-20 in Phoenix, Arizona.
