A recent analysis of online conversations about President Obama’s proposed plan for tuition-free community colleges, America's College Promise, indicates that a significant number of people oppose the plan.  iSchool doctoral student Shubhanshu Mishra and researchers examined the content and civility of comments that were posted on websites during the week following Obama's announcement.

Assistant Professor Emily Knox has been elected to a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). An alliance of more than fifty nonprofit organizations, NCAC promotes freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression and opposes censorship in all its forms.  

Doctoral candidate Shameem Ahmed successfully defended his dissertation, "mHealth Literacy: Characterizing People’s Ability to Use Smartphone-based Health-related Applications," on June 30.

Doctoral candidate Melissa Villa-Nicholas successfully defended her dissertation, "Latinas in Telecommunications: Intersectional Experiences in the Bell System," on June 30.

Around the world, the ubiquity of social media is growing, but its effects remain to be fully understood. Alumnus Anatoliy Gruzd (@gruzd) explores the impacts of social media on modern life, from interpersonal communication to the formation of political structures, in his research.

The Library School Alumni Association (LSAA) has announced the 2016 recipients of its annual awards. The recipients were recognized on June 26 at the LSAA Annual Meeting and reception held at the annual meeting of the American Library Association in Orlando.

Several members of the iSchool community will give presentations at the 2016 Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School (DHOxSS) on July 4-8 at the University of Oxford. Attendees will follow one of eight workshop tracks throughout the week, and attend several additional lectures and a poster session.

Assistant Professor Jana Diesner has begun work on a new project with the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI). The goal of the project, “Selection and Influence: Identification of link formation mechanisms in scientific collaboration networks,” is to study the roles of selection—the process of people forming relationship with similar others—and social influence—the increasing similarity of connected people over time—in scientific collaboration networks.

Georgeann Burch (MS '04), K-12 program coordinator, retired from the University on May 31, 2016. The first to serve in this role, she joined the iSchool in 2005 following experience as a school library media specialist. Under her direction, the program expanded in enrollments, offerings, and reputation.

Developed in the 1940s and 1950s, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy measures physical and chemical properties of atoms or molecules by measuring change in the magnetic resonance of the nuclei of atoms. The process is used by scientists for a variety of applications, such as substance identification. In biomolecular science, NMR supports discovery and identification of new drugs, disease and metabolic research, study of structural biology, and more.