Our School is grateful for talented and dedicated staff, who contribute greatly to our teaching and research excellence. This "Get to Know" series highlights our staff, sharing their friendly faces and stories of professional success.

For its defense of the First Amendment rights of incarcerated individuals, the Education Justice Project (EJP) has earned the 2019 Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award. EJP is a social justice and academic community of incarcerated students, educators, formerly incarcerated individuals, family members of the incarcerated, and others. Based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, EJP offers educational programs to eligible individuals incarcerated at Danville Correctional Center (DCC), a men’s medium-security state prison 35 miles from the Urbana campus.

For the first time in the journal’s history, Library Trends has published a bilingual issue. Communities and Technologies: Realities, Challenges, and Opportunities for Librarians in Cuba was edited by Kate Williams, iSchool associate professor; Pedro Urra González, professor of information technologies at the University of Havana’s School of Library and Information Sciences; and Professor Yohannis Martí-Lahera, professor, director of information, and director of the Central Library at the University of Havana.

Moises Orozco Villicaña, director of enrollment management at the iSchool, was featured in the fall 2019 issue of Perspectives, the magazine of NAGAP, which is the Association for Graduate Enrollment Management. In the interview, "A Candid Conversation on Increasing Enrollment of Underrepresented Students in Graduate School," Orozco Villicaña described his personal motivations for pursuing higher education, his experiences working with underrepresented students, and some of the challenges associated with the recruitment and retention of students of color. He also presented on this topic at the 2019 NAGAP Annual Conference earlier this year.

The iSchool is hosting a special two-day gathering, INDABA: Why Libraries? Why Librarians?, from November 15-16. All are invited, and remote participants can join online. The event will be recorded.

Faculty, staff, and students represented the iSchool at the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC), held on October 1-4 in Orlando, Florida. Produced by AnitaB.org and presented in partnership with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), GHC is the world's largest gathering of women technologists.

Rebekah Buchanan, associate professor of English education at Western Illinois University, will visit the iSchool on October 14 to give a lecture addressing libraries in Norway, particularly libraries in prisons and school as well as public libraries. The talk, which is cohosted by the iSchool, Mortenson Center, and Progressive Librarians Guild, is part of the Info City Lecture series.

Collecting and understanding data is important, but equally important is the ability to tell meaningful stories based on data. Students in the iSchool's Data Science Storytelling course (IS 590DST) learn data visualization as well as storytelling techniques, a combination that will prove valuable to their employers as they enter the workforce.

Our School is grateful for talented and dedicated staff, who contribute greatly to our teaching and research excellence. This "Get to Know" series highlights our staff, sharing their friendly faces and stories of professional success. 

Historian and children's literature scholar Sara L. Schwebel has been named director of The Center for Children's Books (CCB) and professor of information sciences at Illinois. She previously served as a professor of English and women's & gender studies at the University of South Carolina (USC). Prior to her academic career, she taught English and history to middle school students in Connecticut and Virginia.