Four iSchool alumni have received the Up and Comer Award from ATG Media. Sarah E. Crissinger (MS '15), Hailley Fargo (MS '16), Maoria Kirker (MS '11), and Katrina Spencer (MS '16) are among the twenty individuals who were selected for the award, which is intended for early-career librarians and information professionals.

Six iSchool alumni have been selected by the American Library Association (ALA) to participate in its 2018 class of Emerging Leaders. Jessica Colbert (MS '17), Aisha Conner-Gaten (MS '13), Tracy Drake (MS '15), Hailley Fargo (MS '16), Brittany Fiedler (MS '17), and Yan Liu (MS '14) are included in this year's class of fifty individuals from across the country.

Julie Edwards (MS '05) fell in love with Botswana in 2015 when she helped plan a conference there for the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Reference and Information Section. As soon as her conference ended, she vowed that one day she would return. She is now back in Botswana as a Fulbright Scholar for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Three recipients of the 2017 Digital Library Federation (DLF) Forum Fellowships have ties to the iSchool. Jane Kelly, an MS/LIS student in the Leep program, and Nushrat Khan (MS '16) were awarded DLF Forum Fellowships for Students and New Professionals. Richard J. Urban (PhD '12) was named a KRESS+DLF Forum Fellow.

An interest in global education took Tracy Hubbard (MS '05) to India this summer. Hubbard, a library media specialist at the Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies in Evanston Skokie (IL) District 65, spent July in India as a fellow with Teachers for a Global Classroom. 

A travel fund has been established at the iSchool in honor of an alumna who loved to travel and lived in many places, making friends with people around the world. Although she lived in ten states and three foreign countries, Molly Dolan (MS '04) considered Champaign-Urbana "the true home of her heart."

Bradley Kuykendall (MS '15) was a "library junkie" as an undergraduate at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. Now serving as the reference and instruction librarian at Lincoln University, he is in a position to give back to his alma mater and recruit more students into the field of library and information science.

Exactly twenty years after starting work as a graduate assistant in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Lynne M. Thomas (MS '99) is returning as the new head of the library. She'll begin her appointment at the library and assume the Juanita J. and Robert E. Simpson Rare Book and Manuscript Library Professorship on September 1.

The Institute of Contemporary Art's "artful book club," ICA Reads, has selected Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, as its 2017 pick for a book of critical and societal importance. This reinterpretation of Octavia E. Butler's science-fiction masterpiece, Kindred, was adapted by iSchool alumnus and adjunct lecturer Damian Duffy (MS '08, PhD '16) and illustrated by John Jennings.

An interest in organization led Dale Josephs to the field of library and information science and his current job at eBay. Josephs uses the skills he learned at the iSchool—cataloging, metadata, Python programming, and data mining—to develop new analytics tools.