Adjunct Lecturer Zachary Stier has been selected as the Early Career Award recipient of the 2025 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Excellence in Teaching Award. He will be honored at an awards presentation during the ALISE 2025 Annual Conference, which will be held from October 6–8 in Kansas City, Missouri.

The iSchool is proud to announce that nine faculty members have received new appointments. Anita Say Chan, Kate McDowell, and Dong Wang have been promoted to professor. Nigel Bosch, Jessie Chin, Melissa Ocepek, Matthew Turk, and Karen Wickett have been promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure. Associate Professor Rachel Adler has been granted indefinite tenure.

Doctoral candidates Yuanxi Fu and Lan Li have received Beta Phi Mu's 2025 Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship awards for their ongoing dissertation research at the iSchool. This prestigious award honors four doctoral students in library and information science, information studies, informatics, or a related field. Fellowship recipients are awarded $3,000.

Large language models are built with safety protocols designed to prevent them from answering malicious queries and providing dangerous information. But users can employ techniques known as "jailbreaks" to bypass the safety guardrails and get LLMs to answer a harmful query.

Eight iSchool master's students have been named 2025-2026 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. Since 1997, the Spectrum Scholarship Program has assisted over 1,600 graduate-level students pursuing degrees in library and information studies through ALA-accredited programs. This year's scholars were selected based on their commitment to community building, leadership potential, and planned contributions to making social justice as part of everyday work in LIS. The highly competitive scholarship program received four times as many applications as there were available scholarships.

As a law librarian II for the State of Connecticut Judicial Branch, Rebecca Greenlee (MSLIS '21) helps patrons from all walks of life gain access to the law. She credits her graduate assistantship, the connections she made with her classmates, and the iSchool’s instructors with providing her with the foundation she needed for her role.

MSIM student Shravani Bhupal was honored for her internship performance at the 19th Annual Research Park Intern Awards ceremony on July 24. The University of Illinois' Research Park is home to over 120 companies and more than 800 interns. Bhupal, who served as an intern at COUNTRY Financial DigitaLab, received the Best Business Innovation Award for her work. 

Associate Professor Dong Wang will present the keynote at the second workshop on generative AI for recommender systems and personalization on August 4, in Toronto, Canada. The event will be held in conjunction with KDD 2025. 

To say that BSIS+DS student Affan Leebe keeps busy outside of the classroom is an understatement. A first-generation student from Chicago, Leebe has held three internships, led recruitment for the iSchool's professional fraternity, won a FactSet Client Case Competition, and mentored dozens of students. On top of that, he travelled to New York City during the spring 2025 semester to serve as emcee for the ATLAS Fellows Graduation Gala at the Museum of Modern Art.

Associate Professor Kate McDowell has authored a new book that will equip readers with the skills to transform data into stories for library advocacy, social justice, and inclusivity. Critical Data Storytelling for Libraries: Crafting Ethical Narratives for Advocacy and Impact, the second book in a new ALA Editions series on Critical Cultural Information Studies, will be available next month.