Catheryne Popovitch (MS/LIS '11) had never considered working in government archives when she was a student in the iSchool but is now relishing the variety in her job with the Illinois State Archives. Her work has garnered accolades from the Council of State Archivists (2021 Rising Star Award) and the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators (inaugural Emerging Leader Award).

BS/IS student Jared Canty is learning new skills through the Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program (URAP). Canty, a senior from the Chicago area who is also majoring in brain and cognitive sciences, applied to the program because he wanted to obtain more research experience before graduation. For his project, he is documenting bilingual (Spanish-English) speech from individuals residing within the Midwest.

BS/IS student Betty Guerrero shares her internship experience with Synchrony Financial.

Eight iSchool master's students were named 2021-2022 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. MS/LIS student Kaila Rain Thomas earned her BA degree in American history from the University of San Francisco, with a focus on African American history, culture, and politics.

Doctoral candidate Lo Lee successfully defended her dissertation, "Understanding Information Activities of Hobbyists in the Making of Arts and Crafts Across Space," on April 4.

Assistant Professor Elizabeth Hoiem has received the Humanities Research Institute (HRI) Prize for Best Faculty Research for her paper, "The Progress of Sugar: Consumption as Complicity in Children’s Books about Slavery and Manufacturing, 1790-2015." The award recognizes outstanding humanities research by a faculty member at the University of Illinois.

For Kam Wells (MS/IM '18), working for the Boston Red Sox is a dream come true. A baseball player and lifelong fan of the sport, Wells was a graduate data analyst for the U of I Division of Intercollegiate Athletics Sports Technology Department while he was an iSchool student. Now he works with player-related data—analyzing and storing it, as well as everything that goes into running a professional baseball team.

According to MS/IM student Zheng Zhang, being the recipient of a scholarship from the iSchool gave him confidence that he was in the right field. Zhang holds a BS in electrical and computer engineering from New York Institute of Technology and a BS in communication engineering from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications. It was during his undergraduate study that he was advised by a tutor to pursue a degree in information management because of his interests.

Associate Professor Emily Knox will deliver the Masha Dexter Lecture on Gender, Sexuality, and Public Policy at Brown University on April 7. The purpose of the annual lecture is to "memorialize and promote in other students Masha Dexter's extraordinary energy and engagement with the overlapping issues of gender, sexuality, and public policy, as reflected in the broad range of her own activities."

Doctoral candidate Dianah T. Kacunguzi successfully defended her dissertation, "Knowledge Preservation Practices of Herbalists in Uganda: An Ethnographic Study," on March 31