The faculty and personal papers of Gerald McWorter, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor emeritus of African American studies and of information sciences, show the arc of a freedom narrative, from his ancestors’ founding of New Philadelphia, Illinois — the first U.S. town to be incorporated by a Black man — to McWorter’s scholarly work in Black studies and his activism in the Black liberation movement.

Ten iSchool instructors were named in the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for Summer 2024. The rankings are released every semester, and results are based on the Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) questionnaire forms maintained by Measurement and Evaluation in the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. Only those instructors who gave out ICES forms during the semester and who released their data for publication are included in the list.

A paper coauthored by Assistant Professor Travis L. Wagner and Vanessa Kitzie, associate professor of information science at the University of South Carolina, titled "'In Many Ways, You're This Person Who's Providing Light': Theorizing Embodied Responses to Information Absence with LGBTQIA+ Communities," has been selected as the winner of the 2024 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE)/Bohdan S. Wynar Research Paper Competition. 

Professor Emily Knox has been selected for the 2024 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Excellence in Teaching Award. She will receive the award at an awards presentation during the ALISE 2024 Annual Conference, which will be held from October 14-17 in Portland, Oregon.

Members of the iSchool community will present their research this week at the Library Research Seminar, a program of the American Library Association’s Library Research Round Table. Library Research Seminar VIII: Telling Library Stories will be held from September 16-18 at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

iSchool faculty and students will present their research at the 10th International Conference on Computational Models of Argument (COMMA 2024), which will be held from September 18-20 in Hagen, Germany, as well as pre-conference workshops. The conference brings together researchers interested in computational models of argument and the representation of argumentation structures in natural language texts.

Associate Professor Kate McDowell will present three keynotes on data storytelling this fall. Her first keynote will be given at Library Research Seminar VIII: Telling Library Stories, which will be held from September 16-18 at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

Fifty-four iSchool instructors were named in the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for Spring 2024. The rankings are released every semester, and results are based on the Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) questionnaire forms maintained by Measurement and Evaluation in the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Assistant Professor JooYoung Seo a four-year, $459,000 grant to create inclusive learning environments and advance workplace equity for persons with disabilities in STEM fields. The project will build on Seo's work in developing open-source tools that can augment visual charts into touchable (braille), readable (text), and audible (sound) representations.

Jiangping Chen assumed the position of interim executive associate dean and visiting professor on August 16. In this role, she will work closely with Dean Eunice E. Santos to realize the iSchool's strategic goals and objectives. She also will provide leadership for the internal administration of the School, including oversight for the work of associate deans and assigned staff as well as the coordination of faculty affairs. Chen's position will become permanent following approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.