Charles Hargis Davis ("Charlie," "Chuck," "Dave"), former dean and professor emeritus in the iSchool at Illinois, died peacefully at his home in Bloomington, Indiana, on September 24. He was 82 years old.

A record fifteen iSchool master’s students were named 2020-2021 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 Amanda He holds a BA in biology with a minor in chemistry from Kenyon College.

PhD student Clair Irwin will participate in the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s 2020 Virtual Seminar, New Directions in Scholarly Publishing: Community, Collaboration, and Crisis, which will be held September 30-October 1. The seminar will explore new ways for publishers and industry leaders to support peer-reviewed research and academic publishing, especially during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.

PhD student Ly Dinh, doctoral candidate Shadi Rezapour, and Research Manager Chieh-Li "Julian" Chin will participate in the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC), which will be held virtually from September 29-October 3. 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. 

Fifteen iSchool instructors were named in the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for Summer 2020. 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.

Doctoral candidate Jooho Lee successfully defended her dissertation, "Using Grant Applications to Measure the Evolution of Collaborative and Non-Collaborative Research," on September 21.

PhD student Courtney Richardson has been selected as a Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) fellow by Imagining America (IA), a consortium that "brings together scholars, artists, designers, humanists, and organizers to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory 'America' and world." Fellows are selected for their creative and intentional commitment to public engagement and unique approach to engaged scholarship.

Leep student Tobias Paul is the recipient of the Sarah Rebecca Reed Scholarship from Beta Phi Mu, the international honor society for library and information studies. The scholarship provides financial support for a beginning student at an LIS program accredited by the American Library Association. Paul earned their bachelor’s degrees in professional writing and political science from Miami University in May 2020. Paul's interest in librarianship dates back to high school, when they worked as a student page at their local library. 

PhD student Qiuyan Guo will present her research at the Flyover Comics Symposium, which will be held virtually on September 24-25. The symposium is organized by members of the comics studies communities at the University of Illinois, University of North Texas, and Michigan State University.

With Hurricane Sally threatening the Gulf Coast last week, people in its path may have felt reassured by the mobile apps that would provide them with weather alerts or notify first responders in case of an emergency. While the app users may have been willing to share their location with first responders, they might be surprised to learn that their location and other personal information could be shared with a third party or accessed after the hurricane had passed. Assistant Professor Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo and fellow researchers examine the privacy practices of popular disaster apps in the paper, "Disaster Privacy/Privacy Disaster," which was the lead article in a special issue of the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (vol. 71, issue 9)  on information privacy in the digital age.