Four Illinois professors are creating the Innovation Illinois Community Laboratory + Interactive Exhibit with $150,000 in funding from the University of Illinois System, as part of an investment in the arts and humanities. This project will involve a yearlong course that welcomes undergraduate students from all disciplines, who will spend the year imagining, researching, and prototyping social innovation projects that will become part of a traveling exhibit.

Assistant Professor Elizabeth Hoiem has been named the 2019 recipient of the Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award, which is given annually by the Children's Literature Association (ChLA). The award recognizes an outstanding article of literary criticism by an early career scholar on the topic of children's literature within a given year.

Associate Professor Maria Bonn will present her research at a preconference workshop during the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) biennial conference, which will be held April 10-13 in Cleveland, Ohio. With its theme of "Recasting the Narrative," ACRL 2019 will focus on what it means to be an academic library professional in the twenty-first century.

Yoo-Seong Song, faculty member and librarian at the University Library, now has a joint appointment with the iSchool. As a result, he will increase the number of courses he teaches for the School and participate more broadly in advising students who focus on information consulting and related areas.

Associate Professor Kyungwon Koh and her collaborators from the University of Oklahoma and Norman Public Schools will present their research at the 2019 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, which will be held on April 5-9 in Toronto, Canada. The theme of this year's meeting is "Leveraging Education Research in a Post-Truth Era: Multimodal Narratives to Democratize Evidence."