Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner will serve as a keynote speaker at the 1st workshop of reframing research at the European Symposium Series on Societal Challenges in Computational Social Science, which will be held December 5-7 in Cologne, Germany. The theme of the 2018 symposium is “Bias and Discrimination.”

Adjunct Lecturer Ruth Shasteen (CAS '13) has received the 2018 Polestar Award from the Association of Illinois School Library Educators (AISLE) for her contributions to school librarianship. Shasteen served as district librarian at Neoga CUSD and high school librarian at Central A&M High School in Moweaqua, both in the state of Illinois. In addition to being a school librarian, she also taught for many years in Illinois classrooms at Sullivan Jr. High School, Sullivan High School, and Bethany Jr-Sr. High School. 

Professor and Associate Dean for Research J. Stephen Downie will be a keynote speaker for the 20th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL2018), which will be held November 19-22 in Hamilton, New Zealand. The theme of this year's conference is "Maturity and Innovation in Digital Libraries."

Bonnie Mak presented the keynote address at "What is a Document? A Symposium on Documentation, Records, and Evidence," which was held November 8-9 at University Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia. The event was sponsored by the UTS Faculty of Law and is part of a three-year project funded by the Australian Research Council to examine the document from the perspective of laws of evidence. The symposium featured speakers from institutions across Australia in such diverse fields as government and international relations, design, art history, and law.

Associate Professor Emily Knox has been selected to receive a Community Impact Award from the Junior League of Champaign-Urbana for her work with Makerspace Urbana. She will receive the award at the Junior League's Community Impact Gala on November 17.