The iSchool is pleased to announce that Sarah Park Dahlen (MS/LIS '09, PhD '09) will join the faculty as an associate professor in August 2021, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. A nationally recognized scholar in children's literature, Dahlen is currently an associate professor of library and information science at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

PhD student Jamillah R. Gabriel will give the opening keynote address at the Critical Pedagogy Symposium, which will be held virtually on May 17-19. The symposium is a collaborative project of the Association of College and Research Libraries/Greater New York Metropolitan Area Chapter, Library Information Literacy Advisory Committee (LILAC) of The City University of New York, and METRO.

The iSchool is pleased to announce that JooYoung Seo will join the faculty as an assistant professor in August 2021. He is a PhD candidate in the Learning, Design, and Technology program at Pennsylvania State University and also an RStudio double-certified data science instructor and accessibility expert certified by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP).

The iSchool's Library Resources for Spanish Speakers (IS 563) course was featured in a session at Seguimos Creando Enlaces (Creating Connections), a virtual conference held on March 25. Adjunct Lecturers Pamela Espinosa de los Monteros and Anne Barnhart teach the course, in which students explore differences in U.S. Spanish-speaking populations and examine information resources for meeting their needs. At the session, moderated by Barnhart and Espinosa de los Monteros, MS students Kristin Greer Love, Lea Weatherall, and Sylvia Figueroa-Ortiz as well as recent graduates Eddie Kristan (MS '20) and Aldo Vasquez (MS '18) shared their experiences taking the course.

PhD student Jamillah R. Gabriel will present her research at the Association of College & Research Libraries Conference (ACRL 2021), which will be held virtually from April 13-16. The theme of this year's conference is "Ascending into an Open Future."

Anita Say Chan, associate professor in the iSchool and the Department of Media and Cinema Studies, will present her research at the 23rd ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2020), to be held virtually on October 17-21. CSCW is the premier venue for experts from industry and academia to explore the technical, social, material, and theoretical challenges of designing technology to support collaborative work and life activities.

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.

Two projects led by iSchool faculty members have been selected as Humanities Research Institute (HRI) Research Clusters for 2020-2021. Formerly known as the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, HRI fosters interdisciplinary study in the humanities, arts, and social sciences at the University of Illinois. HRI Research Clusters enable faculty and graduate students to “develop questions or subjects of inquiry that require or would be enhanced by collaborative work.” Projects selected as clusters receive grants of $2,500 to support their activities.

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Madelyn Sanfilippo will join the faculty as an assistant professor in August 2020. She is currently a postdoctoral IT policy researcher at the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University.

Anita Say Chan, associate professor in the iSchool and the Department of Media and Cinema Studies, has been awarded a Fulbright Specialist grant to spend three weeks at Javeriana University in Bogota, Colombia. During her visit, which will take place in May 2020, Chan will lecture on feminist data methods and give a workshop on community data.

The University Library's Diversity Committee and the iSchool's Diversity Committee are recipients of a Strategic Programs Initiative Funds grant to support programs on "Becoming a Trans Inclusive Library."

Moises Orozco Villicaña, director of enrollment management at the iSchool, was featured in the fall 2019 issue of Perspectives, the magazine of NAGAP, which is the Association for Graduate Enrollment Management. In the interview, "A Candid Conversation on Increasing Enrollment of Underrepresented Students in Graduate School," Orozco Villicaña described his personal motivations for pursuing higher education, his experiences working with underrepresented students, and some of the challenges associated with the recruitment and retention of students of color. He also presented on this topic at the 2019 NAGAP Annual Conference earlier this year.

Associate Professor and BS/IS Program Director Emily Knox was recently appointed president of the Board of Trustees of the Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF), a nonprofit legal and educational organization affiliated with the American Library Association, and elected vice president/president-elect of Beta Phi Mu, the international honor society for library and information studies.

Assistant Professor Elizabeth Hoiem presented her research at the Children's Literature Association conference (ChLA 2019), which was held June 13-15 in Indianapolis. With the theme "Activism and Empathy," this year's conference

Associate Professor and BS/IS Program Director Emily Knox has published a paper, "Silencing Stories: Challenges to Diverse Books," in The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion (IJIDI). According to Knox, over the past few years, there have been an increasing number of diverse books on the Most Challenged Books List from the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom. Her latest work expands on a previous discourse analysis of censorship on challenges to diverse books through more robust analysis of the challenge cases.

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.

Eight iSchool alumni were selected to participate in the Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians from Traditionally Underrepresented Groups, which was held from July 16-20 in Minneapolis. The institute is a week-long program housed at and sponsored by the University of Minnesota Libraries, focusing on the development of library leaders from diverse backgrounds.

Doctoral students Jamillah Gabriel and Lettycia Terrones will discuss diversity in LIS education at the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC), which will be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from September 26-30. The conference brings together librarians, staff, and supporters as well as community participants to explore issues of diversity in libraries.

Assistant Professor and MS/LIS Program Director Nicole A. Cooke will be a panelist at the Hampton University Forum on Minority Recruitment & Retention in the Library & Information Science Field, which will be held August 1-2 in Hampton, Virginia. The mission of the forum, which is supported by an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant, is to identify critical issues in the recruitment and retention of minority librarians and serve as a springboard for ideas to effectively address these concerns. 

Two iSchool master's students have been selected by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Committee on Diversity and Leadership to participate in the Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce (IRDW) as ARL Diversity Scholars.