Rebecca Howard’s (’19) interest in archives was first piqued while working at her university library. She was earning her undergraduate degree in history from Stockton University, and was working at the university’s library when it merged with the Noyes Museum of Art, which gave her an opportunity to be an archives assistant.

When Danielle Pollock was an undergraduate, she and a friend devised a plan to open an independent bookstore someday. The rise of online shopping and e-books stymied their dreams, but actually led to some of the research work that the UT PhD alum does today.

“I always knew I was interested in libraries – not just that I liked books, but I liked doing research. When I was looking at potential master’s, I knew that if there was one thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life, librarianship would be that,” she said.

Erika Long (’16) was working with children in an after-school program, and as an academic mentor and tutor, when she realized she could do more for them. She wanted to provide children with lifelong skills that would make them successful academically and professionally, and she settled on the best way to do that: become a school librarian.

Featured alum: Valerie Aucoin (’19) just graduated from SIS and is currently interviewing for youth librarian positions across the country. She will be attending the American Library Association conference this week in Washington, D.C. as a volunteer, after she helped lead the student ALA chapter at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Why UTK?

Shelving assistant, library branch manager, business analyst and now, director of product development – these are some of the job titles SIS graduate Donna George (’01), has held throughout her career.

The first job she ever had was at her neighborhood public library, and she loved it. While her peers were working in typical teen jobs at restaurants and retailers, she was happy to be at the quiet library, and had stable hours. But it was more than that – working in a public library set the stage for the rest of her career.

When data are valuable products stored behind closed gates, monitoring those gates are people such as SIS alum Ole Villadsen (’15).

Villadsen works at IBM as part of the cyber security team; his role is to support incident response investigations by providing intelligence support, and he is also building a database of threat information.

“I love it, it’s great to be able to do both the hunting and the farming. Hunting in terms of supporting the investigations, and the farming is building out the database and making sure it’s a usable tool to support investigations,” Villadsen said.