School of Information Sciences

Clinical Professor Cindy Welch Retires After 15 Years at SIS

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Clinical Professor Cindy Welch stands left of Dean Joe Mazer, both smiling broadly as she holds an award signifying her 15 years of working at the School of Information Sciences

Once upon a time, there was a woman who was many things. She was a mentor, a teacher, a librarian, a storyteller, and much more, to many people. Wherever she went, she spread her knowledge, humor, wisdom, and kindness, and she will be remembered by the hundreds of students who have experienced her tutelage over the past fifteen years at the School of Information Sciences. This woman of many talents and graces is Clinical Professor Cindy Welch, and she is retiring this December from her position at SIS. 

Welch has many accomplishments under her belt while  she has been at … Read more “Clinical Professor Cindy Welch Retires After 15 Years at SIS”

Clinical Professor Cindy Welch Retires After 15 Years at SIS written by Hillary Tune and originally published on the College of Communication & Information site.

Alumni Assist with CCI’s Annual Career Fair

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Pam Schmidt and another MP&F employee stand behind a table full of swag at the 2022 Communication and Information Career Fair

It was an internship that led to Pam Schmidt’s current job at MP&F, where she’s worked for a total of 25 years since she graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. It’s no wonder that, as director of human resources and talent development, she’s an avid proponent of students getting internship experience before they graduate.

“There’s only so much you can learn in school. The best way to learn what this industry is really like is by getting out there and getting hands-on experience in real-world settings, which is why I feel so strongly about internships and about our intern … Read more “Alumni Assist with CCI’s Annual Career Fair”

Alumni Assist with CCI’s Annual Career Fair written by Hillary Tune and originally published on the College of Communication & Information site.

CCI Welcomes 11 New Faculty this Fall

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A booklet from CCI Convocation that says

Eleven new faculty have joined the College of Communication and Information this year, ready to add their expertise, scholarship, and instruction to their respective schools, the college, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Here’s a little bit more about them:

The School of Communication Studies 

Lecturer of Practice Abigail Barnes

Barnes comes to the school in two capacities: as a lecturer of practice teaching speech courses, and as the new coach for the Tennessee Speech and Debate Society. Her area of expertise is in rhetorical criticism, critical discourse analysis, and argumentation, and she is currently studying the art of Youtube/online

… Read more “CCI Welcomes 11 New Faculty this Fall”

CCI Welcomes 11 New Faculty this Fall written by Hillary Tune and originally published on the College of Communication & Information site.

SIS Alums Justin Blair and Kay P Maye Complete LEADING Fellows Program for Data Science

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Just Blair (left) and Kay P Maye (right)

In 2022, two School of Information Sciences alumni took part in the LEADING Fellowship Program through Drexel University’s Metadata Research Center. Justin Blair and Kay P Maye were among the 26 fellows to complete a data science project under the mentorship of information science centers across the United States. Maye (’21) is currently the scholarly engagement librarian for social sciences and data at Tulane University, and Blair (’21) continues to focus on publication of his research. We caught up with both to discuss their time in the program and its impacts on … Read more “SIS Alums Justin Blair and Kay P Maye Complete LEADING Fellows Program for Data Science”

Alumni Highlight: MSIS Alum Roger Justus Offered Dream Job on Graduation Day

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Featured alumni: Roger Justus

Current position and location: Data Services Librarian at Miami University

Location: Oxford, Ohio

In May of 2022, Roger Justus was playing the job search waiting game. He’d left behind his 25-year career in IT to find a vocation that would “feed his soul,” and friends and family had encouraged him to explore librarianship. Ultimately, he chose to return, to some extent, to his roots: His first passion and his undergraduate degree were in geography, which led him to the pathway in geographic information sciences through the MSIS program. Fortunately, the same day Roger walked across the … Read more “Alumni Highlight: MSIS Alum Roger Justus Offered Dream Job on Graduation Day”

Hannah Gunderman Given 2022 SIS Innovator’s Alumni Award

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Videogames and information sciences may not sound like a natural fit, but Hannah Gunderman (’21) has found her niche at the crossroads of the two. She came into the MSIS program with a PhD in geography and a desire to be a librarian. Before she graduated with her master’s degree, she was hired on at Carnegie Mellon University’s Library in Pittsburgh as a research data management librarian.

After some time, Gunderman realized many of the students taking the workshops she taught on research data management weren’t engaging with the material—while it highly interests her, she recognized that not everyone is … Read more “Hannah Gunderman Given 2022 SIS Innovator’s Alumni Award”

2022 SIS Distinguished Alumni Susan Jennings

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Susan Jennings (’07) didn’t start out with the dream to be a librarian, but in hindsight, she believes it was pre-ordained. After all, she and her family were voracious readers, she was a library page in junior high school, and she drove her mother to the public library every Saturday where they’d spend an hour or two picking out books. It wasn’t until she ended up working in Appalachian State University’s (ASU) library after moving back home to Boone, North Carolina, that it all coalesced.

“Eleven years later I was still there and loved libraries and loved that I was … Read more “2022 SIS Distinguished Alumni Susan Jennings”

Alumnus Eric Dawson Steps Into Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection Manager Position

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Eric Dawson (’13) has been in the history-filled book stacks and climate-controlled rooms of the East Tennessee History Center ever since he was a student in the MSIS program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

His experience there started in 2012 when he took on a practicum with Steve Cotham, manager at that time of the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection, and, since 1999, official Knox County Historian. Soon after graduating with his MSIS, Dawson began an almost decade-long tenure in archival positions at the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound (TAMIS), the audio-visual department of McClung. Now, with … Read more “Alumnus Eric Dawson Steps Into Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection Manager Position”

SIS Associate Professor Rachel Fleming-May Writes Planning and Assessment Book with SIS Alum & Hodges Librarian Regina Mays

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SIS Associate Professor Rachel Fleming-May was a public and academic librarian before she decided to pursue her doctorate in information sciences, and that experience has informed what she researches and how she teaches. In both, she “tends to focus on finding better ways to do the things I did as a practitioner with maybe not a lot of theoretical knowledge.”

One of those things was planning and assessment, which she describes as a cycle wherein an organization recognizes a need, creates an evidence-informed plan to address it, launches the planned initiative, evaluates the initiative’s success, then uses data to revise … Read more “SIS Associate Professor Rachel Fleming-May Writes Planning and Assessment Book with SIS Alum & Hodges Librarian Regina Mays”

SIS Alum, Children’s Author & School Librarian Alice Faye Duncan to Publish Two New Books

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Children’s picture book author and school librarian Alice Faye Duncan (’91) looks for those moments in history that define generations yet are not often discussed—and especially aren’t stories typically told via picture book.

She was the first-ever picture book author to delve into the Memphis Sanitation Strike and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in her book “Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop,” and now she’s taken on Juneteenth and the Tent City civil rights movement in Fayette County, Tennessee, in her next two books to be released in January 2022.

Becoming a Writer

As a child of two teachers, … Read more “SIS Alum, Children’s Author & School Librarian Alice Faye Duncan to Publish Two New Books”