Tyler Martindale quit his real estate appraiser job and started waiting tables and bartending not long after he graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in business economics.

“I had that early millennial mindset, and I didn’t want to do something I didn’t derive personal satisfaction from for the rest of my life,” he said. “So I was figuring things out. While I was doing that, I was going to my local public library in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and thinking that the services it provided me were invaluable.”

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.

Recent SIS graduate Lauren Cole (Spring ’19) spent part of her last semester conducting a practicum through East Tennessee PBS and its “Black in Appalachia” project.

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.

Friends and family packed a recital hall at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville on May 10 – all excited to watch their loved ones cross the stage and graduate from the School of Information Sciences master’s program at the annual SIS Hooding Ceremony.

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.