Category Archives: Student Spotlight

November 12, 2019 By Hillary Tune

Student Spotlight: Yasmin Stoss Zeroes in on Providing Information Access to Researchers

Featured student: Yasmin Stoss.
Location: Knoxville, TN.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in Japanese.

Career: After graduating, I was working for a while, I had two full-time jobs before I started the master’s program. One of them was working with an institutional review board at a different university and through that job, I got a job with a tech company, Techsoftware.

At the IRB, my role was as a coordinator, and I was something like a compliance officer as well. I would review research submissions, give people feedback if they didn’t structure things well, and teach our … Read more “Student Spotlight: Yasmin Stoss Zeroes in on Providing Information Access to Researchers”

November 9, 2019 By Hillary Tune

Will Biggs: Veteran, Purple Heart Recipient, MSIS Student, Second-Gen Vol

When Will Biggs left the United States Marine Corps after 10 years of service, he started a job hunt that proved to be a bit rougher than he had anticipated.

“I was looking at county jobs and had probably applied to at least 15 positions, and nobody gave me a chance until the public libraries did,” he said. “I started working at the library and I realized I liked it.”

It was quite the change from his military service, for which he received a Purple Heart in 2006 after suffering injuries from an IED blast. Both the injuries and his … Read more “Will Biggs: Veteran, Purple Heart Recipient, MSIS Student, Second-Gen Vol”

veteran

October 10, 2019 By Hillary Tune

MSIS Student Frankie McGinnis on Being a Student, Live Organ Donor, and Caregiver

Since this article was published in the SIS “Spark” magazine, Frankie McGinnis’ daughter, Laura, received a kidney transplant from a cadaver. McGinnis is altruistically donating her kidney to another person who has cystinosis, on Oct. 14. New UT Chancellor Donde Plowman referenced McGinnis and the sick leave policy in an October 1 message, stating that, “We are working to change that policy and find solutions for many of the other issues that have come up.” You can view the entire “Spark” magazine here.

When SIS student Frankie McGinnis sees a problem, she will build a solution for it from … Read more “MSIS Student Frankie McGinnis on Being a Student, Live Organ Donor, and Caregiver”

September 13, 2019 By Hillary Tune

Student Spotlight: Clancy Anderson Joins IMLS Project to Support Veterans Via Library Services

Featured student: Clancy Anderson

Location: Bristol, Tenn.

Education: Training as a submarine nuclear reactor operator in the Navy, and an undergraduate degree in history from Eastern Connecticut State University

Career: I grew up on a ranch in Central Montana, then I went to being on a submarine in the Navy, to being a librarian in East Tennessee. I went to college and it just wasn’t for me at that point, so I enlisted in the Navy and became a submarine nuclear reactor operator. I did six years and two deployments overseas into the Persian Gulf area. I got out of … Read more “Student Spotlight: Clancy Anderson Joins IMLS Project to Support Veterans Via Library Services”

veteran

May 9, 2019 By Hillary Tune

Lisa Ladd Heads to ALA with Marcellus Turner Student Travel Scholarship

MSIS student Lisa Ladd is the 2019 Marcellus Turner Student Travel Scholarship Award winner, and she’s thrilled that it will fund her trip to the American Library Association Conference in Washington, D.C. this June.

Though she has attended the ALA conference in the past in her capacity as a library professional, she has never gone as a student. After completing one semester in the SIS program, Ladd knew she wanted to attend the conference and learn more about her pathway, youth informatics. But without a scholarship, she said it wasn’t going to happen. It’s been a long journey for her … Read more “Lisa Ladd Heads to ALA with Marcellus Turner Student Travel Scholarship”

April 23, 2019 By adminatcci

Student Spotlight: Kashif Graham Finds New Calling in Theological Librarianship

Featured student: Kashif Graham

Location: Nashville

Education: Bachelor’s of Arts in English literature, and Spanish from Lehman College (City University of New York); Master of Arts in Church Ministry from the Pentecostal Theological Seminary in Cleveland, Tennessee; will graduate Spring 2019 with an MSIS degree.

Current job: I moved to Nashville to start working at Vanderbilt Divinity School Library as collections maintenance coordinator and then was promoted to outreach librarian for religion and theology.

Why SIS?

I can think of a time in the eighth grade where I didn’t feel so safe in my school any more, so I hid … Read more “Student Spotlight: Kashif Graham Finds New Calling in Theological Librarianship”

April 11, 2019 By Hillary Tune

Student Spotlight: Emily McCutcheon Switches from Practicing Law, to Law Librarianship

Featured student: Emily McCutcheon

Location: Knoxville

Education: BA in political science and history from Emory University; juris doctorate from University of Georgia Athens School of Law; currently in second semester of the first year in the MSIS program.

Current jobs: I work at the Law Library of Congress as a remote content management internship. It started as a practicum last semester. Essentially, they had a lot of old legal resources and they’re spread out all over the place so a lot of links were not accurate or were broken. I was taking all the old resources and putting them into … Read more “Student Spotlight: Emily McCutcheon Switches from Practicing Law, to Law Librarianship”

February 27, 2019 By SIS Staff

Alum Ari Baker Finds Fulfillment in Public Librarianship

When Ari Baker (’15) first got the career assessment results back that said he’d be an ideal librarian, he was skeptical. After all, he’d spent some time volunteering to shelve books at the Blount County Public Library, and it hadn’t been all that exciting.

Now, three years after he graduated with his master’s degree in information sciences and 10 years into working at the Blount County Public Library, he chuckles at his previous notion of what a librarian does. After all, he spends his days as the learning commons coordinator, overseeing a broad array of programs for adults, including English … Read more “Alum Ari Baker Finds Fulfillment in Public Librarianship”

Student Spotlight

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

School of Information Sciences
College of Communication and Information