Connecting students with possibilities for their future is truly a passion for Bukky Abdul, career coach for the College of Communication & Information at the Center for Career Development.

“I love working with students to help develop themselves, and after my master’s program, I knew I wanted to do career coaching full time. This is the perfect position for me, I love it here,” Abdul said.

In her role, Abdul provides a variety of services and support to students throughout their college experience to assist with job placement once they graduate. These include organizing and ensuring students are aware … Read more “Career Coach Bukky Abdul is Here to Help Undergraduate Students Find Career Success”

Makayla Lerner is the first undergraduate School of Information Sciences student to complete a practicum, and just this last week she won first place in the College of Communication and Information’s 44^th Annual Research Symposium’s Research Poster Kaleidoscope contest. The research she presented in her poster stemmed from the practicum and undergraduate research assistantship work she has been doing with the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture’s Extension programs.

Lerner has participated in three projects with UTIA that all have a focus on broadband internet in rural communities—hence the title of her poster, which aggregated research from all three … Read more “BSIS Student Makayla Lerner Wins CCI Poster Competition with Research on Rural Communities Adopting Broadband”

It’s easy to forget history, but even more so if no one preserves it. Sarah Calise, an archivist and a student in the School of Information Sciences master’s program, is someone who specializes in preservation. So when they saw the history of Nashville’s LGBTQ+ community slowly slipping away, they also saw an opportunity to make a lasting difference. Now they are at the helm of a significant digital archives project called Nashville Queer History, and they are writing the first book ever about that history.

This project came to fruition when Calise was given a big project assignment in … Read more “MSIS Student Sarah Calise Founds Nashville Queer History Digital Archive, Lands Deal to Write First Book on Nashville’s LGBTQ+ History”

Every day, data is gathered in 12 East Tennessee counties about one of its most vulnerable populations: people experiencing homelessness. All of this data is entered into the Homeless Management Information System, which at the Tennessee Valley Coalition for the Homeless (TVCH), is handled by MSIS alum Savanna Sims (’20).

Sims started working at TVCH as a data specialist while she was finishing up the graduate program at SIS, and she’s since moved into the role of director of data management. The database she manages, the Homeless Information Management System (HIMS), houses data about people they work with throughout … Read more “Alum Savanna Sims Manages Data at an Org to Help People Who are Experiencing Homelessness”

Not only are the trio all enrolled in the program at the same time, they’re also all working at the same library branch, Putnam County Library in Cookeville, Tenn. But to top it off, they knew each other even before they worked together and they … Read more “A Trio of Friends Journey Through Work and the MSIS Program Together”

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”

I am definitely not a traditional student. I did not take a straight path to complete my college degree or getting into the SIS graduate program. I started college in 1998 seeking a pre-veterinary degree from Georgia Southern University (GSU) in Statesboro, GA. I dropped out to gain work experience and focus on myself. My spouse and I moved around the country for work, fell … Read more “Student Spotlight: Jessica Woofter on Databases and Data Analysis”

The School of Information Sciences recently added another graduate certificate to its offerings, the Research Data Management Certificate (RDMC).

“At SIS, we tailor our programs to the workforce needs of employers and provide a relevant curriculum that benefits our students,” said SIS Professor and Director Abebe Rorissa. “The new Research Data Management Certificate and our existing certificate offerings in Health Informatics and Youth Informatics will create ample opportunities for students and practitioners to expand their skillsets.”

This certificate combines various courses offered by SIS into a comprehensive program that will showcase student’s ability to manage research data for a … Read more “SIS Launches Research Data Management Certificate Program”

Yuan is the first author for the paper that resulted from … Read more “SIS Professor Dania Bilal Works with PhD Student & Others to Learn How to Use Social Robots to Help People with Dementia”

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”