Hannah Gunderman came into the MSIS program with a doctoral degree in geography already under her belt – but she wanted to be a librarian and chose to pursue even more education to get there. Before she was even halfway through her program, Gunderman landed a position as a Research Data Management Consultant at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries in Pittsburgh.

What she’s learned in the program since starting the job has enhanced what she does and added to her confidence, she said.

Karen Beal is nearing the end of completing her MSIS program, a goal of hers that she’s had since high school. She had put it off for years and finally went for it, and now it has enhanced her current career and given her other options for the future should she wish to go down a different path.

Assistant Professor Brian Dobreski has just wrapped up his second year at the School of Information Sciences, and despite one of those years being in a pandemic, he’s still managed to produce exceptional research that earned him the SIS 2021 Bonnie Carroll and Roy Cooper Faculty Enrichment Award.

In the last couple of years, Dobreski has continued work on a knowledge organization project to better label archival photos of sideshow performers, and he’s started new work on defining what personhood means in relation to works created by artificial intelligence.

Associate Professor Vandana Singh wants her research to be a catalyst for change in the real world and therefore she pursues research topics that appeal to practitioners and advance the field of research. She has published about seventy journal articles and conference proceedings and that body of research has been recognized this year with the College of Communication and Information Faculty Research Award for 2021.

In all the years that Julie Longmire has been working in college advising, one thing has remained the same: she loves seeing the look a student gets when they are excited about their classes and imagining what their future will look like after graduating.

Four months into her position as assistant dean for undergraduate programs and advising for the College of Communication and Information, Longmire is excited to once again be interacting with undergraduate students and helping them plan the next steps of their educational journey.

Lecturer: Christine Schmitz

Location: Knoxville, Tennessee

Academic Background: BA in journalism and public relations, Temple University, Philadelphia, Penn.; MFA in creative writing, University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla.

Jonathan Habashey was one of the first students to join the undergraduate information sciences program when it started in fall 2019, and now he will be one of the first to graduate from it.

Habashey likes talking to people and understanding how they think, but he also likes technology. He started out interested in computer science, but wasn’t very interested in the coding aspect of it – that’s when he found out about the new information sciences major.

Charlie Mix and Nyssa Hunt look at the “Cradle of Southern Appalachia” map. – Photo by Angela Foster, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga

Information is delivered in many forms, and for MSIS student Charlie Mix, maps are his deliverable of choice. Mix earned a bachelor’s degree in geography and went on to work for the National Park Service and for land trust and watershed conservancies before landing at Interdisciplinary Geospatial Technology Lab at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, five years ago.

While Stephanie Walker is excited to be on the verge of graduating from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, with her undergraduate major in information sciences, the senior said it is also a bittersweet moment.