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 […]
Featured Student: Jesse Morris Location: Knoxville, Tennessee Education/Career Background I got my undergraduate degree in life sciences and environmental studies from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. After I graduated I did a couple of random things – I did some pharmaceutical research and was a GIS technician – and then I fell into being […]
Madison Langseth (’15) was first drawn to the idea of connecting people to information when she was volunteering for the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, teaching chemistry and physics to middle and high school students. There, she helped reopen the school’s library, and it was one of the most impactful projects she did during those […]
One of the reasons student Jessica Giles entered the MSIS program was to learn how to better represent data through visualization for her job as an associate data engineer at Intermx in Atlanta, Georgia. She had hoped to gain skills that would allow her to put data and statistics into an easy-to-consume format for the […]
Geography and information sciences will collide during the upcoming fellowship grant that Hannah Gunderman, a postdoctoral research associate with SIS and the Center for Information and Communication Studies (CICS) and an SIS masters student, will soon attend. She pitched a project that blends both of her passions – geography and information sciences – to the […]
SIS student Sharra Rosichan is the type of person who will teach herself something that she’s interested in – such as how to write code, design websites or read maps.
She was a voracious reader at a very young age – reading before talking, and consuming chapter books by the time she was four years old, she said. It was only natural that she would later end up working for a library system and getting her degree in information sciences.
Rosichan is the system-wide programming coordinator for the Nashville Public Library Foundation, and she oversees and creates a variety of events for the area the system serves. This includes art month in October, a celebration of diversity in April, African-American history month, Hispanic heritage, a citywide read, and more. She also does statistics, data entry and program scheduling.
SIS student Rose Borden has been selected as an Earth Science Information Partners Community Fellow, which is a national-level fellow that names five to six students a year to its program. Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) is an open, networked community that brings together science, data and information technology practitioners, according to its website.
“The ESIP Community Fellowship is a national honor that recognizes a student’s ability to contribute to the earth science community and their commitment to actively participate in assuring that scientists and others have reliable and accessible information into the future,” said Suzie Allard, SIS Chancellor’s Professor.
Alumni Q&A’s introduce us to School of Information Sciences graduates and lets them describe, in their own words, why they went into Information Sciences, and what they’re doing with their degree.
Alumni: Taylor Hixson (’14)
Position: Librarian for Geospatial Services at New York University Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates
What does your current job entail? As the Librarian for Geospatial Services at NYUAD, my primary focus is to make sure library patrons and the campus community are able to access and use the geospatial software, data, and resources they need to do coursework or research. I work with faculty to incorporate geographic information–from desktop and web GIS (geographic information system) to physical maps and spatial datasets–into courses. I assist students who are using GIS in courses and capstone research. I also do a lot of drop-in workshops that introduce attendees to geospatial data, tools, and research. I work in a small library, so I have shared library responsibilities, too, such as reference shifts and general library programs.
