Jessica Atkins (‘22) is starting her new career as a senior data collection analyst at the Stephenson Cancer Center at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She says she wouldn’t be where she is today without the opportunities she had at her universities and during her internships.
Atkins completed her undergraduate degree in anthropology at Washington State University before coming to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, for her masters in information sciences.
“I wanted to be an archaeologist,” she said.
After graduating from Washington State, Atkins worked in a public school district near Seattle for two years as a teacher on a special behavior intervention team working with elementary age students.
While teaching in Seattle, she heard about the CALL Grant provided through UT, applied, and was accepted into the program. CALL stands for the Collaborative Analysis Liaison Librarians, and is a master’s-level instructional project that was awarded to the School of Information Sciences in 2019 by the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant program (RE-13-19-0027-19).
Through the grant project, Atkins was under the leadership of Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Wade Bishop.
Atkins said, “I was really interested in archives and working at a museum. Then I found out about Dr. Bishop’s CALL program and the possibility of being a science-focused librarian. That really interested me—working in an academic capacity at a university.”
While at UT she was the public relations officer for Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T).
Atkins said, “That gave me an opportunity to ask librarians from all over the country if they might be interested in coming and meeting with our students, giving a discussion or an overview of what their job is, what kind of advice do they have for students, and just have an hour meeting with students that were part of the chapter.”
She was also a student advisory board member for the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture.
“As part of a community engagement team, we were trying to find ways to engage the students in the larger community about the museum, and trying to come up with activities to bring the students into the museum to learn more about natural history and all the kinds of great opportunities that are on campus,” she said.
Along with her academic career, Atkins did several internship programs. Her first internship was with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) which focused on usability and user experience design. During her internship, Atkins helped develop a new website for one of their programs.
“It was specifically focused on developing a Spanish language version of one of their websites that was related to coastal flooding in California. I did a user-centered design process for that,” she said. “I did a lot of research and worked with one of their user experience design specialists that was part of their team to develop a plan for what the USGS could go through to develop a new version of their website that was specifically tailored for Spanish speaking individuals.”
After graduating from UT, Atkins interned with the University of Pennsylvania for a year and a half. She worked with their hospital system as a bibliometric and altmetric analysis intern.
Atkins explained, “When I was there I was assisting different departments with designing websites and doing a lot of research. I used bibliometric and altmetric analyses to illustrate the domestic and global impact the university has on research and policy. My assistantship at UT helped me develop my research skills and gave me the ability to assist professors from a variety of scientific backgrounds.”
Atkins completed an internship in the Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information in her final semester at UT.
Atkins will focus on grant data in her new role as a senior data collection analyst at the Stephenson Cancer Center at the University of Oklahoma..
“I’m really looking forward to being able to assist the researchers in gaining more insight into the grant data. I can do some analysis on where the grants are coming from, how much money is involved, and provide possibilities for other grants that could be applied for in the future, both for the individual researchers and for the institution as a whole,” she said.
Atkins said her relationships with her professors helped her get to where she is today and she urges other students to value those connections.
“Everybody was always willing to meet, answer questions, and provide any kind of insights they might have for particular career opportunities or internship opportunities that might help in my future career. That was always very helpful. Everyone was always great to talk to and I always appreciated how willing everyone was to give advice,” she said.
Atkins said, when she first started her undergraduate program, she didn’t think she would be working in healthcare, but the opportunities provided to her through her internships allowed her to explore other options within the IS field.
“I originally was going to do archival work, but obviously, that’s not at all what I’m doing now. There’s just a real range of opportunities that you can have with this particular degree. In starting grad school, there’s a lot of opportunities to do so much, especially through internships. You can gain all kinds of different experiences with different internships. I’ve had three now, and they were all completely different. They’ve all given me a variety of skills and the ability to work with all kinds of different people,” she said.