College of Communication and Information

School of Information Sciences

Featured Story

  • Assistant Professor Brian Dobreski Earns NASKO’s Best Paper Award Examining Aristotle’s ‘Categories’

    What does an ancient Greek philosopher have to do with information sciences? SIS Assistant Professor Brian Dobreski answered that in a spring 2021 special topics course, Knowledge of Organization Systems, when he had students read and discuss Aristotle’s writing, “Categories.” Not only did it provide some interesting discourse, it inspired Dobreski to write a paper,…

  • Professor Dania Bilal: Inaugural IDEA Institute on AI at UT a Success

    After a lot of hard work and planning, the inaugural IDEA (Innovation, Disruption, Enquiry, Access) Institute on Artificial Intelligence was successfully launched and completed this July at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “It exceeded all our expectations and was the first nationwide event, as far as we know, to train people in aspects of AI…

  • MSIS Student Diona Eberhart Layden Awarded ALA Spectrum Scholarship

    Diona Eberhart Layden is a licensed attorney and has served as a judicial law clerk for the Tennessee Supreme Court, worked in the Davidson County District Attorney General’s Office, and currently serves as a Guardian ad Litem in the Davidson County Juvenile Court. But after two decades of working as a lawyer, she decided she…

  • MSIS Alumna Lara Marler Creates 68 Kindergarten Readiness Backpacks for Bridge Refugee Services in Knoxville

    While she was in the MSIS program, Lara Marler (’17) started a passion project to get books into the hands of refugee children in Knoxville, and that project recently came to full fruition in the form of 68 backpacks filled with tools to ready Swahili-speaking children for kindergarten. Each backpack has a picture book in…

  • MSIS Student Melinda Sandkam Awarded Lemoncello Scholarship

    Melinda Sandkam has always had a heart for certain endeavors, including the education of children and youth, and also helping people find the answers they need. This has guided her career, which includes positions as a hotel concierge, church program director, and preschool director. So perhaps it’s not unusual that she decided to pursue information…

  • New SIS Director Abebe Rorissa Elected to be ASIS&T President

    Just as new School of Information Sciences Professor and Director Abebe Rorissa stepped into his role July 1, 2021, it was announced that he was elected to be president of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T). Rorissa’s biography and position statement can be viewed here on the ASIS&T site. He has been heavily…

  • SIS Alumni Named as 2021 Movers and Shakers by the Library Journal

    Two SIS alumni were recently announced as 2021 Movers and Shakers by the Library Journal: Amber Gregory (’11) as an Advocate and Kelly Passek (’11) as an innovator. The Library Journal states that this list, which features 46 people this year, is comprised of “individuals who are moving the library field forward as a profession.”…

  • MSIS Student Alissa Browning-Couch Awarded TLA Gleaves Scholarship

    “I just want students to fall in love with the space of the library and feel welcomed there and affirmed there,” said MSIS student Alissa Browning-Couch as she explained why she decided to make a career change and become a school librarian. Browning-Couch doesn’t have a background in education or libraries but she fell in…

  • Paper by PhD Student Joseph Winberry & Associate Professor Devendra Potnis Wins ALISE Award

    When Joseph Winberry was still a master’s student at SIS, he was a graduate teaching assistant to Associate Professor Devendra Potnis and also assisted in research. Both Potnis and Winberry are interested in social innovation, social justice, and the role information sciences can play in both of those areas. Winberry was helping with Potnis’s research…

  • MSIS Student Karen Beal Awarded Gary R. Purcell Scholarship

    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…