Class Notes
You may submit a Class Note by completing the alumni information form or by sending an email to Amy Herlich, Director of Constituent Relations.
Susan Gribble Ryberg (MLS ‘72) retired on September 5, 2014 after 42 years of professional service in three academic library settings.
Tracy Z. Maleeff (MLIS ’05) will be honored as the Dow Jones Innovate Award’s inaugural recipient at the SLA (Special Libraries Association) 2014 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO in Vancouver, Canada. Read more about this honor.
Hwa-Wei Lee, PhD (MLS ’61) has been awarded the 2015 Melvil Dewey Medal, presented by the American Library Association (ALA). The award will be presented at the ALA President’s program, Sunday, June 28, 2015, during the ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco.
Jane Kemp (MLS ’71) retired after working 30 years at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. During those years, Kemp served as Circulation and Special Collections Librarian and, most recently, as Professor and Library Department Head for the Library and Information Studies Department.
Joseph J. Mika, PhD (MLS '71, PhD '80) retired as a Professor in the School of Library and Information Science Program (SLIS) at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Dr. Mika began his career at Wayne State in 1986 as Director of the (then) LIS Program; he was promoted to full Professor in 2007. Prior to his tenure at Wayne State University, Dr. Mika has held positions at University of Southern Mississippi, Johnson State College (VT), and Ohio State University’s Mansfield Regional Campus.
Deborah Nolan (MLS '75) is the Dean of University Libraries at Towson University in Townson, MD.
Jim Matarazzo PhD (PhD '79), Dean and Professor Emeritus at Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science, along with Dr. Toby Pearlsein, published "Special Libraries: A Survival Guide," in May 2013. Drs. Matarrazzo and Pearlstein also authored the feature article "EBooks and Corporate/Special Libraries," in the May-June 2013 issues of "Online Searcher Magazine;" this same article was selected as a featured article in the June 2013 issues of the "Informed Librarian Online." In May 2013, Dr. Matarazzo was informed by LinkedIn that he had one of the top 5% most viewed profiles in 2012, out of 200 million members.
Dr. Terri Lenox (MSIS ’81, PhD ’00) received the Distinguished Faculty Award at Westminster College's annual commencement ceremonies held on May 18, 2013. Dr. Lenox, Professor of Computer Science, who serves as chair of Westminster's Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, joined the faculty in 1999.
Neal London (MSIS ’83), a credentialed Information Systems Architect at Lockheed Martin, was selected to be a Lockheed Martin Fellow. He currently is an Associate Chief Architect in the Enterprise Architecture Directorate.
Richard H. Nollan (MLS '84) was awarded the 2013 Murray Gottlieb Prize from the Medical Library Association (MLA) for the best unpublished essay on the history of medicine and allied sciences written by a health sciences librarian. Richard represents the Health Sciences Library at the University of Tennessee–Memphis.
Vaunda Micheaux Nelson (MLS ’88) was named a 2013 winner of the Coretta Scott King Book Award. Each year, the awards recognize the best children’s books created by African-American authors and illustrators. Read more.
David L. Rosenberg, PhD (MLS ’89) collaborated with the Departmental Archives of the Somme in France to create a collection of digitized materials on the history of the Jewish community in Amiens and its environs. For this work and previous contributions to the history and archival sources of Protestantism in that region, he was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres (an honor bestowed by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication) in April 2013.
Joe Imbimbo (MST '91) has been re-elected to the Oracle Applications Users' Group (OAUG) Board of Directors. He will serve a two-year term running from January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2014. Joe has served on the OAUG Board of Directors since 2008 and chairs the OAUG Technology Committee.
Marcia Lei Zeng, PhD (PhD ’92), Professor, Kent State University School of Library and Information Science, has been elected inaugural chair of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) Advisory Board. Dr. Zeng has chaired and served on standards committees and working groups for the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), Special Libraries Association (SLA), Association of Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), the U.S. National Information Standards Organization (NISO), and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Jamie Allen (BSIS ’93) is the Director of Consulting for Typesafe, the company behind the Scala programming language, Akka concurrency toolkit, and Play web framework. Jamie recently wrote his first book, "Effective Akka" published by O'Reilly Media.
Deborah H. Charbonneau (MLS ‘96), from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, is the 2014 recipient of the Medical Library Association’s (MLA) Donald A. B. Lindberg Research Fellowship.
Heather N. Holmes, AHIP (MLIS ‘98), is the 2014 recipient of the Medical Library Association’s (MLA) Lois Ann Colaianni Award for Excellence and Achievement in Hospital Librarianship. Heather is employed with the Medical Library at the Summa Health System, Akron, OH.
Catherine Arnott Smith, PhD (MSIS ’00, PhD ’02) was promoted in April 2012 to Associate Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Smith is a Discovery Fellow associated with the Living Environments Laboratory, Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. Her field is medical informatics and she studies the interaction between consumers and clinical terminologies and text. The Living Environments Laboratory allows her to do that in virtual reality.
Rachel Vacek (MLIS ’01) was named a “Mover and Shaker 2014” by Library Journal. Rachel is Head of Web Services for the University of Houston Libraries and is the president-elect of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Library and Information Technology Association (LITA). Read more about Rachel.
Maria Harrington, PhD (MSIS ’03, PhD ’08) was awarded a 2012-13 Collaborative Academic Grant by the Faculty Professional Development Council of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE). Dr. Harrington’s selected proposal is titled Investigation and Evaluation of Virtual Worlds, 3D Environments, and Simulations for Alternative Learning, Collaboration, Co-creating, and Decision Formats: The Virtual SRU Campus Modeled in Google Earth and Second Life for a Course on Sustainable Entrepreneurship.
Rebecca Morris, PhD (MLIS '04, PhD '11) joined the Department of Library and Information Studies at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro as an Assistant Professor.
Alexia Hudson-Ward (MLIS ’05) has been elected to the National Executive Board of the American Library Association (ALA) for a three-year term. Alexia is a Reference Librarian Abington College Library, Penn State Abington.
Jonathan Miller (PhD ’09) is the Director of the Olin Library at Rollins College in Winter Park, FL. The Olin Library won the 2013 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Excellence in Academic Libraries Award.
Sergey Sosnovsky (PhD ’12) was profiled in International Innovation Magazine about his work on eLearning systems research and tools. Sosnovsky is the Principal Researcher and Head of the Intelligent e-Learning Technology Lab at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in Saarbruken, Germany. Read more here ( beginning on page 71.)
Molly Troy (MLIS ’13) was appointed as Library Director of the Apollo Memorial Library in February 2014. Read more about Molly.
