Curricula Vitae in School of Information Sciences

Name	Personal Focus	Summary
Mrs. Valerie Lee Byrd-fort Instructor	Diversity in Children's Literature, Reading engagement, Community Literacy	Valerie Byrd Fort engages students with passion and enthusiasm for reading and literacy. She teaches courses in children's literature and in school library management.
Dr. Monica Colon-Aguirre, PhD Assistant Professor	information behaviors of Spanish-speaking Latinx, academic library administration, services for diverse users	Dr. Mónica Colón-Aguirre is an experienced library and information science educator. Her focus areas are information behaviors of Spanish-speakers and information science education. She has experience working in academic libraries, both in her native Puerto Rico and in the United States.
Nicole Cooke Professor		Nicole A. Cooke, Ph.D.was a practicing librarian for 13 years before completing her Ph.D., Dr. Nicole Cooke has experience in public, medical and academic libraries.
Dr. Clayton A Copeland Instructor		Dr. Copeland teaches courses in Foundations of Library and Information Science, Technology, Information Literacy, Information Resources, Planning Library and Information Facilities, and Materials and Programming.
Dr. Darin Freeburg Associate Professor		Dr. Darin Freeburg studies the implementation and benefits of Knowledge Management within churches and other nonprofit organizations. This includes an analysis of an organization’s culture of knowledge creation and sharing, as well as the contextual development of tools to aid in the implementation of solutions to increase this knowledge work. The goal is to allow these organizations to extract value from previously hidden knowledge sources.
Margaret Cook Jackson Instructor		Margaret Cook previously worked as the director of programs at Reading is Fundamental Pittsburgh. There, she drove a bookmobile, oversaw a virtual mentoring program, and performed storytimes across the city. Prior to that, she was one-half of the do-it-yourself puppetry duo Miniature Curiosa, bringing multimedia puppet spectacles to theaters, art galleries and bowling alleys around the country.
Dr. Dick Kawooya Associate Professor		Dr. Dick Kawooya's current research focuses on the role of intellectual property in the interactions and exchange of innovations between actors in the formal and informal economies in Africa (Uganda as case study).
Dr. Vanessa Lynn Kitzie Associate Professor	studies the information practices of marginalized groups, individuals identifying as LGBTQ+	Dr. Vanessa Kitzie studies the information practices of marginalized groups, with a focus on individuals identifying as LGBTQ+. Her research findings inform how information centers, such as libraries, and systems can better serve these individuals. Kitzie's  work is interdisciplinary, spanning library and information science, communication, sociology, and critical studies.
Elise C. Lewis Instructor	Cultural institutions, Service-learning, Information literacy	3D images/Interactive Images, Digital Images and User Behavior, Image Retrieval and Image Seeking Behavior Digital Libraries, Technology Literacy
Lyda McCartin Department Chair/Professor	explores academic librarian behavior and academic librarian-faculty relationships, better understanding the disconnect between library and information science education practice, exploring how to build and sustain pedagogical metacognition in higher education instructors	Lyda McCartin has worked in higher education for over 20 years as an academic librarian and, most recently, as director of the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning at the University of Northern Colorado.
Dr. Ehsan Mohammadi Associate Professor	exploring how social web data can be useful in shaping the scholarly information ecosystem, information-seeking behaviors of patients, challenges in online environments to provide appropriate solutions or design useful web applications	In my research projects, I use data science and web analytics methods to answer questions in different contexts, such as health informatics, mis/disinformation, social media analysis, and the application of AI. My projects have been published in prestigious journals and conferences, including JAMA Network Open The Journal of Medical Internet Research, Information Processing and Management, The Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Jennifer Moore Associate Professor
Susan R. Rathbun-Grubb Associate Professor		Dr. Rathbun-Grubb's doctoral research (Leaving Librarianship: A Study of the Determinants and Consequences of Occupational Turnover) focused on career satisfaction, turnover, and retention in the library and information science field.
Dr. Jenna Spiering Assistant Professor		Dr. Jenna Spiering’s research interests lie at the intersection of school libraries, critical youth studies, and children’s/young adult materials. Specifically, Spiering’s work emphasizes the school librarian’s role in selecting, promoting, and curating materials for students in k-12 settings. Some of her recent work has explored representations of gender and sexuality in young adult literature, and considers how the presence of these topics affects selection practices in school libraries.
Dr. Kim Michelle Thompson Professor	relationship between information access and social inclusion	Kim M. Thompson, Ph.D.'s background is US Fulbright, Honduras; Senior Fellow, Information Policy & Access Center, University of Maryland; academic roles at the University of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN; the University of Missouri-Columbia; and Charles Sturt University, Australia.
Dr. Feili Tu-Keefner Associate Professor	Community-first Disaster and Health Information Services, Infodemic Management, Health Informatics, Health Information Literacy, Health Sciences Librarianship and Its Education, Evidence-Based Health Information Access, • Reference, Information, and Research Services	Dr. Feili Tu-Keefner specializes in health sciences librarianship, health informatics, and health communication and is a WHO-certified infodemic manager. She is a founding member and academic advisor for the Certificate of Graduate Study in Health Communication program and contributes to the development of programs in Information Security and Cyber Leadership. Dr. Tu-Keefner has led six case studies (2015–2024) on public libraries' roles in disaster response and recovery.
Dr. Rachel Williams Assistant Professor	Examining public library services for people in crisis, AR/VR approaches to training and education in LIS, Social work and public libraries	Prior to joining the faculty at the University of South Carolina, Rachel Williams was an assistant professor at Simmons University. Her professional background and current interests are rooted in public librarianship.