The School of Information Sciences has partnered with the American
Library Association and nine other participating LIS programs on a project
to increase racial and ethnic diversity in library and information sciences
doctoral programs. Thanks to a nearly $1 million grant from the Institute of
Museum and Library Services (IMLS), SIS and nine other institutions will
award ten applicants with full four-year tuition fellowships, plus yearly
stipends, to complete a PhD.
One of the successful recipients will pursue a PhD from the College of
Communication and Information with a concentration in Information Sciences.
By the end of this three-year project, it is hoped that diversity will
improve in the library field, not only by supporting these 10 students, but
by serving as a model and inspiration for other initiatives nationwide. SIS
will begin recruiting this fall.
“The Spectrum Scholarship to support doctoral studies at the School of
Information Sciences is a wonderful and important compliment to the school’s
strategic plan, one goal of which is to increase the racial diversity of LIS
scholars and to help create a more nationally competitive SIS doctoral
program,” says Dr. Ed Cortez, professor and director of SIS.
ALA’s Office for Diversity partnered with the following 10 LIS programs,
with the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Science serving as a
lead program: University of Arizona, UCLA, University of Michigan,
Rutgers University, Simmons College, Syracuse University, University of
Tennessee, University of Texas-Austin, and University of
Wisconsin-Madison.
Tennessee’s only Spectrum Scholarship recipient, Doris Dixon, is currently
a student at SIS. See the news
release
for more about Ms. Dixon. The Spectrum Initiative is the American Library
Association’s national diversity and recruitment effort designed to address
under representation of critically needed African American, American Indian,
Asian, and Native Hawaiian librarians within the profession while serving as
a model for ways to bring attention to larger diversity issues.
