 |
 |
Dr. Gary Marchionini, Cary C. Boshamer Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been appointed dean of the School of Information and Library Sciences. The University's Board of Trustees today (Jan. 28) approved the appointment, effective April 1. "Gary Marchionini is a distinguished faculty member whose extraordinary academic background is internationally renowned," said Chancellor Holden Thorp. "He is the ideal person to lead our School of Information and Library Science into this new decade when information and technology have never been more important in our society." Added Bruce Carney, interim executive vice chancellor and provost, "Gary Marchionini knows the School of Information and Library Science and our University exceedingly well. He has the support from within the school to keep it a national leader." A Carolina faculty member since 1998, Marchionini heads the school's Interaction Design Laboratory and chairs its personnel committee. He serves on the Campus Research Computing Committee and has helped lead numerous campus initiatives since arriving at Carolina. Last spring, he was nominated by his students and selected as the school's Outstanding Teacher of the Year. He is president of the American Society of Information Science and Technology, an international organization of professionals who focus on improving access to information. Marchionini is the chair of the National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine's Biomedical Library and Informatics Review Committee. He previously was editor-in-chief of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) "Transactions on Information Systems" from 2002 to 2008, has served on more than a dozen editorial boards and is editor of the Morgan-Claypool book series, "Information Concepts, Retrieval and Services." Marchionini has published more than 200 articles, book chapters and technical reports on topics related to digital libraries, information seeking, usability of personal health records, multimedia browsing strategies and personal identity in cyberspace. He has been awarded numerous grants from the National Science Foundation and other foundations, as well as research awards from companies including Microsoft, IBM and Google. He is the author of "Information Seeking in Electronic Environments," part of a Cambridge University Press series. Marchionini earned a doctorate in curriculum development, focusing on mathematics education, and a master's degree in secondary mathematics education from Wayne State University in 1974 and 1981, respectively. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and English from Western Michigan University in 1971. Before arriving at UNC, he was a faculty member at the University of Maryland for 15 years. He served on the faculty and as a researcher at Wayne State from 1978 to 1983 and taught mathematics at the East Detroit Public Schools for seven years. The School of Information and Library Science seeks to advance the practice and profession of information science and librarianship, prepare students for careers in a variety of information professions and contribute to the study of information. The school offers an undergraduate major in information science and an undergraduate minor in information systems, masters' degrees in information science and library science, and a Ph.D. program. Twenty-six faculty members teach about 330 graduate students and 58 undergraduate students. U.S. News & World Report magazine ranked the school's master's degree program tied for first in the 2010 edition of its "America's Best Graduate Schools" guidebook. Barbara B. Moran, previous dean of the school from 1990 to 1998, has served as interim dean since May 2009 when José-Marie Griffiths, the previous dean, completed her term. "We're grateful to Barbara for providing dedicated leadership to the school during the search," Carney said. "Her calm and steady guidance through this transition has once again demonstrated her amazing skills as dean and her deep devotion to the school and to Carolina." Web links: http://sils.unc.edu University Relations contact: Mike McFarland, (919) 962-8593, [log in to unmask] School of Information and Library Sciences contact: Wanda Monroe, (919) 843-8337, [log in to unmask]