The iSchool at Drexel Doctoral Student Rachel Magee Awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

Congratulations to iSchool at Drexel Ph.D. student Rachel Magee, who has been selected as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. The highly competitive NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is designed to provide financial support to top students who are committed to research careers. The program selects fellows based on intellectual merit and the broader impacts of their research.

Rachel holds a Bachelor of Science in Radio-Television-Film and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Texas, Austin, and a Master of Information Resources and Library Science from the University of Arizona. After spending time as a teen services librarian at the County of Los Angeles Public Library, she chose to take her career in a new direction.

“When I was there, I saw first-hand how hard it can be for people, including children and teens, to access the information they need or want,” she says. “The reasons for these difficulties range from problems with literacy and access to issues with the way information systems and technologies are designed. While I felt like I was helping individuals at the library, I wanted to try for a bigger impact by focusing the on design of technologies themselves and getting users involved in the process.”

She began work on her doctorate at The iSchool at Drexel in the fall of 2010, where she is studying how to make technologies and systems work more effectively for the average user and, in particular, children, teens, and technology novices, through user-centered design. Within this, she is exploring how these groups use technologies to get information.

At Drexel’s Research Day 2011, Rachel presented two posters highlighting her research in online dating – which explores both online dating technologies and the ways people use these services. She serves as primary author on the poster “Find Me Somebody to Love: Dating Sites, Success Stories, and Location,” and also secondary author on “Happily Ever After?  How do Online Daters Define and Discuss Success?” She collaborated with fellow PhD student Christopher Mascaro on both projects.

For more information about the program, and for a complete listing of this year’s recipients, visit www.nsfgrfp.org