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Downie Named Associate Dean for Research
Professor J. Stephen Downie has been named associate dean for research at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, replacing Professor Allen Renear, who is stepping down to pursue further research activities.
Downie will coordinate all aspects of research at GSLIS including working closely with faculty on research plans, overseeing GSLIS research centers, and facilitating the development of GSLIS research strategy.
In addition to his administrative duties, Downie teaches courses in library science, digital libraries and multimedia. He conducts research in design and evaluation of music information retrieval systems, digital libraries, and digital humanities. Dr. Downie joined the GSLIS faculty in 1998. He received his Ph.D. in library and information science in 1999 from the University of Western Ontario. He was instrumental in founding the International Society for Music Information Retrieval, and serves now as president. In recent years, he has garnered more than $1.8 million in research funding. These funded projects include Structural Analysis of Large Amounts of Music Information (SALAMI), from the National Science Foundation, and The Networked Environment for Music Analysis (NEMA), from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Downie’s position began on August 16.
“At GSLIS, research is a very important part of what we do and who we are: it's one important way that we contribute to making the world a better place, and it's also about a third of our budget every year. In order to provide the best support possible for faculty and students engaged in research, GSLIS created an associate dean for research (ADR) three years ago. We were very fortunate to have Allen Renear serve as our first ADR: he brought years of administrative experience to the job, he assembled an extremely effective staff, and with them he developed services that produced an immediate and significant increase in GSLIS research activity. Now that Allen's decided to step down as ADR, I'm grateful to Stephen Downie for agreeing to step up to that role. Stephen has considerable experience in building research communities, he's very familiar with some of our key external funding agencies, and he is a committed believer in the value of all kinds of research. His energy, experience, and enthusiasm are already highly valued at GSLIS, and they are sure to be key assets in his new administrative role,” said Dean John Unsworth.
Downie will be aided on the Research Services staff by Maeve Reilly, who takes the role of research services coordinator, replacing Janet Eke, who will move to research services coordinator at the Center for Informatics in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS). Both will be involved in project planning and proposal development, including general planning, cost-sharing, research resources development, and providing assistance with university policies and procedures.
Maeve Reilly
Research Services Coordinator
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois
Rm 219 LIS
501 E. Daniel
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 244-7316