COCKY'S READING EXPRESS - Key Persons
Andrea Heyward has over a decade of experience working in the public health and health care sectors providing expertise in areas of community health, adolescent health, maternal and child health, women's health, rural health and the integration of evidence-based models to include the Community Health Worker (CHW) model.
Andrea completed a Master of Health Science degree in Health Education and Health Communication from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2010. She received additional certification in Health Communication with a focus in social and behavior change communication. Andrea also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Experimental Psychology and minor in Health Promotion, Education and Behavior from the University of South Carolina. She is also a Master Certified Health Education Specialist.
Job Titles:
- Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Job Titles:
- 8th Judicial Circuit Chief Executive Officer B.S., Business Administration, USC, 1990 Current Term, 2020 - 2024
3rd Judicial Circuit | Physician | B.S., biology, Wofford College, 1980 | M.D., University of South Carolina, 1985 | General Surgery Residency, USC, 1985-1990 | Cardiothoracic Surgery Fellowship, Medical College of Georgia, 1990-1992 | Board member since 2010; current term, 2018-2022 | Board chairman, 2020-2022
B.A., english, Washington and Lee University, 1994, magna cum laude | M.Ed., University of Virginia, 2001 | Ph.D., University of Virginia, 2004 |Secretary of the University and of the University of South Carolina's Board of Trustees, April 29, 2021 - present.
Carol Hull is the Inclusive Services Consultant at the State Library. She focuses on issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion within libraries and provides support to South Carolina public library staff. Her goal is to advocate for libraries that are truly representative of the diverse communities they serve. Hull received her Master's in Library and Information Science from the University of South Carolina. Prior to joining the State Library, she worked for the Charleston County Public Library in a variety of roles including Circulation, Technology Training, Reference, and Children's Services.
catherine lockmiller is a health science librarian at Northern Arizona University's Phoenix Biomedical Campus. She has master's degrees in Library Information Science and English literature, and is a provisional member of AHIP. She is interested in critical health literacy initiatives that minimize the effects of health care disparities and social determinants arising from power imbalances and inequities in underserved populations. She is particularly focused on achieving health equity for transgender populations.
Job Titles:
- Health Informatics Researcher
Charles Senteio is a health informatics researcher focused on improving chronic care outcomes. His is an Assistant Professor at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information in the Department of Library and Information Science. He uses mixed methods to investigate how health care practitioners and patients can better use information to improve chronic disease outcomes for at-risk patients - while reducing cost of care - through financially sustainable care delivery models. He develops and enhances innovative, scalable approaches to care delivery, with a particular emphasis on community-based participatory (CBPR) research strategies. In 2015 he received a PhD in health informatics from the School of Information at the University of Michigan, and also completed a Masters in Social Work during the doctoral program. He began his IT strategy consulting career in the high-tech industry after receiving an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and started a health care consulting practice in 2002 to concentrate exclusively on health care. He is a licensed master social worker (LMSW), certified health education specialist (CHES) and certified community health worker instructor (CHW-I).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Chairman of the Information Technology Committee for the South Carolina Association of School Librarians
Christy James is chair of the Information Technology Committee for the South Carolina Association of School Librarians and Library and Media Services Specialist for the Charleston County School District in Charleston, South Carolina. Her outstanding contributions to the school library profession resulted in the 2018 F. William Summers Outstanding Alumni Award presented by the School of Information Science, University of South Carolina, and most recently in her earned title of 2020 Library Journal Mover and Shaker as a professional Innovator.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Dean for Professional Partnerships
Job Titles:
- Consultant / Piedmont College
Dom Francis, MPH, is the Training Coordinator for the Center for Community Health Alignment within the University of South Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health. He brings to the table over four years of nuanced public health experience in areas including fitness, qualitative evaluation, and workforce development.
As the Training Coordinator, Dom's primary role is to develop curricula and facilitate training for the Center's anchor initiative, the CHW Institute. Dom also serves as an active member of the South Carolina CHW Association and is a part of its Annual Conference Subcommittee.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Member of the Advisory Board
Dr. Amelia Gibson is an assistant professor in the UNC School of Information and Library Science. She graduated from the College of Communication and Information at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Her primary research interests include information access and practices within communities, health information behavior and information policy, focusing specifically on place-based communities as information systems, and the effect of community structure on health and government information access. Gibson is currently conducting research on the information seeking and sharing behaviors of parents and caretakers of individuals with disabilities. She had previously been a research associate at the Information Use Management and Policy Institute, where she researched issues related to rural communities and e-government, and broadband adoption through community anchor institutions. Gibson received her MLIS from FSU, and her AB from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. While at Florida State, Gibson was a McKnight Fellow, and she is a member of Beta Phi Mu.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Laboratory for Leadership
Dr. Clayton Copeland is director of the Laboratory for Leadership in the Equity of Access and Diversity at the School of Information Scienc e. LLEAD focuses on universal design in digital and built environments along with skill development and job training for those who self-identify as differently able.
Copeland also helps manage the Linda Lucas Walling Collection for Universal Access, which is designed to provide self-instruction on selecting and evaluating materials for children with disabilities and materials about children with disabilities.
Copeland is a part of is a partnership with the university's School of Medicine to conduct research on libraries' roles in providing disaster support.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Assistant Professor of Health Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Communication
Dr. Devon Greyson is an assistant professor of health communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Communication. Before this, Greyson was a postdoctoral fellow at the British Columbia Children's Hospital Research Institute studying the role of information in decision making about prenatal and childhood vaccinations. At the Vaccine Evaluation Centre, Greyson worked with Julie Bettinger and the Canadian Immunization Research Network to better understand the ways that information affects health behavior. Greyson's primary areas of expertise are the health information practices of adolescents, parents, and families, as well as the ways health care providers and health systems use information in efforts to improve the health of populations. With research interests clustering around the intersection between information practices and health behavior, Greyson is particularly keen to investigate decision-making about health issues that are influenced by social marginalization and inequity, and the ways information systems can exacerbate or alleviate disparities. Greyson completed a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies at the University of British Columbia in 2015. Greyson's doctoral research, under the supervision of Youth Sexual Health Team leader Dr. Jean Shoveller, investigated how socially-constructed information practices influenced the health behavior and experiences of early-age parents. Greyson received a BA (with honors) in Women's Studies and Music from Oberlin College, and an MLIS from the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. Greyson has taught about gender, sexuality, health, information and public policy at Capilano University and the UBC School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, and founded the Social Justice Librarian blog. Work experience in the non-profit sector (domestic violence and sexual assault), education (pre-school through adult), co- operatives, libraries, and health services and policy research informs Greyson's research and teaching.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor in the College of Education
Dr. Ismahan Arslan-Ari, assistant professor in the College of Education, University of South Carolina, and director of the South Carolina Center for Assistive Technology and Educational Research; experienced quantitative researcher who specializes in developing and implementing explanatory and experimental statistical models in K-12 settings.
Dr. Ken Campbell joined the School of Journalism and Mass Communications in 1988, becoming the school's first African American tenure track faculty member and director of the school's Southeastern Multicultural Newspaper Workshop, a summer program which trained minorities for jobs on newspapers.
Campbell's research focuses on the media coverage of racial issues and African Americans, as well as the historical portrayal of African Americans in the media. That interest led him to help launch the J-school's biennial Media and Civil Rights History Symposium in 2011, which he now heads.
Dr. Leslie Maniotes, co-creator of Guided Inquiry Design and the professional development for model implementation, specialist in curriculum and instruction with over 15 years of experience in teacher training.
Dr. Liam Hein's passion and work to improve the health of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and their communities has spanned over a decade. A major perpetrator of LGBT health disparities is policy that excludes, harms, and oppresses LGBT people. These policies include absence of health coverage due to the Medicare gap, explicit exclusion of transgender care from health plans, absence of equal employment protection, and the legal subjugation of LGBT children to harmful therapies. Patient advocacy through policy is critical for progress on LGBT health disparities. His experience and scholarship has been focused on health disparities education, LGBT cultural competency, community coalition building and national LGBT health policy. He is chair of the LGBTQ Expert Panel of the American Academy of Nursing and Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion committee of the Academy. He was pivotal in leading the Academy to expand their Diversity and Inclusion statement to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Through his work as co-chair, Hein petitioned the Academy to be co-signatories to amicus briefs, to issue statements supporting transgender health and transgender service members, and support for retaining section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. Hein serves on the Board of Directors of GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality, a national inter-professional organization of health care professionals. Through his board service with GLMA, he works to build collaborative relationships with other organizations that support LGBTQ health equity. Locally, he serves on the Advisory Board of the Harriet Hancock LGBT Center in Columbia, SC.
Job Titles:
- Principal Investigator / Project Lead
- Professor of Information Science, University
Dr. Lucy Santos Green, professor of Information Science, University of South Carolina; school librarian educator, researcher, well published and internationally known in the areas of technology integration for K-12 settings, instructional partnerships for learning, Guided Inquiry in STEM, and instructional design.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Scientist at OCLC
Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway is a senior research scientist at OCLC and leads the User Research team. She is the 2017 ASIS&T past president. Connaway has held visiting scholar positions at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the University of Sheffield, and at the Royal School of Library and Information Science. Her research has been funded by agencies in the US and the UK and she is the co-author of Research Methods for Library and Information Science, 6th ed.
Dr. Marie L. Radford is a professor in the Department of Library and Information Science at Rutgers University. An award-winning author, she has one forthcoming book Conducting the Reference Interview 3rd ed. (with Catherine Ross & Kirsti Nilsen) and published two books in 2017: Library Conversations: Reclaiming Interpersonal Communication Theory for Understanding Professional Encounters (with Gary Radford), and Research Methods in Library and Information Science, 6th ed. (with Lynn S. Connaway). Her research focus is on interpersonal communication in virtual and face-to-face contexts, social media, qualitative methods, postmodern approaches to library problematics, and media stereotypes. She presents frequently at scholarly conferences and publishes widely in the highest-ranked LIS journals. She received the 2010 ALA/RUSA Mudge Award for distinguished contributions to reference.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor in the College of Education
- Instrument Designer
Dr. Melissa P. Johnston, associate professor in the College of Education, University of West Georgia, school librarian educator and researcher, well published and internationally known in the areas of technology leadership, and research methods in library and information science.
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
Dr. Nicole Cooke is the Augusta Baker Endowed Chair at the UofSC School of Information Science. A practicing librarian for 13 years before completing her Ph.D., Cooke has experience in public, medical and academic libraries. Cooke's research and teaching interests include human information behavior, critical cultural information studies, fake news/misinformation/disinformation, and diversity and social justice in librarianship (with an emphasis on infusing them into LIS education and pedagogy).
Dr. Nicole Cooke joined the School of Information Science in fall 2019 as the Augusta Baker Chair in Childhood Literacy, a position named for the pioneering African American children's librarian who served as the university's storyteller-in-residence for 14 years.
Dr. R. David Lankes is the Virginia & Charles Bowden Professor of Librarianship at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Information. Lankes has always been interested in combining theory and practice to create active research projects that make a difference. His work has been funded by organizations such as The MacArthur Foundation, The Institute for Library and Museum Services, NASA, The U.S. Department of Education, The U.S. Department of Defense, The National Science Foundation, The U.S. State Department, and The American Library Association. Lankes is a passionate advocate for libraries and their essential role in today's society earning him the American Library Association's Ken Haycock Award for Promoting Librarianship in 2016. He also seeks to understand how information approaches and technologies can be used to transform industries. In this capacity he has served on advisory boards and study teams in the fields of libraries, telecommunications, education, and transportation including at the National Academies. He has been a visiting fellow at the National Library of Canada, The Harvard School of Education, and was the first fellow of ALA's Office for Information Technology Policy. His book, The Atlas of New Librarianship won the 2012 ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Award for the Best Book in Library Literature.
In January 2019, Dr. Shirley Staples Carter was named Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the College of Information and Communications at the University of South Carolina.
In this capacity, Carter provides primary leadership for diversity, equity and inclusion in the CIC. She works with college and school leadership to facilitate the development of programs, policies and practices to promote critical understanding of diversity and equity issues across the college, local community, state, and nation.
As the thought leader for diversity, equity, and inclusion within the college, Carter reports to the dean and works directly with college and school leadership, faculty, staff and students to create a vision and strategy supporting the CIC's commitment to be a diverse, welcoming, safe and inclusive learning, teaching, and working environment.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Principal Investigator
- Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina School of Information Science
Vanessa Kitzie, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina School of Information Science. Her research and teaching interests include human information behavior (with a focus on information marginalization), gender and sexuality studies, and social justice and diversity in librarianship. She is a recipient of IMLS Early Career Development (2018) and ALA Diversity (2019) grants.
Kitzie's 2020 iConference paper, which reports on findings from her Early Career Development grant and was written with doctoral students Vera and Wagner, was nominated for the Lee Dirks Best Paper Award. She chairs the School of Information Science's Research and Doctoral committee and is on the Advocacy and Resources committee of the American Library Association's Rainbow Roundtable.
Dusty Roether is the digital services librarian in the Walker Local and Family History Center at Richland Library. In this role, he manages digital collections, cataloging, and indexing of historic materials pertaining to Columbia and Richland County and works to make these collections more inclusive of all members of the community. He received his B.A. from Furman University and his M.L.I.S. from the University of South Carolina.
Job Titles:
- Alumni Association President
Attorney | B.A., education, secondary english, USC, 1974 |J.D., USC School of Law, 1989| Board member, ex officio; current term, 2022-2024
Job Titles:
- 10th Judicial Circuit Attorney B.S., Business Administration / Finance, USC, 1992 J.D., Samford University, 1995 Current Term, 2020 - 2024
Job Titles:
- Member of the Academic Program Chairs and Directors Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Academic Program Chairs and Directors Team
- Department Chair, Instruction and Teacher Education
Job Titles:
- Interim Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Job Titles:
- Governor of South Carolina
A.B., history, USC, 1969 | J.D., USC School of Law, 1973 | The Governor is the ex officio Chair of the Board and serves for the duration of his tenure as Governor.
Job Titles:
- Coordinator of Library Technology for the Fort Worth Independent School System
Jennifer LaBoon, coordinator of library technology for the Fort Worth Independent School System in Fort Worth, Texas, has been a school library administrator for 14 years and has extensive leadership experience, including work in advocacy and in leadership training. A past-president of the Texas Library Association, Jennifer has testified before state and federal legislative committees, leading delegations to speak to legislators in Austin, Texas, and congregational representatives in Washington, D. C.
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
- Coordinator of Information Literacy at the University of South Carolina Upstate
John Siegel is the Coordinator of Information Literacy at the University of South Carolina Upstate. He serves as liaison and affiliate faculty for the USC Upstate Center for Women's and Gender Studies.
John's interests include reference services, instruction, outreach, and collection development for LGBTQ+ and diverse populations. He has presented at numerous conferences and co-authored articles on LGBTQ+ information needs at health sciences and academic libraries.
John earned his Master of Library Science (MLS) at the University of Maryland and received a Master of Education (MEd) in adult and professional learning from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He previously worked at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the Health Sciences Library System at the University of Pittsburgh.
Julie Smithwick, LMSW, CHW, has over twenty-five years of experience working alongside communities and families to find solutions to address health and social inequities. Trained as a Community Health Worker in Ecuador, she is the founder and director of the Arnold School of Public Health Center for Community Health Alignment.
Prior to developing the Center, Smithwick founded and led PASOs, a community-based organization that engages with Latino communities throughout South Carolina utilizing the CHW model. She also helped found the South Carolina CHW Association and is on the Boards of Directors of various organizations including the National Association of Community Health Workers.
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
Kamla Sanasi-Bhola, MD, is a board-certified infectious diseases physician with Prisma Health and an assistant professor of clinical internal medicine at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia, where she serves as associate program director for the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program. She received her medical degree from the University of Guyana in Georgetown, Guyana, South America, and completed her internal medicine residency at Howard University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. Following her residency, she completed a fellowship in infectious diseases at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia.
Dr. Sanasi-Bhola's research interests include HIV prevention with a rural health focus, LGBTQIA+ health care disparities with a focus in transgender health care and advocacy, women's health, and bone and joint infections. She is actively involved in the education of medical students, nurse practitioner students, residents and fellows.
An attending physician at the Prisma Health Immunology Center, Sanasi-Bhola's patient population includes women with HIV (specifically peri-partum HIV-positive women), transgender, HIV/hepatitis-C co-infected patients, and patients on pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). As the director of the South Carolina AIDS Education and Training Center Progam's PrEP telehealth program, she coordinates and executes PrEP technical support and LGBTQIA+ care competency programs for health care providers.
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
- Health Program Coordinator
Kathia Valverde is originally from Costa Rica and has lived in the United States for over 30 years. She has a BA degree in Accounting and Business Administration, a diploma in English as a Second Language; and two Associate Degrees in Early Childhood and Liberal Arts. S
he has served as an interpreter and translator for South Carolina Department of Social Services, family court, several attorneys, and several medical entities in the state. She is the former Coordinator of the HABLA Project at UofSC which served the Latinx community of the State with Interpretation and Translations through DSS. Kathia is the State Reproductive Health Coordinator at PASOs for the Latinx community, which is part of a State-wide Initiative that wants to ensure that every person regardless of their ability to pay; have access to receive the contraceptives of their choice.
Her passion and solidarity, advocacy and activism for issues affecting minorities, immigrants, diversity, women rights, LGBTQ+ community; is what inspires her to serve in several counsels, committees, boards such as WGST-Women and Gender Studies, WREN-Women Empowerment Network, Choose Well Initiative and local Schools.
Kathia loves to travel de world, spend time with her family, she is an active yogi, a lover of animals, nature, and her garden.
Kathia Valverde is the Reproductive Health Program Coordinator at PASOs, which is part of the Choose Well Initiative. Kathia is originally from Costa Rica and has a Bachelor's Degree in Accounting and Business Administration, a diploma in English as a Second Language; and two Associate Degrees in Early Childhood and Liberal Arts. She's the former Program Coordinator for the HABLA Project at the University of South Carolina. She has served as an interpreter and translator for South Carolina Department of Social Services, family court, several attorneys and other medical entities in the state. Kathia enjoys spending time with her wife and two children. She is an active yogi and gardener. She is a passionate activist and advocate for issues affecting our state's diverse LGBTQ+ community.
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
- Senior Manager of Data and Reporting for SC Thrive
Katrina Seastrunk is the Senior Manager of Data and Reporting for SC Thrive. Previously, she worked as the Senior Regional Manager supporting SC Thrive's low county partnerships. Her education includes a BA in Economics from Siena College in Loudonville, New York.
Prior to joining SC Thrive, Katrina worked managing HOAs and worked with the Greater Greensboro Habitat for Humanity as a construction leader, volunteer manager, neighborhood revitalization coordinator and completed two years of AmeriCorps service.
Recently, Katrina sustained her membership with the Junior Service League of Summerville after serving 2.5 years in a leadership capacity. In her free time, Katrina enjoys quilting and knitting, baking, and spending time with her husband, Will, and their two cats.
Job Titles:
- Student Member - at - Large
Job Titles:
- Director of Scholastic Media Organizations
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
- Director for Access Kershaw
Lindsey Kilgo is the Director for Access Kershaw. In this role she leads the program in Kershaw County that works to connect individuals with needed resources to enhance overall wellbeing for all residents in the community; with an emphasis on those that are uninsured and underinsured in Kershaw County. Access Kershaw encourages and has created a community-based network of care in an effort to address the uninsured population and be able to provide a centralized resources for those individuals in Kershaw County.
Prior to Access Kershaw, Lindsey worked for the South Carolina Office of Rural Health and led several initiatives to support rural communities to advance health equity. In other roles, Lindsey has the led the Healthy Outcomes Program for Providence Hospitals as the Program Coordinator. In that role, she implemented a program that connects uninsured patients with primary care and addressed many other critical barriers to care. Her professional goal is to provide integrated services through the development of relationships with both, individuals and the community as a whole. Lindsey's passion for teaching blossomed as a field instructor for the College of Social Work at the University of South Carolina. Her guidance has helped numerous social work students. Lindsey also teaches part time, as needed, with the College of Social Work at UofSC.
Her academic work includes a Master's degree in Social Work from the University of South Carolina and a Bachelor's of Science degree, majoring in Social Work, from Western Carolina University. Her community involvement and love for helping others continues to be her motivation. She feels an undeniable calling in life to promote the social well-being and social justice for all people through advocacy, education and empowerment. Lindsey lives in Columbia with her husband, daughter and two dogs.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Media Specialist at Cherokee High School
Lisa Bakanas is a School Library Media Specialist at Cherokee High School in Marlton, New Jersey. After leaving a career in healthcare technology project management, she is in her fourteenth year as a high school librarian. Lisa has served on the executive board of the New Jersey Association of School Librarians (NJASL) in the roles of secretary, member at large and president. She was also the recipient of NJASL's Villy Gandhi Leadership Training Scholarship allowing her to present her work at the Association for Educational Communication and Technology annual conference. Lisa presents annually at the NJASL Fall conference sharing her passion for digital literacy and programming for students with special needs.
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
A native of South Carolina, Greg graduated from The Citadel in 2006 with a degree in Psychology. After working 5 years as a Police Officer and Firefighter, he began working in the trade business at FedEx. Greg has been a member of Tau Kappa Phi Inc, a non-profit LGBT Greek lettered organization since 2004. During this time, he helped to maintain a space within Tau Kappa Phi for transgender men, Alpha Omega Kappa Fraternity, Inc. serving as the first president of the organization.
Greg served as a moderator for a transgender support group at Garden of Grace United Church of Christ. He has been on the board of South Carolina Equality as the chairman of the Trans Action Task Force, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Harriet Hancock Center.
Greg has spoken in Washington DC with the U.S. Department of Justice ; Federal Bureau of Prisons, Dorn VA Hospital, Federal Correctional Institution; Edgefield, SC, Federation of Families Summer Summit, The International Conference on Stigma, and various other engagements. Greg has recently published his first book, Audacity: Memoirs of Transitioning.
Job Titles:
- Provost Visiting Scholars
Job Titles:
- President
- President of the University
Michael Amiridis became the 30th president of the University of South Carolina on July 1, 2022. Before he served as chancellor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he was executive vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of South Carolina from 2009 to 2015.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Michelle Maniaci Folk has been a school librarian at both the elementary and middle school level for over twenty years. She was the librarian at Luther Elementary when it was chosen as an outstanding school library on the 2011 AASL Vision Tour. As a member of the 2016-2017 AASL Presidential Initiative Task Force, she co-developed the annotated resource guide: "School Librarians as Learning Leaders: An Administrator's Guide". Along with Lucy Santos Green she co-authored the Research into Practice column in the 2018-2019 volume of School Library Connection. Michelle is currently a middle school librarian in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.
Job Titles:
- State Superintendent of Education
Nick Vera is a doctoral student in the School of Information Science at the University of South Carolina. He received his Master's in Library and Information Science from the University of South Carolina. His research interests include understanding health and information behaviors of populations living in underserved communities. Prior to starting his Ph.D., he worked in the low country region of South Carolina with a local nonprofit SC Thrive to provide innovative and collaborative tools to help underserved communities efficiently access quality of life resources.
Job Titles:
- Department Chair, Educational Leadership and Policies
Job Titles:
- Assistant Dean for Enrollment Management and Academic Program Development
14th Judicial Circuit | Banker | B.A., finance and economics, Converse College, 1992 | MBA, USC, 1994 | Board member since 2018; current term, 2020-2024
Job Titles:
- Director of Libraries for the Medical University of South Carolina
Shannon Jones (she/her/hers) is the Director of Libraries for the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Prior to her arrival at MUSC, Shannon worked as the Associate Director for Research and Education for Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
Shannon focuses her research on staff recruitment and retention, diversity, equity, and inclusion in libraries, and leadership in academic health sciences libraries. Shannon is the co-editor of Diversity and Inclusion in Libraries: A Call to Action and Strategies for Success. She holds an MLS from North Carolina Central University and an M.Ed. in Adult Learning from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is currently pursuing an Ed.D in Educational Leadership at Charleston Southern University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
Sharita Sims, MSW, CHW, is the Community Health Social Worker at Richland Library where she hopes to inspire everyone to question things and think of impossibilities every day. A University of South Carolina graduate, where she obtained her Master's degree, has worked in the public health sector for over five years.
Sharita joined Richland Library in 2016 where she coordinates events and services that provide health related information to library customers. She helps customers access community services, complete health applications, and understand information from health organizations in relation to Medicare, Medicaid, Benefit Bank, Affordable Care Act benefits, and Social Security benefits. In addition, Sharita provides staff training and consultation on health related issues for library customers, e.g. coordinating flu shots clinics, nurse visits, etc.
Her favorite pastime is reading and she loves The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory and enjoys spending time with family and friends when not working.
Job Titles:
- Interim Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs
The primary library for students at the University of South Carolina, Thomas Cooper Library houses seven levels of research materials, subject matter experts and partner organizations that complement your learning experience.
In August 2012, Thomas Hodges joined the Instruction and Teacher Education faculty at the University of South Carolina. Hodges has previously served as coordinator of Elementary Education programs, Chair of the Department of Instruction and Teacher Education, and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.
Travis Wagner, MLIS, is a Ph.D. student in the School of Information Science at the University of South Carolina, as well as an instructor in the Women's and Gender Studies department. Their primary research interests include critical information studies, queer archives, and social advocacy in librarianship.
Their recent publications include articles in Reference Services Review and Open Information Science. Wagner is also the co-creator of the Queer Cola Oral History and Digital Archives Project. They currently work as a Research Assistant on Kitzie's current Early Career Development grant.
Valerie Lookingbill is a research and instruction and sciences librarian at Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina. Her concentration is health sciences librarianship. She received her bachelor's degree in English literature from Elizabethtown College. Her research interests include information poverty and health information practices
Dr. Vanessa Kitzie is an assistant professor in the School of Information Science in the College of Information and Communications at the University of South Carolina. 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.
Job Titles:
- Student Member - at - Large
Job Titles:
- Consultant / Virginia State University