Summer 2025 Awards and Recognitions
Join us in celebrating accomplishments and honors attained by UT Libraries’ staff, faculty, and student assistants.
Awards & Recognitions
Maggie Albro (Health, Wellness, and Professional Programs; Webster C. Pendergrass Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine Library) and fellow researchers were awarded a $1,000 Research, Development, and Demonstration Project Grant from the Medical Library Association to pursue their project "Exploring the Education and Self-Training Practices of Information Professionals in Evidence Synthesis Methodologies."
Pauline Bayne, professor emerita, former assistant dean of libraries, and former head of the George F. DeVine Music Library, is the 2025 recipient of the MLA Citation, awarded by the Music Library Association in recognition of distinguished service to music librarianship over the recipient’s career.
The Association of Southeastern Research Libraries recognized Amy Chew (Collection Management and Sharing) for her extraordinary service and leadership as part of ASERL’s Resource Sharing—Interoperability Working Group. She received this commendation: “ASERL as a community is stronger, better and smarter, thanks to your contributions!”
The UT Faculty Senate Heart and Soul Award honors individuals who selflessly enrich the university community through service, compassion, and collaborative leadership. This spring the Heart and Soul Award was conferred on two librarians. Nathalie Hristov (Arts and Humanities; George F. DeVine Music Library) was recognized as having “significantly transformed the role of Faculty Senate Communication Officer. Her efforts have elevated Senate communications from simple news updates to powerful storytelling that highlights the excellence, diversity, and impact of our faculty community.” Michelle Brannen (Immersive Spaces and Technologies) was declared “a vital member of the Faculty Senate team whose dedication as Senate Secretary ensures the integrity and transparency of shared governance.”
Thura Mack, Angelica Nepomuceno, and Elizabeth Nix (Community Learning and Engagement) received the 2024–2025 Innovation Trailblazer Award from Oak Ridge Schools. They were recognized for their work with Willow Brook Elementary School through the Reading Design Challenge, a program that develops students’ literacy skills through reading comprehension and design challenges.
Mack, Nepomuceno, Nix, and Izzy Alexander (Community Learning and Engagement) were awarded a $1,000 Outreach and Engagement grant from UT’s Division of Access and Engagement. The grant funded the inaugural Great Expectations in Healthcare conference for East Tennessee middle school students.
Stacy Palado (Advancement) was appointed by Mayor Indya Kincannon to a three-year term on the City of Knoxville’s Public Arts Committee. The purpose of the committee is "to enhance the reputation of the community, contribute to the civic environment, and enrich the lives of citizens and visitors through the involvement of professional artists to integrate public artwork throughout the City."
Anna Sandelli (Teaching and Learning Programs) was elected incoming secretary of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ University Libraries Section. She also will serve as chair of the ACRL Instruction Section's Management and Leadership Committee for 2025–2026.
An article by Grace Therrell (Teaching and Learning Programs), “Balancing, Prioritizing, and Reimagining: Comprehensively Updating Asynchronous Library Instruction,” won the 2024 award as the best article published in the peer-reviewed journal Practical Academic Librarianship.
Publications & Presentations
Alex Boris (Health, Wellness, and Professional Programs) chalked up several publications and presentations. Her paper, "Out With the Old, In With the New: Revitalizing a Leisure Reading Section in an Academic Library," appeared in the Journal of Creative Library Practice. Her presentation from the LOEX 2024 conference, “Cultivating an Inclusive Garden: DEI Engagement and Outreach on Display in Academic Libraries,” appeared in the recently published conference proceedings. She also gave a poster presentation on “Reading for All: Creating an Inclusive Leisure Reading Section” at the ACRL 2025 Conference.
Olivia Chin (Research Impact and Open Access) was an invited speaker at the Cleveland State University AI Symposium. She and fellow researchers led a discussion on the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence.
Niki Cobb (Health, Wellness, and Professional Programs) and Erin Whitaker (Teaching and Learning Programs) published a chapter, “The Leadership Role of the Advanced Nurse in Searching for Evidence,” in Leading Evidence-based Practice and Quality Improvement Initiatives in Advanced Nursing Practice: A Competency-based Approach.
Melanie Dixson, Calantha Tillotson, and Paris Whalon (Health, Wellness, and Professional Programs) made a poster presentation for the Medical Library Association 2025 Annual Meeting. Their subject was “Stories that Heal: Bridging Minds and Mental Health through the Care and Custody Exhibition.”
“Breaking Boundaries: Investigating Gender Biases in Generative AI and Its Implications for Library Outreach” by Sidney Gavel (Data and Digital Scholarship), Mikayla Wood (Data and Digital Scholarship), and Jeanine Williamson (Health, Wellness, and Professional Programs; Webster C. Pendergrass Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine Library) appeared in the journal College and Undergraduate Libraries.
“An Analytical Investigation into Scholarly Publication Trends” by Alexander Harriman (Assessment Programs and Collection Strategy; Research Impact and Open Access), and Judy Li (Research Impact and Open Access), and Brooke Noffsinger was the subject of a poster presentation at the BRIC 2025 (Bibliometrics and Research Impact Community) conference in Montreal.
The Journal of Creative Library Practice published “Musical Maps of the World in the 21st Century: Leveraging Librarian Expertise in the Development of Visualization Tools for Music Research and Pedagogy,” by Nathalie Hristov (Arts and Humanities; George F. DeVine Music Library) and Joshua Ortiz Baco (Arts and Humanities; Data and Digital Scholarship).
Thura Mack, Angelica Nepomuceno, and Elizabeth Nix (Community Learning and Engagement) presented “Beyond Traditional Walls: Leveraging a Digital Learning Format for STEM Literacy Development” at the 2024 Tennessee Association of School Librarians Conference. They also presented “Cultivating Engaged Scholarship: How Higher Education Promotes Student Success” at the 2025 Innovative Teaching and Learning Conference.
“My Journey on Identity Management” by Joy Panigabutrra-Roberts (Cataloging) appeared in the journal Technicalities.
David Ratledge, Laura Romans, Alexandra Sabau, and Alesha Shumar (Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives) presented a panel discussion on "Barcoding and Beyond: Streamlining Your Archive Relocation" at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Society of Tennessee Archivists.
Amanda Richards (Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives) was co-presenter of “Forging Connections: Working Together to Build and Sustain Small-Team Preservation Programs in Libraries and Archives” at the annual conference of the American Institute for Conservation.
Mike Rogers (Discovery and Technology Solutions) will present “Better Discovery Through Change: Looking Back on Fifteen Years of Primo Development to Help Prepare for the Future” at the 2025 ELUNA (ExLibris Users of North America) conference.
Grace Therrell (Teaching and Learning Programs) led an invited presentation (“Preparing a SoTL Literature Review for My Topic of Inquiry") at the University of Tennessee’s SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) Retreat. She also gave a virtual poster presentation (“Embracing Millennial Cringe: Using Humor to Center Humanity and Connect with Students Online") to the ACRL Distance and Online Learning Section.
Therrell and Joshua Ortiz Baco (Arts and Humanities) published an article, "The Problem of Abundance: Text Mining Approaches to Qualitative Assessment of Asynchronous Library Instruction,” in The Journal of Academic Librarianship.
Calantha Tillotson (Health, Wellness, and Professional Programs) was the first author on “Making an Open Information Literacy Textbook: A Case Study in OER Collaborations Among Four Oklahoma Academic Librarians.” The article appeared in the Journal of New Librarianship.
“Student Engagement in Academic Libraries: A Conceptual Framework” by Erin Whitaker (Teaching and Learning Programs) appeared in the journal College and Research Libraries.
“Academic Search Using Artificial Intelligence Tools” by Jeanine Williamson (Health, Wellness, and Professional Programs; Webster C. Pendergrass Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine Library) and Peter Fernandez (Arts and Humanities; Research Impact and Open Access) was the subject of a Through the Looking Glass: Envisioning New Library Technologies column in Library Hi Tech News.