Candidate for Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

 

Diane M. Rasmussen Pennington
Assistant Professor
Ashford University

 

Candidate's Statement

It is a true honor to be nominated for this position. ALISE provides those of us who are passionate about LIS education with a network that augments our connections and our intellectual understanding of this rapidly evolving field. I have presented at ALISE several times, including at the 2013 ALISE Academy on qualitative research, and I am always amazed by the depth and breadth of the conversations and how they shape our work.

The SIGs hold tremendous potential for this association’s work to flourish in meaningful ways. Although they individually represent our diverse spectrum of career phases and content specialties, they unite us in our common purpose: to move our field and our students’ futures forward. As a library and information scientist working in a business school, I teach MBA students how they can use research and technology to make informed organizational decisions. This experience has reinforced my belief that academia and industry need our expertise now more than ever.

If I am elected, I will lead manageable activity increases within and among the SIGs in two ways that are aligned with ALISE’s 2011-2014 Strategic Directions. First, I will work with each SIG’s officers to help them further develop appropriate Web presences in an effort to promote year-round engagement within the SIGs and broader communities (1.1c). Additionally, I will implement a SIG conference presentation award (3.2e).

Biography

Diane Rasmussen Pennington (formerly Diane Rasmussen Neal) is an assistant professor in the Forbes School of Business at Ashford University as well as ASIS&T’s Social Media Manager. Previously, she worked in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at The University of Western Ontario. She earned her information science degrees from the University of North Texas, and she has worked as a systems librarian as well as a corporate IT professional. She teaches online graduate courses in research methods and information systems. Diane’s research areas include social media, online pedagogy, online consumer health information, and digital photograph representation. She is the editor of two books: Social media for academics: A practical guide and Indexing and retrieval of non-text information. Currently, she is the PI on a grant entitled “Understanding student behaviors in online classrooms: A qualitative approach.” She is a 2012-2014 ASIS&T Director-at-Large, Chair of the ASIS&T Web Presence Task Force, and the Vice President of the Canadian Association for Information Science. Diane won ASIS&T’s SIG Member of the Year award in 2011 and the SIG Publication of the Year Award in 2009. Her complete biography and CV are available at http://infogirl99.wordpress.com.