Leading the Field
Recent recognition for UW faculty, alumni and students

David Wennergren, left, presents CIAC Director Barbara Endicott-Popovsky, Dave Dittrich, Radha Poovendran and Brenda Oldfield with the Center's designation.

iSchool Cited for Excellence in Information Assurance Research
The Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity (CIAC) at the University of Washington Information School is among the first centers in the United States to be designated a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Research, beginning with academic years 2008-2013. The designation recognizes excellence in information assurance research and was bestowed by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, joint sponsors of the program.

Patricia Katopol, '07, Wins Best Paper at 2008 CAIS Conference
‘Just Enough’ Information: Information Behaviour, Organizational Culture, and Decision-Making in Municipal Government, a paper by Patricia Katopol, Ph.D. 2007, was selected as a Best Paper at the June, 2008 conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science in Vancouver, Canada.

In her paper, Katopol suggests that in a complex, time-driven work environment with frequently changing priorities, the information needed for decision-making is often ‘just enough’ to inform the decision. The use of just enough information can be fostered by the organizational culture which privileges some behaviors over others and is a primary contributor to information behavior in the organization.

The paper was based on her dissertation work done while at the Information School and will be published in the Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science later this year. Katopol is an assistant professor at the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa and is associated with the Center for Human-Information Interaction at the Information School.

Read more about this designation.

MLIS Student Takes Grand Prize in Office Live Workspace Contest
The Microsoft Office Live Workspace team presented David Austin with the $100,000 grand prize, as part of the Office Live Workspace sweepstakes that kicked off when the service launched on March 3, 2008. Participants entered for a chance to win by signing up for their own Workspace, and earned up to two bonus entries for uploading their first document to their Office Live Workspace account and the first time they shared a document or Workspace with others. The winner could choose to use the grand prize to fund a favorite charity, an education or build a business.

Austin, a Seattle-based graduate student in the Library and Information Science program at the iSchool, was introduced to Office Live Workspace during one of his courses at UW, where he was studying various collaborative solutions such as Office Live Workspace. Read more about Austin’s winning entry.

UW Educational Outreach Honors Endicott-Popovsky
Barbara Endicott-Popovsky, iSchool senior lecturer, is one of six instructors named by UW Educational Outreach as recipients of a 2008 Teaching Excellence Award.

UW faculty members Janine Brodine, Barbara Endicott-Popovsky and Lisa Coutu were honored at the UW Extension Certificate Awards ceremony in June, along with fellow instructors Janet Boguch, Kris Fulsaas and Kristie Dunkin.

Based on stellar evaluations (both numeric ratings and written comments) by students on course evaluations and program exit surveys, the Teaching Excellence Awards are presented annually to instructors who have taught for a minimum of one year in an Extension, evening degree, distance learning, or other program administered by Educational Outreach. An award is presented in each of six categories.

Endicott-Popovsky, director of the iSchool's Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, harnessed the support of an exceptional advisory board of academic and industry professionals to launch the UW Certificate Program in Information Assurance and Cybersecurity in 2004. Honored in the technology category, she was lauded as an excellent and accessible teacher, an engaging speaker and a leader in curriculum development. One of her students said, "I learned something new and useful in every class meeting, even though I'm already experienced in this field."

Learn more about the award.

SLA Student Chapter Again Wins Innovative Programming Award
“For the second consecutive year, the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Student and Academic Affairs Advisory Council honored the UW SLA Student Chapter officers with the Innovative Programming merit award.

This award recognizes the UW SLA Chapter for the creativity it has put into its event programming over the past academic year, including networking Happy Hours, a speaker panel at iCareer Week, student membership giveaways, and the ever-popular library crawls. The award was presented at the SLA Annual Conference in Seattle, during the SAAAC Awards Session in June.

"You can look forward to this tradition of innovative programming continuing next year with the incoming SLA student officers," said Matthew W. Goddard on behalf of the group.

Lisa Nathan Takes Second in CHI 2008 Grad Student Competition
Ph.D. candidate Lisa Nathan won second place in the graduate student research competition at CHI 2008, held in Florence, Italy. Nathan presented preliminary findings from her dissertation work entitled "Ecovillages, values, and information technology: Balancing sustainability with daily life in 21st century America." She is investigating information technology practices in the daily life of two ecovillages, communities made up of individuals striving to balance their use of technology with a lifestyle that is environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable. Nathan's motivating research question is, "How do values such as trust, community, and sustainability influence our use of information technology?"

Often information technology is framed in terms of efficiency and productivity, but Nathan seeks to broaden our understanding of the long-term influence of information technology on the human condition.

CHI is the leading international conference for Human-Computer Interaction, a rapidly-growing field that studies and facilitates how people interact with computers. This year’s conference included 2000 attendees from 38 countries. CHI 2008 was focused on the balance between art and science, design and research, practical motivation and the process that leads the way to innovative excellence. The conference was sponsored by the Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SIGCHI), an active community within the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Deborah Turner Wins Fulbright Award
Information School Ph.D. candidate Deborah Turner has received a Fulbright award for the 2008-09 academic year. The award, among the most prestigious academic awards bestowed by the U.S. Department of State, will allow Turner to continue her dissertation research into the ways that sharing information by talking differs from other ways of information-sharing. Turner will spend a year in Finland to conduct an empirical study of professionals who share information while talking with multinational colleagues in a common second language (e.g., Finnish managers speaking in English with German and Japanese colleagues).

Read more about Turner’s award.

Amelia Abreu Named to 2008 Public Humanities Institute
Amelia Abreu, an iSchool doctoral student, has been selected to participate in the 2008 Institute on the Public Humanities for Doctoral Students, an honor that carries with it a fellowship award. In choosing from a diverse and competitive pool of applicants, the review committee cited Abreu’s range of professional experiences, disciplinary orientations, and curricular and extra-curricular commitments as factors that led to her selection.

The Institute, now in its sixth year, is housed at the University of Washington and is co-sponsored by the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Graduate School, and the College of Arts & Sciences’ Divisional Dean of the Arts & Humanities, and Divisional Dean of the Social Sciences.

MLIS Student Wins 2008 Miriam Braverman Prize
MLIS student Miriam Rigby won the Progressive Librarians Guild's 2008 Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize for her essay, “Just Throw It All Away! (and other thoughts I have had that may bar me from a career in archiving).”

Essays were submitted by library and information science students from colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. Their papers considered such subjects as the USA Patriot Act, health literacy outreach, and humanism as critical librarianship. Rigby’s essay will appear in the upcoming issue of Progressive Librarian, the journal published by the Progressive Librarians Guild. She also received a $300 stipend to attend the 2008 American Library Association’s annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif.

Read more about Rigby’s award.

Darci Hanning, '05, Is a 2008 'Mover and Shaker''
Darci Hanning (MLIS ’05) was recently named one of Library Journal’s 2008 Movers and Shakers, a yearly list which identifies more than 50 emerging leaders in the library world. Hanning, a technology development consultant for the Oregon State Library in Salem, was lauded for her work providing the infrastructure that allows 36 rural Oregon libraries to maintain free, content-rich, easy-to-update Web sites that can be maintained locally.

Read more about Hanning and her work. Get a complete, annotated list of all the 2008 Movers and Shakers on Jessamyn West’s blog.

iSchool Picks Up 3 Best Paper Awards at CHI 2008
Best Paper nominees and awards were announced at the CHI 2008 conference, held April 5-10 in Florence, Italy. Best paper nominees represented the top 5 percent of 714 full papers submitted. Best paper winners represented the top 1 percent, or 7 papers from all 714 submissions. Three papers by University of Washington authors were among the 1 percent selected as Best Papers. The iSchool’s Jacob O. Wobbrock was honored with two Best Paper awards.

CHI is the leading international conference for Human-Computer Interaction, a rapidly growing field that studies and facilitates how people interact with computers. This year’s conference included 2000 attendees from 38 countries, and focused on the balance between art and science, design and research, practical motivation and the process that leads the way to innovative excellence. The conference was sponsored by the Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SIGCHI), an active community within the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Wobbrock and the other UW authors who won Best Paper awards were all part of the University of Washington DUB group (design:use:build), an alliance of faculty and students exploring Human-Computer Interaction and Design. Best Paper awards went to:

• Adar, E., Teevan, J. and Dumais, S.: "Large Scale Analysis of Web Revisitation Patterns"
• Wobbrock, J.O., Cutrell, E., Harada, S. and MacKenzie, I.S. (2008): "An Error Model for Pointing Based on Fitts' Law"
• Gajos, K.Z., Wobbrock, J.O. and Weld, D.S. (2008): "Improving the Performance of Motor-Impaired Users with Automatically Generated, Ability-Based Interfaces"

Find out more about the iSchool’s Best Paper winners.