The Rutgers Board of Governors announced it has approved the promotions of three faculty members at the School of Communication and Information: Kaitlin Costello, Vikki Katz, and Charles Senteio.

Their promotions will be effective July 1, 2022.

“Please join me in congratulating our wonderful colleagues! Against all the challenges great scholarship has won through and will be rewarded,” Dean Jonathan Potter wrote in an email to the school.

Kaitlin Costello: Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in Library and Information Science

Kaitlin Costello studies how patients with chronic illnesses seek out, use, and disclose health information in online communities, on social media, and in clinical settings. They also investigate how patients assess the relevance and credibility of health information in these contexts. Their research program advances the use of qualitative methods and the constructivist grounded theory methodology to develop and extend theory in library and information science. Costello regularly teaches classes in human information behavior, health sciences information, and algorithms and society at Rutgers.

Vikki Katz: Promoted to Professor I in Communication

Vikki Katz conducts research with children growing up in low-income, working class, and immigrant families. Her work has three main foci. The first is how parents and children collaborate to learn about, and with, new technology, to support skills development, access to resources, and opportunities for children and adults. The second is how families respond to policy initiatives to reduce digital inequality and integrate technology into classroom teaching. The third is how families interact with U.S. social institutions (i.e., schools, medical facilities, social services, and family courts) that help shape how immigrant families integrate into their adopted communities. Her current research is funded by the Spencer Foundation and the Grable Foundation. Prior projects have been funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation, where she spent the 2016-2017 academic year as a Visiting Scholar.  She is also Co-Editor of Journal of Children and Media and Associate Editor for AERA Open. You can find out more about her work on her website.

Charles Senteio: Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in Library and Information Science

Charles Senteio uses mixed methods to investigate how healthcare 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. His dissertation describes the psychosocial factors that practitioners consider in providing outpatient diabetes care. Among his findings are the perceived facilitators and barriers to using Electronic Health Record (EHR) tools to document and use pertinent psychosocial information.

More information about the Rutgers School of Communication and Information (SC&I)  is on the website.