The Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Board of Directors has named SC&I doctoral student Maria Ortiz-Myers ’16 a 2021 recipient of the “Doctoral Student to ALISE Grant.” According to the ALISE website, the grant “supports the attendance of one or more promising LIS doctoral students at the ALISE Annual Conference,” and the winner(s) of this award “exemplify the excellence that ALISE encourages and represents in the LIS community.”

The grant enabled Ortiz-Myers to attend the 2021 ALISE conference, “ALISE 2021: Crafting a resilient Future, Leadership, Education, and Inspiration” held virtually from September 20 -24, 2021.

On its website, ALISE wrote that every year the organization’s Board of Directors “seeks nominations from institutional members” for the grant, and that award recipients benefit from the grant “through undertaking conference assignments and participating fully in conference programs,” and by “gaining an understanding of how ALISE serves its members.”

A current Ph.D. student, Ortiz-Myers received her Master of Information from SC&I in 2016. She has worked as a part time library research assistant in Reference at Rutgers’ Alexander Library, an instruction librarian for Rutgers where she conducted research instruction sessions for undergraduates enrolled in the Rutgers English Writing Program, and a librarian and library graduate assistant at the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies. 

Ortiz-Myers said this was the first time she attended the ALISE Annual Conference and that it was an opportunity for her to learn about knowledge-building processes in larger groups, which is essential for achieving social equity, something she said she takes very seriously and hopes to contribute to within LIS.

"ALISE is a diverse community that includes those already contributing to information practices and incorporating social equity goals in their pedagogy. Being able to attend offered me the chance to learn where my research sits in the discipline broadly and enabled me to facilitate a connection with potential collaborators,” she said. 

Finally, as a relatively new instructor, Oriz-Myers said she was eager to leverage the knowledge of other LIS educators for the benefit of her students in the Information Technology and Informatics (ITI) major and Master of Information (MI) program at SC&I.

Learn more about the Ph.D. Program at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.