invisible boundaries: how do we govern global cyberspace?

BY ALIA DASTAGIR, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Last February at the College ofLaw, School of InformationStudies professor Milton Muellerspoke to a group of SU studentsabout an area affecting every person who has ever done a

Google search, sent an e-mail, or loggedonline. “How many of you have ever heard of ICANN?” Mueller asked. Only a few scattered hands rose, some from their laptops.He didn’t seem surprised. “ICANN is theInternet Corporation for Assigned Names andNumbers,” he said. “Sounds very technicaland boring, but actually it has a lot of impacton how the Internet is run.”

ICANN, originally created by the U.S.Department of Commerce in 1998, is now aninternationally organized corporation respon-sible for governing cyberspace and ensuringthat all Internet users can find valid addressessuch as “.org” or “.gov.” However, some peo-ple, including Mueller, who wrote the firstscholarly account of the Internet governancedebates in his book Ruling the Root: InternetGovernance and The Taming of Cyberspace (MIT,2002), feel that ICANN represents the unilat-eral control the United States is trying to exertover a fundamentally global space. “There areproblems for setting rules on how to regulatethe Internet when all of the rules are made bynational governments that pertain to specificterritories,” Mueller says. “Also, freedom ofspeech, privacy, costs, and access are all relat-ed to the global need for Internet governance,because regulations of these issues differ fromcountry to country.”

In 2002, the World Summit on the Inform-ation Society commenced to discuss issues of Internet governance, including ICANN.ICANN has developed global rules for theInternet, but they were not negotiated througha multinational treaty. Critics cite four mainproblems with ICANN. First, it epitomizesglobalized governance, which incites critics who

can’t reconcile issues of national sovereignty.Secondly, other telecommunication institu-tions, such as the International Telecom-munication Union (responsible for allocatingtelephone numbers and some technical stan-dards), are challenged by the rise of the Internetand view ICANN as a rival. Thirdly, althoughcreated by the U.S. government, ICANNmakes policy decisions in the context of privateparties. Businesses, advocacy groups, and non-profit corporations deliberate without govern-ments, which are confined to an advisory role.And, finally, many question ICANN because ofthe United States’ preeminent role in the organ-ization, raising concerns that ICANN is morea branch of the U.S. government than a globalgoverning body.

School of Information StudiesT H E O R I G I N A L I N F O R M A T I O N S C H O O L ®

SPRING 2006 VOL. 9, NO. 1S Y R A C U S E U N I V E R S I T Y

Dean von Dran to Step Down in August 2007 BY MARGARET COSTELLO, EDITOR

Raymond F. von Dran, dean of the School of Information Studies at SyracuseUniversity since 1995, announced March 20 that he intends to step down fromhis position in August 2007. He will have served as dean for 24 years at three

universities. Von Dran will retain his status as a professor in the school.“I promised myself I would never celebrate my 25th year as a dean,” says von Dran,

who previously served as dean of the information schools at Catholic University of America and the University of North Texas. “I feel I’ve accomplished a lot andmoved the School of Information Studies forward during my 11 years as dean. Nowit’s time for a new, energetic dean to take the reins and continue to build on themomentum we have created. I’m looking forward to returning to the classroom andfocusing my attention on teaching and research.” Von Dran also plans to help theschool create commercial spin-offs from its research and development work, andassist with fund raising.

“Ray has been a tremendous leader of an absolutely first-rate information schoolon the cutting edge of many fields,” says Syracuse University Chancellor andPresident Nancy Cantor. “I am so grateful for his long years of service and also grate-ful that he has positioned the school to recruit for the future leadership that will carryon his legacy. I am very gratified that he will still be on campus, and I know he willcontinue to be actively engaged with the School of Information Studies and theUniversity. ”

Vice Chancellor and Provost Deborah A. Freund, who has roots in teaching, says she understands von Dran’s desire to return to the classroom and research labs. “Ray has been an excellent and committed dean with a true national reputationfor his superb leadership,” Freund says. “While I would rather see him stay, I alsocompletely understand his need to refresh his mind and soul and step out in newdirections for SU. After his year on leave, I am sure he will come back with his sameexcellence, but will show it in different and equally fantastic ways.”

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I N V I S I B L E B O U N DA R I E S :

How Do We Govern Global Cyberspace?

“. . . freedom of speech, privacy, costs,and access are all related to the globalneed for Internet governance, becauseregulations of these issues differ fromcountry to country.” —Professor Milton Mueller

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY | S C H O O L O F I N F O R M AT I O N S T U D I E S

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break $6 million by the end of this fiscal year. Ourschool houses seven centers—the InformationInstitute of Syracuse, Center for NaturalLanguage Processing, Center for EmergingNetwork Technology, and CommunityInformation Technology Institute.We also sharethree interdisciplinary centers with other schoolson campus: the Digital Convergence Center with Newhouse; the Center for Digital Literacywith Newhouse and the School of Education;and the Systems Assurance Institute with theL.C. Smith College of Engineering and ComputerScience. Apart from the centers, faculty membersare working on such projects as bibliomining,digital libraries, virtual collaboration, collaborativetechnologies, visualization and human computerinteraction, and the affects of technology on thework force, to name a few.

We’ve been developing some new academicprograms that will begin this year and next.Thissummer, with support from the Robin HoodFoundation, we will again work with the NewYork City public schools to create strongerlibraries and media resources for students. In2004, 30 New York City public school teachersgraduated from our program as school mediaspecialists. Each went into a new media center,constructed by the Robin Hood Foundation, inthe poorest of schools.This year, we’ll graduate25 more media specialists for 25 new libraries.

We will start a new M.S. degree in informationand communication technology management for experienced professionals who want tomove up the management ladder. We will also offer an executive doctorate in informationin Washington, D.C., for those with years ofexperience who want a practice-based researchdoctorate to prepare them to move into infor-mation technology leadership or research librarypositions.

I think I’ve used up my space in this columntelling you about the great things the faculty, staff,and students are doing here at the top informa-tion school in the country. I’ll save the rest for thenext column. I stand by the motto I learned inTexas: “It ain’t braggin’ if it’s true.”

Raymond F. von DranDean

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In August 2007 I will step aside as dean, takea year’s leave, and embark on a role I lost 28 years ago—being a faculty member.Thefaculty, staff, students, and I have had some

very productive fun over more than a decade.The first faculty member I hired was the 18th in the school. Now we have more than twicethat number.The news is not so much that we’ve more than doubled, but that we grew well.We maintained the vision and core valueswe developed as a much smaller group, and have developed and sustained an inclusive organizational culture that fosters mutual respect and support.

One of the things that I’m most proud of is the integration of the M.S. degrees curricula.Until 1999 the three M.S. degree programs—library and information science, informationmanagement, and telecommunications and network management—had separate corerequirements, which resulted in students rarely,if ever, taking courses with students in a differentmajor. In 2000, we structured the curriculum so that students share seven hours of core work in the following courses: Information and Information Environments, ManagementPrinciples for Information Managers, andInformation and Telecommunications Policy.Here, we leverage the gender, ethnic, attitudinal,and skill diversity of the students who work ininterdisciplinary teams from day one.We like tothink that we produce librarians who kick butt,and telecommunications managers with heart.

The research productivity of this faculty isenormous.When I came we did less than a million dollars of sponsored research. Now we’ll

Inside this IssueFeature Articles

Invisible Boundaries: How Do We Govern Global Cyberspace 1

Dean Steps Down 1Exploring Women’s History Online 5Introducing Wireless Grid

Technology to the World 6CITI-Community Partnership

Assists Medicaid Applicants 6Going Global, Locally 9From Boxing Ring to Networking 10

School NewsDean’s Column 2Faculty Column 3Faculty News 3Student Briefs 7Student Profiles

Josh Eisenberg ’04, G’06, G’06 7Shuyuan Mary Ho 11

Development Forum 142006 Commencement Awards 15School’s Programs Climb in

National Rankings 16

Alumni NewsAlumni Briefs 11From the Director 12Class Notes 12Alumni Profiles

Phyllis Bova Spies G’72 13Bertha Georgetta

Merritt Campbell G’56 15

S Y R A C U S E U N I V E R S I T Y

School of Information StudiesT H E O R I G I N A L I N F O R M A T I O N S C H O O L ®

PAGE

Home Page is published twice a year by the School of Information Studies,Hinds Hall, Syracuse University,Syracuse NY 13244, 315-443-2911;ist.syr.edu; [email protected].

Raymond F. von Dran,Dean

Executive Editor:Barbara Settel G’73, G’[email protected]

Editor:Margaret [email protected]

Contributing Writers:Katherine Cantor G’06Alia Dastagir G’06Tammy DiDomenicoKathleen Haley ’92Crystal Heller ’06R. David Lankes ’92, G’99Sara Mortimer G’06Amy Shires

Design and Production:Kiefer Creative

Photography:Douglas LloydSteve SartoriPedro L.Villanueva Jr. ’06

Editorial support provided by the Office of Publications.

Address submissions to:Margaret Costello, Office of Publications,820 Comstock Avenue, Syracuse NY 13244;[email protected].

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Another i-School Dean Steps DownSchool of Information Studies Dean Raymond F.von Dran congratulates retiring Dean MichaelEisenberg G’86 of the University of WashingtonInformation School for having created a world-classinformation school. Syracuse and Washington alumniand faculty honored Eisenberg in January following the ALISE conference in San Antonio. Eisenberg, whoearned a Ph.D. at the School of Information Studies,served on the faculty here from 1982 to 1999, and was a former director of the Information Institute of Syracuse.

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SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY | S C H O O L O F I N F O R M AT I O N S T U D I E S S P R I N G 2 0 0 6

Faculty, Staff, Student NEWS

R. DAVID LANKES

Some see digital libraries as cold sets of electronic documentsresiding in hard drives. Some define digital libraries in terms ofterabytes, metadata schema, and object repositories. Some see

digital libraries as a near utopian vision of technology, where theworld’s information floats freely as ones and zeros in the atmosphere.In fact, many students entering the school’s digital library programstruggle over a semester to find a definition. Is it a web site? IsAmazon a digital library? Is my home page? What makes somethinga digital library? The best answer in this very active and dynamic fieldis not based on some characteristic of a web site, or some easily discernable feature set. Rather the answer lies under the mountainsof source code in the dedicated, trained, talented, and creative community that seeks to serve users.

These new digital librarians build search engines, design inter-faces, describe digital documents, and answer users’ questions. Theybring with them the traditional values of librarianship in access, service, and organization and apply them to new digital settings.Freed from the physical constraints of shelving space, brittle paper,and demagnetizing media, digital librarians create whole cathedralsof information. In digital libraries spires of data can reach impossiblyhigh, unconstrained by gravity. Without the constraints of physicalarchitecture, a digital library becomes the ultimate human expres-sion of information.

Imagine you are handed a million pictures. How would you organize them? By size? Predominate color? Subject matter?Location? If you had to put these pictures in shelves, you might haveto pick only one of these methods. In a digital library you could dothem all. What’s more, one person might pick subject, and anothercolor. The point is that the only constraint in how they are organized(or the number of ways they are organized) is a human decision nolonger determined by bricks and mortar.

This is not to say that the physical library is no longer important.Digital librarians are busily converting the vital historical, cultural,and scientific human record to binary information. Syracuse alumni areplanning massive projects that integrate online information withphysical collections. Digital librarians are building a rich informationspace that spans the physical and the virtual.

At the School of Information Studies, our faculty and researchersare defining the new core skills of the digital library. Research is ongo-ing in understanding how adults and children seek out informationin digital libraries. Syracuse leads the field in understanding how

human expertise and skills can be seamlessly integrated into webinterfaces allowing students, teachers, and the general public to askquestions of scientists around the globe. Syracuse scientists usehuman analysts to perfect natural language retrieval systems, and do qualitative analysis to understand how communities describe and organize documents. Recent work funded by the MacArthurFoundation is looking into tools to ensure users get credible infor-mation from the Internet—in essence preserving the authority oflibraries in the digital domain.

So, what is a digital library? The ultimate answer is a digital libraryis a collage of software, data, services, and users, that when takenas a whole, forms the contours of the people who created it.

R. David Lankes is an associate professor in the School of InformationStudies and is director of the Information Institute of Syracuse, which housesthe Gateway to Educational Materials and the Virtual Reference Desk. Heis a founding member and executive committee member of the NationalEducation Network. His research interests lie in education information anddigital reference services.

Digital Libraries at Syracuse:The Mortal in the Portal

R. David Lankes

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MARILYN P. ARNONE, research associate professor and director of educational media for theCenter for Digital Literacy, represented the center in January at the National Forum on InformationLiteracy board meeting in Washington, D.C., whereshe presented several current projects and plannedresearch. She also created and serves as editor of a new online magazine Educators’ Spotlight Digest,which was launched in February.The magazine isdesigned for educators interested in informationand ideas to teach information literacy and will helppromote the S.O.S. for Information Literacy project.She presented “A Storybook Approach toInformation Literacy” in March at the South CarolinaAssociation of School Libraries 2006 Conference inCharleston, S.C.

KEVIN CROWSTON,associate professor and directorof the Ph.D. in information sci-ence and technology pro-gram, published with S.Sawyer and R.Wigand“Redefining Access: Uses andRoles of Information and

Communication Technologies in the U.S. ResidentialReal Estate Industry from 1995 to 2005” in theJournal of Information Technology, 20(4), 213-223; withN. Massad and R. Heckman “Customer Satisfactionwith Electronic Service Encounters” in theInternational Journal of Electronic Commerce,September 2005; with J. Howison and H.Annabi“Information Systems Success in Free and OpenSource Software Development:Theory andMeasures” in Software Process—Improvement andPractice, October 2005; and with J. Howison and M. Conklin “FLOSSmole: A Collaborative Repositoryfor FLOSS Research Data and Analyses” in theInternational Journal of Information Technology andWeb Engineering, January 2006. He also wrote“Future Research on FLOSS Development” in aspecial issue of First Monday.

He presented with K.Wei, Q. Li, U.Y. Eseryel,and J. Howison “Coordination of Free/Libre OpenSource Software Development” at the Proceedingsof the International Conference on InformationSystems in Las Vegas, in December; and with K.Wie,Q. Li, and J. Howison “Core and Periphery inFree/Libre and Open Source Software Team

Communications” at the 39th Hawaii InternationalConference on System Sciences in January 2006.

He is organizing numerous IT conferencesaround the globe.

BARBARA KWASNIK,professor, presented “The Useof Classification in InformationRetrieval” in November at the annual meeting of theAmerican Society forInformation Science andTechnology in Charlotte,N.C. She co-chaired with D. Roussinov and N. Levina

a minitrack on “Genres of Digital Documents” at the Hawaii International Conference on SystemSciences in January. She traveled to Japan to consulton a research project and conducted a seminar on genre research at the National Institute ofInformatics (NII) in Tokyo and a workshop onbrowsing for researchers from Keio University, theNII, and the National Institute for Media Education.

Kevin Crowston

Barbara Kwasnik

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ELIZABETH LIDDY,professor and director of the Center for NaturalLanguage Processing,published “Metadata: APromising Solution” inEducause, May/June, 40:3;“Automatic DocumentRetrieval” in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics

(Elsevier Press); with A.Turner, J. Bradley, and J.Wheatley “Modeling Public Health Interventions for Improved Access to the Public Health GreyLiterature” in the Journal of the Medical LibraryAssociation, 93(4); with H. Hembrooke, L. Granka,and G. Gay “The Effects of Expertise and Feedbackon Search Term Selection and Subsequent Learning”in the Journal of the American Society for InformationScience and Technology, 56:8.

She also published with A. Diekema, J. Hannouche,G. Ingersoll, and B. Oddy “Analyst-Focused ArabicInformation Retrieval” in the Proceedings of theInternational Conference on Intelligence Analysis; withO.Yilmazel and S. Symonenko “Improved DocumentRepresentation for Classification Tasks for theIntelligence Community” in the Proceedings of theAAAI Stanford Spring Symposium, March 2005; andwith V. Rubin and N. Kando “Certainty Identificationin Texts: Categorization Model and Manual TaggingResults” in the Computing Attitude and Affect in TextSpringer, Dordrecht,The Netherlands.

She has made numerous presentations at academic conferences throughout the country, andhas been active in chairing, mentoring, judging, andreviewing for several professional organizations.

JOON PARK, assistant professor, published with J. Giordano “The AccessControl Requirements for Countering InsiderThreats” in the Proceedings of IEEE Symposium onIntelligence and SecurityInformatics, San Diego, Calif.,

in May; “Role-Based Profile Analysis for Scalable and Accurate Insider-Anomaly Detection” in the Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on InformationAssurance, Phoenix, Ariz., in April 2006; and with G. Jayaprakash and J. Giordano “ComponentIntegrity Check and Recovery Against MaliciousCodes” in IEEE International Workshop on Trustedand Automatic Computing Systems,Vienna, Austria,in April 2006.

He received a U.S. patent for his work withProfessor Ravi Sandhu at George Mason Universityon System Apparatus for Storage and Transfer ofSecure Data on the Web. He was named to theeditorial board of the International Journal of NetworkSecurity. He was also invited to serve on severalresearch conference program committees.

JIAN QIN, associate profes-sor, presented “BuildingInteroperable Vocabulary and Structures for LearningObjects” at the Dublin CoreMetadata Conference inMadrid, Spain, last October.The paper was also publishedin the January 2006 issue ofthe Journal of the American

Society for Information Science and Technology. Shecontributed the chapter “Ontology-Based SemanticWeb” in Knowledge Technologies and Applications, abook published in Chinese by the Scientific andTechnology Document Press in China, lastNovember.

RUTH V. SMALL, professorand director for the Centerfor Digital Literacy (CDL),served as proposal reviewerfor the Australian SchoolLibrary Association annualonline conference and is associate editor of Educators’Spotlight Digest, a new web-based magazine for teachers

of information literacy skills at all levels, produced aspart of CDL’s S.O.S. for Information Literacy project.

She also wrote “Transforming Research intoPractice” for the magazine. Small co-authored withM. Arnone and T. Hardy a chapter, “From Front-EndAnalysis to Evaluation: Developing an InformationLiteracy Resource for Educators” for the 2007 editionof Educational Media and Technology Yearbook.

JEFFREY M. STANTON,associate professor and direc-tor of Syracuse InformationSystems Evaluation (SISE)Project, wrote with K. StamThe Visible Employee: UsingWorkplace Monitoring andSurveillance to ProtectInformation Assets—WithoutCompromising Employee

Privacy or Trust (Information Today Inc., June 2006).The book is based on four years of research thatexamined the frequency and extent of loss becauseof employees’ misuse of information systems, andprovides a prescription for improving informationsecurity by working with employees to increasesecurity accountability.

PING ZHANG, associateprofessor, published the follow-ing three books in 2006:Human-Computer Interaction:Developing Effective Organiza-tional Information Systems, withD.Te’eni and J. Carey (JohnWiley and Sons Inc., 2007);and Human-ComputerInteraction and Management

Information Systems—Foundations and Human-Computer Interaction and Management InformationSystems—Applications, edited with D. Galletta, in the series of Advances in Management InformationSystems (M.E. Sharpe Inc., 2006).

She also published the following papers:“Foundations of Human-Computer Interaction inManagement Information Systems: An Introduction,”“Applications of Human-Computer Interaction inManagement Information Systems: An Introduction,”“The Role of Affect in IS Research: A Critical Surveyand a Research Model,” and “Pop-Up Animations:Impacts and Implications for Website Design andOnline Advertising” in the series Advances inManagement Information Systems (M.E. Sharpe Inc., 2006).

Zhang published “Producing Human-Centered,Usability-Sensitive, and HCI-Competent Managers,CIOs, and CEOs,” Proceedings of CHI ExtendedAbstracts, ACM, Montreal, Canada, April 2006; withN. Li “Consumer Online Shopping Behavior” inCustomer Relationship Management, J. Fjermestad and N. Romano (eds), Advances in ManagementInformation Systems (M.E. Sharpe 2006); with H. Sun“The Role of Moderating Factors in User TechnologyAcceptance, International Journal of Human-ComputerStudies (IJHCS),Vol. 64, No. 2; with N. Li and H. Sun“Affective Quality and Cognitive Absorption:Extending Technology Acceptance Research, HawaiiInternational Conference on System Sciences (HICSS),January 2006; and with H. Sun “An Empirical Studyon Causal Relationships between PerceivedEnjoyment and Perceived Ease of Uses” in theProceedings of the Pre-ICIS 05 Annual Workshop on HCI in MIS in Las Vegas, December.


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Faculty, Staff, Student NEWS

Joon Park

Ruth Small

Jian Qin

Ruth Small Named a Meredith ProfessorProfessor Ruth Small, director of the Center for DigitalLiteracy, was recognized as a Laura J. and L. DouglasMeredith Professor of Teaching Excellence, one of twoawarded by the University this year.The award providesthree years of funding to support her research and projects that improve teaching and learning.

The Meredith Professorships were created with asubstantial bequest from the Meredith estate.The profes-sorship recognizes and rewards outstanding teaching, andis designed to foster research and dialogue on teachingexcellence. After completing their three-year term,honorees retain the title of Meredith Professor and are enrolled for life in the Meredith Symposium as a signal of honor and to provide an ongoing forum for the discussion of teaching excellence.

Two Professors Selected for Diane Forsythe Award at AMIA Professors Carsten Østerlund and Catherine Arnott Smithwere honored along with co-author Nienke P. Dosa,M.D.,M.P.H., by the American Medical Informatics Association

(AMIA) for their paper, “Mother Knows Best:MedicalRecord Management for Patients with Spina Bifida Duringthe Transition from Pediatric to Adult Care.”

The paper was selected among more than 200 papers.The Diane Forsythe Award honors either a peer-reviewedarticle in the scientific literature or peer-reviewed AMIApaper published in the Proceedings of the AnnualSymposium that best exemplifies the spirit and scholarshipof Diana Forsythe’s work at the intersection of informaticsand social sciences.

Three Professors Receive NSF GrantThe National Science Foundation awarded $684,882over three years to professors Kevin Crowston, RobertHeckman, and Elizabeth Liddy for “Investigating theDynamics of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS)Development Teams.”

Using three methods of investigation—natural languageprocessing, social network analysis, and source code analysis—the project will examine how FLOSS teams developshared mental models and the norms and rules for inter-action and work processes.

Jeffrey M. Stanton

Ping Zhang

Faculty Briefs

Elizabeth Liddy

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Research professor Joanne Silverstein is collaborating withSUNY Oswego’s Judith Wellman to build Roads FromSeneca Falls: A Web-Based Curriculum Project for K-12,

a metadata web library and information service created specifical-ly for women’s history research. The site will include an ask-a-service, where students can post questions for experts to answer,and will link researchers with historical sites and other resourcesrelated to the Women’s Rights Movement. Silverstein andWellman plan to have the service online by March (Women’sHistory Month) 2007.

Silverstein says the goal is to assemble a collection of reliableresources for students, educators, and researchers. All the infor-mation and links will be screened by a 20-member advisory boardof experts and historians from around the country that is assist-ing with the project. “You can be sure the resources have been evaluated by experts in the field,” she says.

But Silverstein and Wellman don’t want the web site’s users torely on text alone. Central New York has a wealth of locales thatplayed a role in the movement. Users can find links that will surelylure them offline to such places as the Women’s Rights NationalHistorical Park and the National Women’s Hall of Fame, bothlocated in Seneca Falls, New York, and the Harriet Tubman Homein Auburn, New York.

Last year, the two professors secured a $219,000 grant from theU.S. Department of Education to fund the construction of the website, administrative support, and a teacher’s workshop, planned forJuly 23-24 in Seneca Falls. The summer workshop will introducearea schoolteachers to the web-based curriculum and its relatedresources. In conjunction with the site, the project includes an

Ask Lizzie (named for suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton) virtual reference desk. “This puts question-askers in touch withexperts,” Silverstein says. “You can click on a button on the website, the system supplies a form, you submit it, and it’s automati-cally sent to an expert in that particular area of expertise.”

In designing the site, Silverstein and Wellman consulted a six-member focus group of teachers, who shared how they use websites as learning tools in their classrooms. “It was a real eye-opener,” Silverstein says. “The teachers gave us feedback abouteverything from how students would respond to the look of thesite, to how the Ask Lizzie questionnaires should be worded.”

As a result, Silverstein says the site will demonstrate how user-based design can be implemented. “We let our audience membersdirect how they think this information should be retrieved,” shesays. The pair expects to receive more detailed feedback from participants in the summer workshop on how well the site will helpthem meet their goals. Roads From Seneca Falls is definitely a project Silverstein is eager to share. “It’s one of the most fun projects I’ve ever worked on,” she says.

Exploring Women’s History OnlineBY TAMMY DIDOMENICO, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Users can find links that will surely lure them offline to such places asthe Women’s Rights NationalHistorical Park and the NationalWomen’s Hall of Fame, both locatedin Seneca Falls, New York, and theHarriet Tubman Home in Auburn,New York.

The Elizabeth Cady Stanton home(above) and The Waterwall (right) arejust two sites described on a newWomen’s Rights web resource, RoadsFrom Seneca Falls:A Web-BasedCurriculum Project for K–12.

Alumnae Share Advice at WIT PanelMore than 50 students and faculty attendedthe Women in Information Technology (WIT)Alumnae Panel on April 7 at the School ofInformation Studies. Five successful graduatesdiscussed their careers and offered advice to students on entering the job market:(from left to right) Kavitha Veigas G’05, seniorproject/systems analyst at Fidelity Investmentsin Boston; Sara Piccitto G’05, scientific support analyst at Bristol Meyers-Squibb inSyracuse; Kristen Schuliar ’04, business analystwith the Enterprise Release ManagementTeam at Aetna Information Services inHartford, Connecticut; Joielle Walter ’97,G’99, Siebel Operations and Finance Leaderat General Electric in Danbury, Connecticut;and Allison Formicola ’94, recruiting directorat Harrison and Star, a health care advertisingagency in New York City.

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In summer 2005, information studies pro-fessor Lee McKnight brought SyracuseUniversity’s wireless grid technology to

Boston for a summer program at the Museumof Science. Through a National ScienceFoundation (NSF) grant, the two-weekWireless Grid Summer Institute invited students from Boston area high schools—Everett, Malden and Medford—along withresearchers and educators to participate in thefirst public trial-use of SU’s technology. “Theresponse was very positive,” McKnight says. “It was motivation to continue wireless gridresearch.” While last summer the institute wasoriented toward introducing high school stu-dents to wireless grids, this summer the insti-

tute will invite international graduate studentsto test out this groundbreaking technology.

Pioneered by McKnight, wireless gridsallow real-time collaboration with a resource-sharing network that connects informationdevices to work from different computerscreens on the same content. McKnightdeveloped an interest in wireless grids afterearlier research revealed that the concept

had tremendous potential. “For collaborativework done in educational institutions andbusinesses, wireless grids can be very handy,”McKnight says. “The development of thesewireless sharing capabilities could be a realsignature event for the school because theresearch is attracting the attention of largemultinational companies who are interestedin this technology.”

Aside from exposing students to thefuture of technology, the summer program’smission advocated pursing technical and scientific education in college. Marie Avery, asophomore at Medford High School, enjoyedthe experience and the opportunity to test outthe technology of the future. “All the newtechnology that is developing right now wewill be using later in our lives,” she says.Working together with wireless grid technol-ogy also created close friendships among thestudents. “I still talk to all of the people from

the program about the memories we sharedand everything we learned,” Avery says. “Ifthere was another summer program we wouldall definitely go.”

The 2006 Wireless Grid Summer Institutewill be held on campus and introduce wirelessgrids to international graduate students fromthe Netherlands. Lidwien van de Wijngaert,a professor from Utrecht University, was a

visiting professor with last year’s summer program, and will bring 15 of her students toSU to learn about the technology. “ProfessorMcKnight wants more people to know aboutwireless grid technology,” says AgnieszkaKwiatkowska, a doctoral student who workedwith the summer institute last year and willalso be involved this summer. “It’s helpfulthat Utrecht students will go back to Europeand introduce the technology to their ownuniversity.”

The graduate students from Utrecht willhave more advanced hands-on activities thanlast summer’s high school students, but with thesame goal to test the wireless grid and help outwith the research and analysis of the technol-ogy. “This benefits both SU and Utrecht,”McKnight says. “This is an early example ofincreasing opportunities for SU students tointeract with partner universities involved withwireless grid work all around the world.”

Introducing Wireless Grid Technology to the WorldBY CRYSTAL HELLER, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Boston-area highschool students workon a project at the2005 Wireless GridSummer Institute atthe Museum ofScience in Boston.

W ith the help of the local Medicaid office and several community partners, a teamfrom the School of Information Studies’

Community and Information Technology Institute (CITI)devised a broadband Internet video link between the localMedicaid office and nursing homes, enabling clients to beinterviewed online from the health care site. A successfultrial in 2000-01 has since spawned a permanent service bythe Medicaid Chronic Care Unit of the Onondaga CountyDepartment of Social Services. “Now, the applicants don’thave to battle parking, and the number of no-showsdropped at the Medicaid office,” says Professor MuraliVenkatesh, CITI director. “The quality of informationobtained by Medicaid is superior because the video linkfacilitates a meeting that includes the applicant, social worker, and family members.”

The trial grew out of Venkatesh’s role as technologycommittee chair of the MetroNet project, a high-speedbroadband network that connects schools, hospitals, gov-ernments, and non-profit organizations in Syracuse.“FutureMetroNet adopters had a lot of questions about how thetechnology could be implemented, and my group at CITIdecided we could help,”Venkatesh says.CITI’s philosophy isto develop computer applications that meet societal needs;work with clients to install and test prototypes; and evaluatethe prototypes both technologically and in how they assist

the client, he says.Demonstrations were set up to intro-duce potential users to the capabilities of high-speedbroadband and video conferencing.

Medicaid officials saw the demonstrations andapproached CITI about its possible use with theMedicaid chronic care process for those in need of long-term home care or nursing home services. In a pilotproject, CITI, with support from Verizon and MetroNet,installed the video conference system that linked thecounty Medicaid unit, SUNY Upstate Hospital, and JamesSquare Health and Rehabilitation Centre, all in Syracuse.The trials were provided to the organizations at no cost.CITI worked with vendors to obtain donations of equip-ment, broadband connections, and software.“We hadreally good responses from patients and families,” saysLynn McCabe, resource coordinator at James Square.

Seeing the benefits exhibited in the trial, OnondagaCounty decided to implement video interviewing as apermanent service in 2004.The county and three facilitiescurrently signed up—James Square,Van Duyn NursingHome, and Community General Hospital—pay $300 amonth for the MetroNet service and the encryption soft-ware, which was designed by Collabworx, a start-up ofthe CASE Center, a New York State Center for AdvancedInformation Technology at SU. Other health care facilitiesare expected to join.Venkatesh is evaluating the perma-

nent video interviewing service with Professor CarstenØsterlund and Ph.D. student Saira Haque to more fullyunderstand its feasibility.

For the county, the Medicaid application process isgoing more smoothly with the added benefit of better-informed applicants.“We’ve trained staff members of thehealth care facilities on how to prepare a person for aninterview,” says Leo Viscusi, Onondaga County chronic careadministrative supervisor. “We were involved before help-ing people with applications, but now we sit in on everyinterview to hear the type of questions the Medicaidintake workers are asking,” McCabe says.“It gives us a bet-ter perspective on all the documentation and informationapplicants have to provide.”Those involved are pleasedwith the results for the clients, who are usually goingthrough many changes in their life when they are applyingfor Medicaid.“It enables them to maintain their dignity andprivacy in this process,” says Wayne Miner ’06, who wasassociate CITI director and oversaw the trial.

Such projects as CITI’s video linkup demonstrate theUniversity’s commitment to community engagement.Viscusi notes the county would not have been able tofund a trial and take a chance the technology would bebeneficial.“Without Murali and his staff, we couldn’t havedone it,” Viscusi says.“This is a blessing.”

CITI–Community Partnership Assists Medicaid ApplicantsBY KATHLEEN HALEY, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

“The development of these wireless sharing capabilities could be a real signature event for the school because the research isattracting the attention of large multinational companies who are interested in this technology.” — Professor Lee McKnight

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everal years ago, it wouldhave been hard to imag-ine Josh Eisenberg ’04,G’06, G’06 walking awayfrom a career that manydream of, but few havethe talent to actually pursue. As a classically

trained dancer, he had nearly every aspect of his life planned, scheduled, and controlled.Eventually, Eisenberg realized that there was more to life than dancing. While he lovedperforming, he yearned to explore more of his personality and intellect. It is a journey that unfolded gradually during his education at the School of Information Studies. Thisspring, Eisenberg graduated with two master’sdegrees—one in library and information scienceand the second in information management—and three certificates of advanced study. And, he says he now feels ready for the endlesspossibilities of his new career—whatever theymay be.

For some, Eisenberg’s let’s-cover-all-the-bases approach to his studies may seem a bitunfocused—perhaps even obsessive. But hesays in this age of rapid change, it’s simplygood career sense. “The field is so varied,”the Syracuse native says. “One cannot go intothe field without a diverse background.”

Eisenberg says the School of InformationStudies was the right fit for his vast curiositythat he discovered once he left his dancecareer. “A career as a dancer is a short one,” hesays. “I knew I wanted a career that couldexpand and evolve over the years. I was inter-ested in so many disciplines—medicine, law,history, management—and I thought infor-mation management would expose me to all

of these. I wanted to come here because it wasobvious to me that information and technolo-gy were driving the world economy.”

Although Eisenberg began dancing at age 3,and was dancing professionally with theAmerican Ballet Theater by the time he was15, he found the transition to academic life tobe fairly seamless. “I was really ready for achange,” says Eisenberg, who now only occa-sionally dances for fun. “I wanted to exploremy interests, to acquire more knowledgeabout things beyond the world of dance. I wasvery aware of how different my life was fromthat of most people.”

But what has amounted to an identitychange has not come easy. His family had con-cerns. “They were actually shocked by mydecision to quit dancing,” he says. “Theythought that I had a talent that few othershave and it should be used. But even at 19, 20,I saw the writing on the wall. By the timeyou’re 25 years old, you’re mid-career.”

Eisenberg did find that the rigid routine andhealthy lifestyle he established as a dancermade for a focused, productive life as a student.He graduated summa cum laude from the infor-mation management and technology bachelor’sdegree program while holding a full-time job.By the time he was admitted to the graduateprograms, he had already completed 14 credithours toward a master’s degree in informationmanagement. “He is obviously a highly moti-vated individual,” says Roberta Segreti, a grad-uate academic counselor who helped keepEisenberg on track as he raced toward his mul-tiple academic goals. “He is persistent, hard-working, organized, totally disciplined, and veryhumble. He is a team leader respected by fac-ulty and students alike. Josh’s success has every-

thing to do with the demands he puts on him-self and a deep-seeded motivation to be every-thing he can be.”

As for the future, Eisenberg is leavinghimself open to opportunities. “I am ready for all the possibilities the information fieldhas to offer,” says Eisenberg, who received afederal Scholarship for Service, a competitivescholarship program initiated by the U.S. government to recruit and train informationassurance professionals. “I’m confident I havethe ability to utilize diverse sets of skills. I hada single-minded determination in ballet, butnow I am prepared for diversity.”

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Dancer Steps Into a New ProfessionBY TAMMY DIDOMENICO, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Josh Eisenberg ’04, G’06, G’06

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Graduate Student Awarded NYLA Scholarship Kirsten Hensley, a library and information sciencegraduate student, was one of seven students in the stateto receive a $1,500 New York Library AssociationDewey Scholarship.

The scholarship is funded by a grant from the LakePlacid Education Foundation and is awarded to a libraryscience graduate student attending an accredited libraryschool located in New York State.

Distance Education StudentSelected for Who’s Who Award Lee Howard G’06, a graduate of the library and infor-mation science distance education program, has beenselected to receive a Who’s Who Among Students awardfor the class of 2005-2006. In addition to completing theM.S. degree in library and information science degree,Howard earned a Certificate in Advanced Study in DigitalLibraries.

Howard, a resident of Atlanta, has a bachelor’s of music degree in music education from FurmanUniversity in South Carolina and has taught elementary,middle, and high school band for six years.

Who’s Who Among Students honorees are selectedby campus nominating committees made up of represen-tatives from faculty, administration, and the student body.

Three Student-Athletes Selected forBig East All-Academic Team Three School of Information Studies students have beenselected for their combined efforts on the football fieldand in the classroom. Tommy Harris, a linebacker andgraduate student; Tim Washington, junior running back;and Ben Maljovec, a freshman free safety, were among10 SU student-athletes selected for the Big East All-Academic Team.

Harris, of Daytona Beach, Florida, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in information management andtechnology and is currently a graduate student in theschool. In addition to his second appearance on the Big East All-Academic Team, he has been a three-timehonoree on the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll.

Washington ’07, of Bristol, Connecticut, has beenselected for the Big East All-Academic Team two timesand the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll on five occasions.

Maljovec ’09, a Warren, Pennsylvania native, makeshis first appearance on the Big East All-Academic Team.

Ph.D. Student Wins Dissertation AwardSvetlana Symonenko, a Ph.D. student in information science and technology, won the 2005 DoctoralDissertation Proposal Scholarship from AmericanSociety for Information Science and Technology.The award supports her dissertation proposal,“A Website Though Genre Lenses: RecognizingEmergent Regularities in Website Content Structure.”She plans on investigating the conventionalization of web site content organization and conducting qualitativeuser experiments to understand users’ knowledge and familiarity with web site structures.

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During von Dran’s tenure, the number of faculty and studentsin the school has nearly tripled, and the school’s sponsoredresearch has increased five fold. All seven of the school’s researchcenters were launched under his leadership, and several academicdegree programs—including limited residency master’s degrees intelecommunication and network management and in informationmanagement—were instituted. The school’s success has been recognized by U.S. News & World Report, which ranked the M.S.program in information management first and the digital librarian-ship second in the nation, and the school third overall in schools oflibrary and information studies (see related story, page 16).

The school’s growth and its pro-grams led to an increased physicalpresence on campus. From a mere7,000 square feet of space in build-ings that housed other colleges’programs, the School of InformationStudies will now fill 50,000 squarefeet under one roof in its newlyrenovated Hinds Hall. “Hinds Hallallows us to function together as acommunity of learners and providesour students and faculty with the cutting-edge technology that willkeep the school at the forefront ofthe information field,” von Dransays. “I’m excited about the possibil-ities created by this facility, and I hope it will give the new dean a solid foundation from which tobuild.” Von Dran was also instru-

mental in increasing the school’s endowment, recently helping to secure the largest gift in its 110-year history.

A founding member of the i-Schools Group—a national consortium of academic institutions focused on the relationshipbetween information and people—von Dran has helped define a growing academic and research field in national and internation-al circles. Through his work, he has brought acclaim to theSchool of Information Studies, which often serves as a model forother information schools to follow. “His leadership and scholar-ship have propelled the information field forward,” says JamesB. Thomas, dean of the School of Information Sciences andTechnology at Penn State. “He is the soul of the informationcommunity’s commitment to interdisciplinary teaching andresearch—a commitment that has changed the face of IT schol-arship.” Others in the information field often turn to von Dranfor guidance. “He has unselfishly mentored those of us whohave taken on deanships more recently,” says Ron Larsen, deanof the School of Information Sciences at the University ofPittsburgh. “He has shared freely of his knowledge, experience,and goodwill, and has been a leader in the development of aninternational community of i-School deans. Ray’s strategicvision, tactical focus, engaging personality, and ever-presentsense of humor make him a special colleague and friend.”

Others in the field echo those sentiments about Dean von Dran, including alumnus and former faculty member, Mike Eisenberg G’86. “Ray’s impact on Syracuse and throughSyracuse on the entire information field is extraordinary,” saysEisenberg, dean emeritus and professor at the University ofWashington’s Information School. “Syracuse’s School of

Information Studies has been blessed with terrific deans. Theyare rightly celebrated for important accomplishments. But noneachieved so much so fast, and with greater impact, than Ray von Dran.” John King, dean of the School of Information at the University of Michigan, adds: “The School of InformationStudies at Syracuse under Ray’s leadership has been a model foremerging i-School programs at many other universities in the pastdecade. I’m sorry to see him stepping down as dean. But Ray isirrepressible, and I know he’ll continue to contribute to our fieldfor a long time to come.”

Von Dran says he plans to do just that—continue to contributeas a teacher and researcher. He says he has announced his plansnow so that the University can conduct a national search andhopefully select a new dean before he completes his term inAugust 2007. He intends to take a year of administrative leave,during which time he plans on traveling the world with his wife,Gisela von Dran, a professor in the school. He also has a bookcontract with MIT Press, and hopes to begin some commercial-ization projects with colleagues in the school when he returns in fall 2008.

Von Dran wrote The National Union Catalog Experience:Implications for Network Planning (Library of Congress, 1980), as well as numerous articles and papers on such topics as infor-mation science education, competencies for the InformationAge, the economics of information, managing informationresources, and authority control structure in libraries. He chairedthe American Society for Information Science and Technology’sEducation Committee, which created the organization’s firsteducational standards. He has advised a score of universities oninformation technology systems and new information curriculum.He holds a Ph.D. degree in information science and master’sdegrees in library science and European history from theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison and bachelor’s degrees in foreign languages and history from Seton Hall University.

Dean von Dran andformer ChancellorKenneth Shaw use a toy jackhammer to inaugurate the renovation of HindsHall, June 6, 2003.

Dean von Dranaddresses PLUS students shortly

after they arrive oncampus in July 2001.

“He is the soul of the informationcommunity’s commitment to interdis-ciplinary teaching and research—a commitment that has changed theface of IT scholarship.”

—James B.Thomas, dean of the School of

Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State

Dean von Dran met with Senator Hillary Clinton in 2001 when she visitedSyracuse University.They discussed the school’s role in economic develop-ment in Central New York.

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On Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.Professor Derrick L. Cogburn teachesa course from a third-floor lab of Hinds

Hall at the School of Information Studies.Although all 12 of his students are in atten-dance, Cogburn is alone in the room. His students are elsewhere: Washington, D.C.;Toronto; South Africa; Uganda; or just a fewblocks away from campus. Students simplyneed a computer and an Internet connection tolog into the web conference and participate inthe seminar, Globalization and the InformationSociety. “It allows the students to have tremen-dous flexibility,” says Cogburn, who asks stu-dents to come to the first class if possible, tofamiliarize themselves with the process of log-ging in properly. After that, they can continueto take the course at the lab if they choose, butit’s not a requirement. Cogburn says this isespecially helpful for seniors in the course,allowing them to go to New York City or otherplaces for interviews, without having to missclass. “And it’s the same way for me,” Cogburnsays. “Using these technologies, I can go toimportant academic conferences and teach myclass, without making any sacrifices.”

The course focuses on collaborative learn-ing and bringing together ideas from studentsaround the world. It represents two ofCogburn’s three areas of research: buildingand studying the impact of collaboratories,and collaborative learning. The other area ofCogburn’s research is on global governance.His entire research program is coordinated bythe Collaboratory on Technology EnhancedLearning Communities, better known asCotelco (www.cotelco.net). Cotelco takes thetheories of collaborative learning taught inCogburn’s globalization seminar and appliesthem to projects involving other nations,

resulting in an improved understanding of theglobal flow of technology and information.Cotelco has about a dozen participants,stretching from the Eastern United States toDenmark, Switzerland, and South Africa.

Benjamin Addom, a Ph.D. student in theSchool of Information Studies, has workedwith Coteclo for the past two semesters and views it as a highly significant project.“Knowledge is powerful but can be hiddenif nothing is done to unearth it,” Addom says.“I believe people from the developing nationshave a rich store of knowledge, which can betapped through this kind of collaboration.”

Cotelco has had a significant impact onimproving virtual collaborations, as evidencedby the prestigious Smithsonian InnovationAward/Computer World Honors AwardLaureate medal hanging in Cogburn’s office.He is confident that it has immense potential.“We represent a valuable store of knowledgeabout collaboration in general, and about geographically distributed collaboration inparticular,” he says. “We also provide a valu-able resource in terms of contributing to collaborative and funded research.”

Cogburn views his work as a means of connecting people in the most efficient waypossible. “I’m not talking about doing awaywith face-to-face interaction,” he says, “but inmaximizing the dimensions of time andplace.” He believes people are more likely toattend a meeting or conference if all they hadto do was turn on their computers. Addomagrees. “Time is very precious and resources arealways scarce,” he says. “It’s laudable to thinkand devise strategies that could be used to min-imize time and resources, while also harnessingthe intended outcome.”

Going Global, LocallyBY KATHERINE CANTOR, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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Last November the summit concludedwith the decision to create an InternetGovernance Forum that will meet in Athens inlate 2006 to continue work on a variety ofInternet-related policy issues. “This is a newentity on the international scene under the auspices of the United Nations, but it doesn’thave binding power,” Mueller says. “What wehope the forum will do is generate quality ideasthat will influence international policymakers.”

Mueller says the Internet is a virtual worldthat has trouble conforming to territorial jurisdictions. “Normally you would negotiatean international treaty with governments,”Mueller says. “But because of the speed of theInternet’s development and conflicts over whowould control this process, we have not beenable to do that.” Samer Yassmin, a graduate student in the School of Information Studieswho has done research with Mueller, says international Internet governance is possible.“Setting rules on something that is global will definitely not be easy,” Yassmin says.“However, a governing body that really doesnot belong to a single country or continent is notthat far-fetched.”

While there has been some agreement thatthe new Internet Governance Forum will have

participants from different countries repre-senting diverse interests and will not restrictdiscussion on any issues, it is unclear how theforum will be structured or funded. Addi-tionally, most people are unaware of howInternet governance plays into their daily lives.Most recently in China and in France, majorsearch engines such as Google and Yahoo com-plied with these countries’ demands to censorcertain information. “Yahoo filtering and cen-soring searches in different countries reallygoes to the core of how people perceive theInternet,” Mueller says. “Are we going to allowgovernments to monitor everything on theInternet, be able to identify where messagescome from, look them up, and grab peoplebased on that? All people want to use theInternet and know that their rights will not beabused.” Karl Auerbach, an Internet techni-cal expert and the only elected member ofICANN from North America, says that theevolution of Internet governance is more significant than people think, because it canprovide insight for resolving other issues ofpower and control in the global world. “A suc-cessful organization is a model for how wemight evolve all future forms of government,”Auerbach says. “The stakes go well beyond theInternet.” Milton Mueller

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Professor Derrick Cogburn works on one of his Cotelco projects with Keonda Barrett,who received her BS in ’04.


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The School of Information Studies is dedicated to expanding humancapabilities through information. The

Faith and Hope Community Center is equallydedicated to expanding human capabilities—especially those of Syracuse’s young blackmen—through encouragement, pride, andexample. Thanks in part to the efforts ofKenneth O. Miles, the school’s assistant deanof student services, the noble goals of bothorganizations are merging into a championshipsuccess story—one that plays itself out in thesurprising setting of a boxing gym.

Miles is coordinating efforts between theschool’s Black and Latino Information StudiesSupport (BLISTS) student group and theFaith Hope Community Center, a physical fitness facility and youth center founded andoperated by five friends from the city’s SouthSide. Programming at Faith Hope includestraining in the fundamentals of boxing andother forms of physical fitness, tutoring, angermanagement, and meditation, all intended toreduce violent behavior and provide supportfor area children and families. “This centeris dedicated to helping the community,” saysMiles, who is assessing the center’s needs and determining ways the school might getinvolved. “These individuals actually do whatit takes to save our youths’ lives. They phys-ically go into people’s homes, being a medi-ator of sorts, to minimize violence by encour-

aging youth participation in the center. Theyoffer after-school programming, teach the fun-damentals of boxing, and basically serve as aresource and mentors to the youth in thearea.”

It’s all about giving kids options, saysBobby Harrison, a five-time Golden Gloveschampion and former prison inmate who isone of the center’s owners. “No one herewants a bunch of accolades,” he says. “We doit because we love doing it and we are givingback to our neighborhood. And, hopefully, wehelp someone. We make a difference in some-one’s life.”

The school’s relationship with Faith Hopeis fairly new, but Miles expects it to growsteadily. He sees the center’s mission as anespecially good match for the BLISTS organ-

ization, which seeks to empower local com-munities through computer technology. Mileshas been busy recruiting students at theSchool of Information Studies and across theUniversity to participate in the center’s after-school program as tutors, mentors, and rolemodels. Former BLISTS president PedroLuis Villanueva Jr. ’06 is working with FaithHope to create a web site for the center, usingphotographs taken by Newhouse graduatestudent Jesse Neider. BLISTS members havealso committed to helping set up the center’snew computer lab and teaching fundamentalsoftware applications.

Dexter McKinney ’08 began working withthe center last year as a Literacy Corps tutor,and visits on his own time whenever he getsthe chance. “I like being there to help kids

with whatever they need, and just spend timewith them, hanging out and having fun,” saysMcKinney. “Just being there as a role modelis as important as helping them with readingor math. I like to set a good example and showthem something different from the negativitythey see around that neighborhood.”

Beyond getting students involved, atFaith Hope’s request, Miles has also con-nected with several University leaders,including some deans and vice presidents,inviting them to become involved at FaithHope. “These gentlemen assist in variousways, not only to enhance the facility, but alsoto strengthen the connection between SU andits neighbors,” says Miles, who is a familiarface at the center. He goes several times aweek—whether it is to work out, help out, orjust be a part of the Faith Hope community.

“I was excited about Faith Hope’s commitment level and the great potential for growth,” Miles says. “They are wonderfulindividuals and it is a wonderful organization.There is so much love in the air, and so much willingness to make change happen.Assisting them in their pursuits helps bridgethe gap between the community and theUniversity.”

From Boxing Ring to Networking BY AMY SHIRES, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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huyuan Mary Ho is oneof the most renownedcrime fighters in theworld—the virtual world,that is. Good natured and exceedingly polite in person, Ho, a second-year Ph.D. candidate in

the School of Information Studies, is downrightruthless when it comes to tackling the murkydilemma of information security.

The Taiwan native has been researchingdesign, criteria, and mechanisms to assist inthe detection, prevention, and countering ofinsider threats to information security. She hasisolated this particular aspect of informationsecurity—personnel anomaly detection(PAD)—as having research gaps, and hasmade it the focus of her doctoral research. Herinterest in this field stems from the growingprevalence of information theft from withinan organization. Ho realized how widespreadthis problem was two years ago, when she par-ticipated in an insider threat research projectled by Professor Elizabeth Liddy through theCenter for Natural Language Processing.“People with high-level security clearancewithin an organization pose the largestthreat,” Ho says. She points to high-profileexamples such as convicted spy and formerFBI agent Robert Hanssen, who sold classi-fied information to Russia in exchange for diamonds and cash. She has studied reportsfrom the United States Secret Service andDepartment of Homeland Security, as well as an insider threat case study done for the critical infrastructure sectors, and a study onthe financial and banking sectors. All havepointed to a growing problem with insiderthreats.

Ho arrived on campus with a wealth oftechnical expertise. She served nearly twoyears as manager of resource development for Electronic Commerce Universal Inc. inTaipei, Taiwan; another two as system engi-neering manager for Asia Pacific; and three as

a networking/security product supervisor forFirst International Computer Inc. in Taipei.Ho says her experience has helped focus hercurrent research. “Having worked as an infor-mation security professional for 10 years, Ihave identified many areas that require morestudy and research to defend the informationassets from outside and inside hackers’attacks,” she says.

Ho received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Ohio DominicanCollege in Columbus, Ohio, and has a master’sdegree in business administration from theUniversity of Hartford in Connecticut. Shedecided to enroll at the School of InformationStudies because she believed the environ-ment and faculty would be supportive of theinnovative nature of the field. “Security needsto be studied from a broad, global view, andthe school has an interdisciplinary researchenvironment and many resources that canadvance this field.”

Professor Derrick Cogburn, director of the Collaboratory on Technology EnhancedLearning Communities (Cotelco), says Homade a strong impression as a researcher rightfrom the start. She became the first lab man-ager for Cotelco when Cogburn moved the labto Syracuse University from Michigan in 2002(see related story, page 9). “She was instru-mental in helping me get the lab organizedhere at SU and coordinating the initial set ofprojects and activities,” Cogburn says. “Shetook a leadership role in developing the cur-rent content management system that we usein the lab, and in the 2005 GlobalizationSeminar.”

For two consecutive years, Ho has beenawarded the International InformationSystems Security Certification ConsortiumInc. (ISC)2 Scholarship for Excellence inInformation Security/Assurance Research.Only four students are selected worldwide forthe $12,500 scholarships each year. The awardenabled Ho to focus on her own research:building a theory based on conceptualized

studies on security issues. She is designing amethodical way to train researchers in specif-ic information security regulations and assessinsider threats. “I hope the theoretical frame-work of PAD can be built and the mechanismof detecting personnel anomalous behaviorcan be found and studied,” Ho says. “If theanomalous behaviors of employees can bedetected, we could try to determine whetherthose good and bad behaviors would turn intomalicious acts.”

Once she completes her degree, Ho hopesto apply her expertise at a research institute orgovernment organization. “If I can find themechanism for detecting malicious behaviorsof personnel, this research could be very ben-eficial in curbing insider threats,” Ho says.“This is my ultimate goal.”

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Addressing Insider ThreatsBY TAMMY DIDOMENICO, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Shuyuan Mary Ho

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Alumnus Wins Reference Librarianship AwardAlumnus Joseph Janes ’82,G’83,G’89 received the2006 Isadore Gilbert Mudge Award—R.R. Bowker Award,given to an individual who has made a significant contribu-tion to the field of reference librarianship. Reference andUser Services Association members select the winner,who receives a $5,000 cash award and is recognized atthe annual American Library Association conference.

Janes, who holds a B.S. in math, an M.S. in library science, and Ph.D. in information transfer, is an associatedean at the University of Washington and creator of theInternet Public Library.

Alumni Named a Top ‘Movers and Shakers’ in Library FieldAlumni Tito Sierra G’03, digital technologies develop-ment librarian at North Carolina State University in Raleigh,and Kathy Leeds G’97,Wilton Library Association direc-tor in Wilton,Conn.,were named two of the “2006 Moversand Shakers who are transforming libraries for the future”by the national trade publication Library Journal. They areprofiled in the March 15,2006, issue.

Sierra received a B.A. in government from HarvardUniversity, and an M.S. in information management fromthe School of Information Studies.He was recognized atthe school’s 2003 Convocation with the master’s prize ininformation management.

Leeds earned a B.A. from Duke University and a master’s degree in library and information science from SU. She received the Antje Lemke Book Award andScholarship at the school’s 1997 Convocation.

Alumni Briefs ALA Reception forSU AlumniAll alumni are invited to attend a reception

in conjunction with the American Library

Association annual conference

Sunday, June 25 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.Crescent City Brewhouse,527 Decatur Street (French Quarter)

Enjoy a New Orleans cuisine of po-boys, shrimp

creole, crawfish, and crab with local beers and

beverages. Socialize with alumni and faculty and

celebrate our No. 1 ranking.


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Kyla McIntosh ’01 is a business associate at Daley and Associates in Boston.

Greg Hauser ’02 is a senior technicalrecruiter at Ameriquest MortgageCompany in Orange, Calif.

Jeffrey Kessler ’02 is a systems engineer for SchoolNet in New York City.

Evan Siegel ’03 is a senior consultant at BoozAllen Hamilton in Washington, D.C.

Paras Chaudhari ’04 is web content managerfor GoGoTech Inc. in New York City.

Mounir Maurice Doumani ’04 is a consultantwith Booz Allen Hamilton in Beirut,Lebanon.

Adam Heller ’04 is an associate broker withNewmark Realty in New York City.

Shawn Newman ’04 is a technical supportengineer with American PowerConversion in Wakefield, R.I.

Jorge Segarra-Rovira ’04 is a network/telecommunications assistant atSouthwest Florida Water ManagementDistrict in Tampa, Fla.

Jill Epstein ’05 is an information technologyspecialist with IBM in Fairfax, Va.

John Johnson ’05 is a consultant withFactSet in New York City.

Josh Morrissey ’05 works in the informationtechnology department at SimpsonThacher & Bartlett law firm in NewYork City.

David Jasper ’06 is a software engineer withInfosys Technologies in Fremont, Calif.

M.S. in Information Management

Thomas Brown ’91 is the information technology manager at the BrooklynAcademy of Music in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Ronald Gifford ’93 is a principal consultantfor Keane Inc. in Elgin, S.C.

Patricia Bray ’95 has published The FirstBetrayal, the first book in a new fantasyseries, The Chronicles of Josan. Bray haspublished several books in anotherseries, Sword of Change, includingDevlin’s Luck, winner of the 2003Compton Cook award. Her writing sup-plements her career as a senior systemsanalyst at IBM corporation in Endicott,N.Y.

Paul Buckman ’99 is director of broadbandprogramming at Scripps Networks inKnoxville, Tenn.

Kevin Relyea ’02 is administrative projectcoordinator for ColorsNW in Seattle. He completed the third Empire StateAIDS Ride, cycling from Niagara Fallsto New York City and raising $3,500 forCentral New York AIDS CommunityResources.

Robert M. Sauro ’02 is an administrativeintern in the Office of the AssistantSuperintendent at Liverpool CentralSchools in Liverpool, N.Y. InDecember 2005 he received a certifi-cate in educational technology fromSU’s School of Education.

Koapong Ganjanarungsita ’03 is projectmanager at Processing Center Co. Ltd.in Bangkok, Thailand.

Monique Rizer ’03 published “WhenStudents Are Parents” in the December16, 2005, issue of The Chronicle of HigherEducation. The column discusses thevalue of distance education programs.

Charles Sudderth ’03 is a program manag-er for Sun Microsystems in Ashburn,Va.

BARBARA SETTEL,DIRECTOR OF ALUMNI

RELATIONS AND ANNUAL GIVING

The School of Information Studiesoffers hundreds of courses taughtby more than 100 faculty andadjunct instructors to a few thou-

sand students.We have around 7,000 alumnipursuing careers all over the world. Demandfor our graduates continues to grow becausethey possess a unique array of managementskills, technology skills, and the “soft skills” thatassure information systems and services addvalue to an enterprise.There is, however,another attribute that our students and grad-uates demonstrate in spades, and that is theircommitment to service and communityengagement.Whether it be serving thepatrons in a public library, extending wirelessgrid technology to high school students, orusing video technology to improve access to quality health care, the school has instilledin students our vision to expand human capabilities through information, and to makea positive difference to individuals, organiza-tions, and society.

A commitment to community engage-ment and a desire to give back have recentlybrought two of our alumni to join the school’sBoard of Visitors. Jason Mills ’95, G’96 andPhilip Kaplan ’97 are the first alumni of ourundergraduate program to join the school’sboard.The Board of Visitors plays an impor-tant role in assisting with the development ofthe school. It is composed of senior businesspeople, professionals, industry leaders, andother supporters of the school.They give thedean and faculty members advice and feed-

back on the school’s effectiveness in achievingits academic mission. Members range in agefrom 30 to 80, and they bring experience andvision from all sectors of the information field.

Jason Mills demonstrated his commitmentto service early on as an undergraduatewhen he founded BLISTS (Black and LatinoInformation Studies Support), and today he isstill actively engaged in helping this organiza-tion serve students not just at Syracuse, butthroughout the country. He was recentlyappointed to Chancellor Nancy Cantor’sTaskforce on Institutional Culture, whichseeks to “break down the social barriers thatwound and limit educational opportunities.”Jason’s corporate experience, enhanced byhis social leadership, will be a valuable asseton the board.

Philip Kaplan brings to the board hisexpertise as an entrepreneur, having success-fully founded and managed numerous web-based businesses. His most recent enterprise,AdBrite, simplifies the process of placing adson the Internet and makes advertising acces-sible to every business and individual. Philip’sknowledge and experience in building andgrowing Internet businesses will be a valuableresource as the school prepares graduates towork in a digital economy.

Other alumni are also members of theBoard of Visitors and provide valuable adviceand guidance to the School.A complete rostercan be found at www.ist.syr.edu/about/board.asp.We recognize and celebrate the alumni whogive back to the school and society in differentways, and thank you all for making service acore value of your lives.

A L U M N I NEWS

Serving the Community and the School

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use the enclosed envelope to let us know aboutyour professional and personal accomplishments sowe can include them as news items in future issuesof Home Page. Also, please inform us of any addresschanges.

Y O U M AY A L S O

visit the alumni web site at ist.syr.edu/alumni to updateyour address, make a gift to the school, or join theonline alumni community. You can now submit classnotes online.

O R C O N TA C T

Barbara SettelDirector of Alumni Relations and Annual GivingSchool of Information StudiesSyracuse University 343L Hinds Hall, Syracuse NY 13244-4100315-443-5604Fax: [email protected]

Your NewsgB.S. in Information Managementand Technology

Jay Flaherty ’91 is a senior software engi-neer at Capitol Advantage LLC inFairfax, Va.

Marc Bilotti ’92 is an account executive withNortel Networks Ltd. in Billerica, Mass.

Brett Hallinan ’93 is director and generalmanager for Yahoo search business atYahoo in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Dan Marino ’97 has taken a new positionin client technology management withJPMorgan in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Jennifer Sodha ’98 is a procurement analystat Becton Dickinson in Franklin Lakes, N.J.

Erin Lyons ’00 is director of the LivoniaPublic Library in Livonia, N.Y.

Marc Arigo ’01 is chief information officerof national security programs atLockheed Martin in Bethesda, Md.

Hilary Connors ’01 is human resourcemanager at General Electric inLouisville, Ky.

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A L U M N I P R O F I L E

hyllis Bova Spies G’72 has such anenthusiasm for the field of libraryscience, it is a shame she can’tspend one-on-one time with each ofthe students who passes throughthe School of Information Studies.Her zeal for connecting libraries tothe information they need is appar-

ent even during a brief conversation.Spies has been employed with the Ohio-based Online

Computer Library Center (OCLC) for more than 30 years.Spies’s loyalty to OCLC reflects a career stability that is raretoday. She says the organization has continued to presenther with opportunities for professional growth. She is cur-rently vice president of collection management services—in charge of business development for metadata/cataloging,resource sharing, and digital collection services.

As a master of library science student at SU, Spiesaspired to a career in academia. But since accepting thatfirst job with OCLC, she has traveled to 35 countries andworked in every facet of the field—from research anddevelopment to user services, marketing and managingworldwide sales. Spies has had a front seat as OCLC hasgrown from a regional library cooperative for academiclibrarians in Ohio to an international information man-agement powerhouse that employs about 1,200 worldwideand serves more than 55,000 libraries in 93 countries. “Ifeel privileged to have seen the profession, and OCLC,grow by leaps and bounds,” Spies says.

She is continually fascinated to see how time and tech-nology have dissolved cultural differences in the libraryfield. “Libraries around the world have common themesthey share; the democratization of information is a partic-ular concern right now, for example. These issues seem totranscend different economies.”

Last year, she joined the School of Information StudiesBoard of Visitors, and has been busy reacquainting herselfwith her alma mater. “It has been fun reconnecting withthe school and learning about all the changes that haveoccurred over the years,” she says. “But what really hasn’tchanged is the way that the school has been able to showstudents the importance of incorporating the virtues of thelibrary profession with the melding of different fields.”

For those just starting their careers in the informationfield, Spies suggests they develop an understanding of theusers they are serving, pay attention to market research,and develop solutions to meet current needs. “Librariesare finding they don’t know their users that well,” Spiessays. “This new generation of user has different expecta-tions of what resources a library should provide.” OCLC’sresearch of library users found there is general optimismabout the future of libraries, but many users still see themas a print-driven resource. “Libraries have to positionthemselves as information technology centers to meet thechanging needs of users,” she says. “The pace of infor-mation transfer and access has changed. We have to adaptin order to stay relevant. We have to integrate library serv-ices into the users’ workflow.”

OCLC’s mission is to help libraries keep costs down byeliminating redundancies and leveraging the power of thenetwork; shared cataloging is one method that has helpedlibraries cut repetitive tasks. Spies says the growth of vir-tual technology, in general, has improved resource sharingamong libraries. OCLC has had a large role in determiningwhich services would be most useful internationally, andthen moving them to a virtual network. Spies says that thepower of information fuels her continuing interest in thefield. “I’ve been very lucky,” Spies says. “With OCLC, I’vealways been able to grow professionally in new areas andmeet the current and emerging leaders in the field.”

Giving Libraries Global PerspectiveBY TAMMY DIDOMENICO, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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Konstantinos Hatzikos ’04 worked as anetwork administrator during a year ofmilitary service and is now a businessintelligence technical consultant forAssertive Ltd. in Athens, Greece. He is being trained on Hyperion Solutionsproducts.

Bruce Gorman ’05 completed a master’sdegree, along with two certificates ofadvanced study in information securitymanagement and information systemsand telecommunications managementat the School of Information Studies,and was inducted into Phi Beta Delta.He is now the director of systems andtechnical services at the Halifax PublicLibraries in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Maki Kajiwara ’05 is a market researcherwith NTTDATA AgileNet inWashington, D.C.

Hsin-Yang Lu ’05 is a web developer atTechnology Marketing Corporation inNorwalk, Conn.

M.S. in Telecommunications andNetwork Management

Jairo Garcia ’01 recently founded Global-edtech in Atlanta. The company providesresearch and development of curriculumand information and communicationstechnologies for educational organizations

looking to compete in the global market.Julio Caraballo ’03 is vice president for Latin

America in Citigroup’s technology infra-structure division, operating out of FortLauderdale, Fla. He is leading the LatinAmerica Regional Business/PMO Office,which orchestrates strategic planningacross 19 countries in the region and provides process, communications, andquality management support to othersenior level decision-makers across theorganization.

Frank Robinson ’04 is an engineer atAirDefense in Alpharetta, Ga.

Poh-Shi (Saimon) Ko (IM and TNM) ’05is an account manager at GroundhogTechnologies in Taipei, Taiwan.

Hasan Shaikh ’05 is a customer supportengineer for Cisco Systems in San Jose,Calif.

M.S. in Library and Information Science

Paul Adalian Jr. ’71 is founding librarianand dean of the new California StateUniversity Channel Islands Library inCamarillo, Calif. He is working witharchitects to design the new John SpoorBroome Digital Teaching Library.

David B.Wells ’76 is the administrator of the Archives of Falconry at the

Peregrine Fund’s World Center forBirds of Prey in Boise, Idaho.

Suzy Palmer ’78 is associate dean for collections, preservation, and digital initiatives at the University of LouisvilleWilliam F. Ekstrom Library inLouisville, Ky.

Will Jarvis ’79 retired in February with fac-ulty emeritus status from WashingtonState University Libraries in Pullman,Wash. He is collaborating on a book,Buddha and Christ: A ComparativePerspective. He continues to research,write, and present on the subject oftime capsules.

Fred Stoss ’82 completed training for theNational Library of Medicine’s NationalCenter for Biotechnology Information(NCBI) Advanced Workshop forBioinformatics Information Specialists.He is one of three librarians serving onNCBI’s Bioinformatics Support Network.He co-presented “Proteomics: Measuringthe Emergence of a New ScientificDiscipline by Bibliometric Means” at theResearch Forum of the Science andTechnology Section of the AmericanLibrary Association’s (ALA) Associationof College and Research Libraries. Healso presented “Green Chemistry andthe Environmental Community: Building

Phyllis Bova Spies G’72


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S P R I N G 2 0 0 6

As director of development, Ioften find myself answering thequestion of “Why give.”While Ican rattle off a list of high-need

areas for the school and explain how a giftcan advance our mission as a top-rankededucational institution, I recently attended alecture by Maxwell professor Arthur C. Brooksthat shed light into the deeper reasons ofwhy people give.

Did you know that donors are 50 per-cent more likely than non-givers to say theyare very happy and are more likely to saythey’re healthy, vote, follow public affairs, andare more active citizens? Did you know theUnited States has far higher levels of givingand volunteering than any other developednation, and that while wealthy people givelarger amounts of money, members of theworking class give the highest percentage oftheir incomes? Professor Brooks describesthese and other interesting findings in hisupcoming book, Who Cares:The Surprising TruthAbout Who Is Charitable,Who Isn’t, and Why itMatters for America (Basic Books, scheduledfor release in November 2006).

These findings go against previous assump-tions Brooks had held for years about giving,and it took a prospective student fromSingapore to open his eyes to the reality of phi-lanthropy in the United States. In their discus-sions, the student said that he was shocked that

so many Americans were willing to help himand other international students. Regardless oftheir wealth, they donated their time and theirfunds to many causes.The student decided thisis what makes the United States such a greatcountry and wanted to study philanthropy atMaxwell to bring it back to his country.Theconversation made Brooks rethink his views asan economist that people accumulate wealthand then become charitable.

Through his research, Brooks discoveredsome trends about why some people arecharitable, while others are not.Approxi-mately three-quarters of Americans give theirtime and money to various charities, church-es, and causes.This same group shares moneywith relatives and friends, donates blood, andgives in other informal ways.The other quar-ter does virtually none of these things.Weare a nation of givers, and a nation of non-givers. But does it really matter that we aretwo nations when it comes to charity—andespecially that one large, identifiable group ofAmericans is less likely to participate in vol-untary acts of generosity? This book arguesthat it matters a lot, and should be of concernto all of us. Charity is more than just a pleas-ant personal characteristic—it is a key ingre-dient in our prosperity, happiness, health, andeven our ability to govern ourselves as a freepeople.

Why Giving MattersPAUL BRENNER,

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT

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Bridges with ICE—Information,Communication, Education” at the 2005National Meeting of the AmericanChemical Society.

Allan G. Savage ’87 is senior technicalinformation specialist in the MedicalSubject Headings Section at theNational Library of Medicine inBethesda, Md.

Carolyn Trombly ’87 received the 2005Joseph A Witowski Teacher of the YearAward for her outstanding service aslibrary media specialist at CamillusMiddle School in Camillus, N.Y.

Bettie Jean Harden ’90 received the 2006Distinguished Service Award from MusicOnline Computer Library Center UsersGroup (MOUG). The award recognizesand honors a librarian who has made sig-nificant professional contributions tomusic users of OCLC. She received theaward during MOUG’s annual businessmeeting in February in Memphis, Tenn.Harden is music cataloger at theUniversity of North Texas Libraries inDenton, Texas.

John Osterhout ’94 is a corporate informa-tion technology manager at RaymondCorporation in Greene, N.Y.

Karen LaMacchia ’98 is a content managerfor vwd GmbH in Frankfurt, Germany.

Sarah Moore ’03 is a young adult librarianat the Los Angeles Public Library inLos Angeles.

Carrie Rampp ’04 is area director forresource development and services at Middlebury College Library inMiddlebury, Vt.

Glen Wiley ’04 is digital resources andmetadata librarian at RensselaerPolytechnic Institute ResearchLibraries in Troy, N.Y. Wiley is alsoteaching distance education classes forSOLINET, a library organization in thesoutheast United States.

Melissa Ahart ’05 is a library media special-ist at M.S. 88 Park Slope EducationalComplex in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Eleta Exline ’05 is digital collections librarianat the University of New Hampshire inDurham, N.H.

Mary Panek ’05 will move in Septemberfrom the elementary school to a highschool position as school media specialistin Jamesville, N.Y.

Nicole Politi ’05 is a reference librarian at the Fayetteville Free Library inFayetteville, N.Y.

Andrea Williams ’05 is a library schoolmedia specialist in the Ballston Spa(N.Y.) School District.

Lichen Rancourt ’06 is an informationtechnologist in the University of NewHampshire Library systems office inDurham, N.H.

Ph.D.

Joseph Janes MLS ’83, Ph.D. ’89 received the2006 Isadore Gilbert Mudge Award forreference librarianship from Referenceand User Services Association, a divisionof the American Library Association.

Corinne Jorgensen MLS ’88, Ph.D. ’95, isprofessor, associate dean for academicaffairs and research, and doctoral pro-gram coordinator at the College ofInformation at Florida State Universityin Tallahassee, Fla.

SUPPORT YOUR SCHOOLThe following is a list of naming opportunities at the School of Information Studies in its newhome in Hinds Hall. Anyone interested in funding one of these spaces or discussing other waysto support the school’s students, faculty, and resources is encouraged to contact Paul Brenner,executive director of development, at [email protected] or 315-443-6139.

School Naming $20 millionCASE Classrooms $350,000 to $500,000Suites $500,000 to $750,000Lounges $50,000 to $750,000Research Centers $100,000 to $500,000Labs $100,000 to $400,000Collabs/Meeting Rooms $100,000 to $250,000Server Rooms $200,000Technology Support Rooms $200,000Dean’s Office $125,000Student Offices/Spaces $100,000Galleries and Lobbies $25,000 to $100,000Associate Dean’s Office $75,000Faculty/Staff Offices $5,000 to $50,000

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A L U M N I P R O F I L E

t 77, Bertha Georgetta Merritt Campbell G’56 is asharp, engaging conversationalist who can easilycall upon her rich personal history and lifelongpursuit of knowledge. This is someone for whomHarriet Tubman was more than a historical refer-ence, and who survived a battle with cancer,taught thousands how to expand their knowledgethrough use of library resources, wrote a book

about the black press, and once refused the romantic intentions of a well-known football and lacrosse star at Syracuse University. “People alwaysask me if I would have done things differently if I had known he was goingto become so famous,” Campbell says with a laugh, recalling the singlegroup date the two shared.

But information has been Campbell’s most enduring love. She spent34 years working in various public school libraries in New Jersey andanother 16 in university and college libraries. Campbell, the daughterof two teachers, attended Johnson C. Smith University (B.A.) and NorthCarolina Central University (B.L.S.) for her undergraduate work andearned a doctorate in educational leadership from Fairleigh DickinsonUniversity in 1978. Although Campbell’s family included educated professionals dedicated to uplifting other black people, they sometimesencouraged their children to leave the segregated South. For Campbelland her sister, Rena Merritt Bancroft ’52, G’53, Syracuse offered a pathout. Campbell said her family knew that the Syracuse area was a placewhere blacks could live comfortably, and build solid futures. “In thosedays, you always had a relative who had made it out,” she recalls. “I had‘Aunt’ Rena, a very good friend of my mother’s, who was friends with AuntHarriet [Tubman] of Auburn. Rena was one who had ‘made it’ studyingon the Hill in Syracuse.”

When Campbell found that her library science degree from NorthCarolina Central University was unaccredited and a liability in the jobmarket, she took action. Because of the segregation that still gripped thestate’s educational institutions, Campbell was denied entrance into theUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the state honored its obligation to pay for Campbell to attend a master’s degree program

elsewhere. The Syracuse master’s degree inlibrary science program had the AmericanLibrary Association certification, and RenaHawkins offered Campbell a place to stay.Campbell initially worked on her degree duringsummer breaks from her reference job at MorganCollege in Baltimore, but she took a semester-long leave from that job and completed herrequirements in 1956.

Campbell went on to work in libraries in sixstates over 50 years. For the first 10 years, sheworked exclusively at traditional Southern blackcolleges, including Arkansas A.M.&N., TexasSouthern, and Morgan College in Baltimore.But she is as proud of her work in the NewJersey public elementary schools as she is of herstints working with graduate-level library mediaspecialists. In 1981, Campbell completed ExtantCollections of Early Black Newspapers, A ResearchGuide to the Black Press, 1880-1915 (WhitstonPublishing Co.). The book was something of atribute to her father, who left a career as a news-paper publisher for teaching in 1896.

Campbell’s first and last visit to Syracuse since she completed herdegree was in 1998. Much had changed and she admits she “barelyknew the place.” Fifty years have passed since she celebrated atSyracuse, and North Carolina Central has long since been accredited.All things considered, Campbell says library science really was the bestchoice for her—a person who never wanted to stop learning. “Whenyou’re helping someone else, you can hardly not learn something,”Campbell says. However, she humbly attests that modern technologyhas bypassed the scope of her multiple degrees. “All the growth thathas occurred in the field is marvelous,” she says. “Human knowledgehas just expanded so much. I pity people today, who have so much to learn.”

Escaping Segregation Into the World of InformationBY TAMMY DIDOMENICO, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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Bertha Georgetta Merritt Campbell G’56

Congratulations to the following graduates who were rec-ognized at the 2006 Commencement ceremonies in May.

School of Information Studies ClassMarshals:Emily Longcore of Manlius, New YorkRyan Scherer of Geneva, New York

Syracuse University Scholar:Lukasz Boral of Poznan, Poland

Undergraduate Leadership Award:Thomas J. Martin of Cedar Grove, New Jersey

Juliet Weiss Award for CooperativeEducation:Rachel Herrington of Moreland Hills, Ohio

Weitzel Memorial Award for InformationSystems Research:Jack Aboutboul of Brooklyn, New YorkThomas Hucke of La Paz, Mexico

Antje Lemke Book Award:Laurie Lefever of Marcellus, New York

Graduate Leadership Award:Dan Renfroe of Syracuse

Marchand Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement:Ryan Kutnick of South Euclid, Ohio

Amy Everett Award for Information Ethics:Mara Schneider of Syracuse

Master’s Prize in Library and InformationScience:Dan Muzyka of Syracuse

Master’s Prize in Information Management:Gaurav Dhawan of New Delhi, India

Master’s Prize in Telecommunications andNetwork Management:Diego Martinez of Santa Domingo, DominicanRepublic

Doctoral Prize Winner:Hala Annabi of Seattle

Jeffrey Katzer Professor of the Year Award:Catherine Arnott Smith

Alumni Class Leaders:The following individuals were selected as 2006 AlumniClass Leaders based on their academic success, involve-ment in academic and extracurricular programs, andtheir interest in networking with alumni as well asprospective students: Ryan Scherer of Geneva, New York, B.S. degree in

information management and technology Matthew Smith of Fairfield, Connecticut, B.S.

degree in information management and technology Gaurav Dhawan of New Delhi, India, master’s

degree in information management Evan Hood of Columbus, Ohio, master’s degree in

information management Karen Bertoldo Wilson of Geneva, New York,

master’s degree in library and information science Xue Snow Xiao of Xinjian, China, master’s degree

in information management Diego Martinez of Santa Domingo, Dominican

Republic, master’s degree in telecommunications andnetwork management

Graduates Honored at Spring Convocation


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4The School of Information Studies

received top ranking for its graduateprogram in information systems, andwas ranked third overall in schools of

library and information studies, according toU.S. News & World Report’s 2007 edition of“America’s Best Graduate Schools,” releasedMarch 31.

“We’ve been targeting a move up in infor-mation systems, which is our forte and ourstrength, so this No. 1 ranking is such an honorfor the faculty and the students who have real-ly made it first in the country,” says schooldean Raymond von Dran. “When you look atthe U.S News rankings overall in all the dif-ferent areas, you can see why nationally we areregarded as having a leadership position. Wehave provided information studies schoolswith the Syracuse model.”

Among the school’s other graduate pro-grams, the digital librarianship programranked second, the school library media pro-gram ranked fourth, and the health librarian-ship program ranked eighth. Master’s pro-grams in library and information studies werelast ranked in 1999, when the school tied for third among the 48 American LibraryAssociation-accredited master’s degree pro-grams, and ranked second and 10th, respec-tively, for its graduate programs in informationsystems and school library media.

School’s Programs Climb in National Rankings

The Top SchoolsRANK/SCHOOL AVERAGE ASSESSMENT SCORE (5.0 = HIGHEST)

1. University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign 4.5

University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill 4.5

3. Syracuse University 4.3

4. University of Washington 4.2

5. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor 4.0

Information SystemsRANK/SCHOOL

1. Syracuse University

2. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

3. University of Washington

4. University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign

5. Drexel University (PA)

Digital LibrarianshipRANK/SCHOOL

1. University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign


3. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

4. University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill

5. University of Washington

School Library MediaRANK/SCHOOL

1. Rutgers State University–New Brunswick (NJ)

2. University of South Carolina–Columbia

3. University of Maryland–College Park


5. Florida State University

AMERICA’S BEST GRADUATE SCHOOLSAMERICA’S BEST GRADUATE SCHOOLS