The GSLS Carnegie Scholars: Guests in Someone Else's House

Dr. Nicole A. Cooke is an Assistant Professor at the School of Information Sciences, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Nicole Cooke, PhD

School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Seminar Date: September 27, 2017 This content is archived.

From 1970–72, the graduate library and information science (LIS) program at the University of Illinois welcomed twenty-nine students of color known as the Carnegie Scholars. The Carnegie Scholars Fellowship Program was designed to increase the numbers of minority librarians in the profession and denoted a radical change at the school; it is a radical change we need to see again as we envision the future of the information profession and librarianship.

The program was also fraught and full of assumptions about the capabilities of students of color and their role in librarianship. This experience indicates that LIS programs need to continue to think critically about the recruitment and retention of students of color. Investigation of the Carnegie Scholars Program, and other historical initiatives, could facilitate a new radical change in LIS education.

Nicole A. Cooke, PhD, is an assistant professor at the School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she is also the program director for the MLIS program. She was awarded the 2017 ALA Achievement in Library Diversity Research Award, presented by the Office for Diversity and Literacy Outreach Services, and the 2016 ALA Equality Award. She has also been honored as the University of Illinois YWCA’s 2015 Leadership Award in Education winner in recognition of her work in social justice and higher education, and she was selected as the University’s 2016 Larine Y. Cowan Make a Difference Award for Teaching and Mentoring in Diversity. She was the 2013 recipient of the Norman Horrocks Leadership Award given by ALISE, and Library Journal named her a Mover & Shaker in 2007. Cooke’s research and teaching interests include human information behavior, critical cultural information studies, and diversity and social justice in librarianship (with an emphasis on infusing them into LIS education and pedagogy).