Alice Bae

December 2009

Through the wonderful assistance of the Stepping-Up grant program and supportive iSchool fellows, Alice Bae has accomplished her higher goal to become a professional librarian by completing the MSIS program at the University of Texas at Austin in December 2009. She served UT Engineering Library as a GRA, East Asian Collection Division as a library technician, and The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History as a page while in the library program.

While endeavoring to find a professional employment, she has been honing her teaching skills and gaining interpersonal, cultural understanding by tutoring Korean and English to people from diverse backgrounds in need of her service.

Michelle Bogart

May 2009

Michelle Bogart completed her MSIS with an emphasis in Archival Enterprise at the University of Texas at Austin in May 2009. While finishing her degree, she worked at two archives at UT-Austin and went to Guatemala City twice to create a collection archive at a private university and to train library staff and others in archival procedures. She also worked as an intern with the Austin Public Library's Wired for Youth Program.

Michelle is currently volunteering at the Harris County Archives in Houston and looking for a job in archives.

Kady Ferris

May 2010

Kady Ferris graduated with her MSIS in May 2010 with an emphasis in academic librarianship. While working on her degree, Kady worked part-time in the University of Texas Libraries as an Ask a Librarian Intern answering virtual reference questions and teaching library instruction courses, and as a Film Collection volunteer at the Harry Ransom Center. Kady is currently the Collection Development Librarian at St. Edward's University.

Jonathan Grass

May 2010

Jonathan Grass has benefited from the support of Stepping Up in the completion of his studies and in his engagement with ALA. He graduated in May with an MSIS with a focus on reference and instruction in public librarianship. He has worked at the Perry-Castañeda Library and the McKinney Engineering Library in the University of Texas Libraries system, and has designed and taught library instruction classes at Austin Public Library. He is currently seeking a job in public librarianship.

Clarke Iakovakis

August 2011

During his time at the iSchool Clarke Iakovakis took courses in reference services, descriptive cataloging and metadata, collection management, instructional psychology, digital libraries, and information policy. He worked for two years at the Austin Public Library before taking a job at the circulation desk of the Benson Latin American Collection. Upon graduation, Clarke began his career as an academic librarian.

Johanna Jones

December 2011

Johanna currently works full-time as a library assistant in public services at the Scarborough-Phillips Library at St. Edward's University.

Irena Klaic

August 2011

Irena Klaic obtained an MSIS degree while working full time at the Austin Public Library. Her 40 hour workweek was split between working for the Customer Service Department and the Organization Development Department, with some of the responsibilities being developing and conducting staff training, internal and external customer support, and maintaining the user database.

Irena began schooling for information science professional in her native Croatia and was, in large part thanks to the Stepping Up program, able to continue pursuing her dream of public service within a library system. It was an amazing experience learning in a positive and constructive environment with all the support and guidance Stepping Up students receive. She is continuing to serve the public of the city of Austin with improved skills and deeper understanding of librarianship and life in general due to skills and knowledge acquired in the iSchool.

Danna Lamb

May 2009

Participation in Stepping Up has helped Danna Lamb settle into her new position as a librarian at ITT Technical Institute. As a solo librarian in charge of overseeing all activities in the Learning Resource Center, the SU emphasis on leadership contributed to her ability to effectively manage all of her new responsibilities. "I often reflect on the management workshops when figuring out what step to take next," she says. "The interactions with library professionals and the tools provided to me through Stepping Up have been invaluable."

Danna graduated with her MSIS in May 2009 with an emphasis on librarianship. In addition to Stepping Up, she participated in the Perry-Castaneda Library Reference Volunteer Program and the UT Chapter of the Special Libraries Association. Danna gained experience in librarianship through work experiences at Austin Public Library and the Legislative Reference Library of Texas.

Laura Larsell

August 2010

Laura Larsell's interests lie in library instruction and information literacy and she completed a capstone project designing and teaching information literacy courses and adult programming at the Austin Public Library.

While pursuing her degree, Laura worked at Huston-Tillotson University’s Down-Jones Library as a Public Services Assistant. She also completed a summer as an intern at the Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University where she encoded and cataloged documents for their digital papers project.

Tiffany LeMaistre

August 2011

During her time at the iSchool, Tiffany worked as the Serials Library Assistant at the St. Edward's University Library. Tiffany was also the lead student researcher on a study of the evolving role of reference librarians in the wake of new technology.

Rachel Little

May 2010

Rachel Little graduated with her MSIS in May 2010. As a student at the UT School of Information, she worked as a Tarlton Fellow through Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas School of Law. She is currently employed as a Reference Librarian at the Baylor University Law Library in Waco, Texas. Her job duties include supporting the research activities of the law school faculty, providing legal research instruction to law students, and serving on the law school's website committee. She is a member of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries (SWALL), and the Special Libraries Association (SLA). She is a licensed attorney in the State of Texas.

Samantha Mueller

December 2009

Samantha Mueller completed her MSIS at the University of Texas at Austin in August 2009. While working on her degree, Samantha worked for the Austin Public Library, Tarlton Law Library, Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities, and was a Teaching Assistant for Professor Megan Winget.

Samantha is currently working at the Dell Children's hospital in the Family Resource Center and Library while looking for professional employment. There, she is acquiring a new set of skills in medical reference and learning the specialized information needs of patients and medical providers.

Rebecca Sexton

May 2010

Rebecca Sexton graduated with her MSIS in May 2010. After graduation, she hopes to put the skills she has gained through participation in the Stepping Up program, her courses in librarianship, and her professional activities to use as a professional librarian.

In addition to pursuing the MSIS degree, Rebecca works full-time as a library tech at the Pflugerville Community Library where her responsibilities include outreach, programming, acquisitions, cataloging, and reference work. She was an ALA/TLA student chapter co-director during the spring of 2008 and participated in the Austin Public Library/iSchool mentorship program in the fall of 2008.

Gustavo Soto

May 2009

Gustavo Soto graduated from the iSchool with a MSIS degree in May 2009 while working full time at Austin Public Library in administrative duties. As part of his Capstone project, he helped el Corazon de Tejas REFORMA bring Carmen Tafolla, a bilingual author, to the Mexican American Cultural Center, as a part of el Día de los Niños event.

Now he is turning a new page, gaining valuable professional experience assisting customers in Spanish and English access information in the reference area of the library. Gustavo is also co-chair of the Culture and Diversity Committee at the Austin Public Library, and a member of the Internet Committee and the Customer Service Committee, and an intern for ALA CORS Committee on Research and Statistics.

April Sullivan

December 2010

April Sullivan completed her MSIS with an emphasis in Archives and Special Collections. While working towards her degree, April worked in both Public Services and Archives & Special Collections at the Scarborough-Phillips Library at St. Edward's University in Austin.

Tami Sutton

May 2010

Kristin Walker

May 2011

Kristin Walker has a background in management and has over eighteen years of collective experience in this capacity. These jobs have been varied and include restaurant kitchen manager, a film festival administrator, assistant supervisor and her current position as Lending Supervisor of Interlibrary Services at The University of Texas at Austin. She has received several awards for leadership during her time in Interlibrary Services including the Harold Billings award, the Staff Endowment Award and the Library Excellence Award.

Her greatest strengths lie in her communication skills and her ability to be an effective leader and manager. She is proud of being able to foster a harmonious and yet highly productive working environment for her staff members. She works with the latest software and scanning technology to provide materials to patrons as quickly as possible. She hopes to apply her management experience to a professional position that involves project management or departmental supervision in the areas of digitization initiatives, electronic data bases, digital repositories, consortia collection building and shared resources.

Kristin’s long term professional goal is to work in library administration and to work with teams to further the advancement into cutting edge technology in the information arena. She would very much like to continue contributing to the UT Libraries and beyond in a more advanced capacity. She is a creative problem solver, an innovator, a futurist. She believes a visionary approach will be needed to integrate information and technology to its greatest potential.