Congratulations to the School of Information’s Associate Dean for Education Dr. Soo Young Rieh, who was recently announced as the 2022 recipient of the Watson Davis Award for Service. This award recognizes a member of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) who has shown continuous dedicated leadership in and service to ASIS&T and made substantial and lasting contributions to ASIS&T governance, chapters, SIGs, committees, and publications.
“I am extremely honored and grateful to receive the Watson Davis Award for Service,” Dr. Rieh said. “Earning this recognition means a lot because ASIS&T has provided so many opportunities for me to learn and grow as an academic. I have had the fortune to work with brilliant, passionate, and dedicated people in the ASIS&T community for more than 20 years. I hope this award will help me inspire and mentor young scholars in the field of information science.”
Dr. Rieh’s research areas include search as learning, human information behavior, web searching behavior, credibility assessment in information seeking process, and information literacy. Her research has been funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), MacArthur Foundation, and Brainly, Inc. Rieh has been active for ASIS&T serving as a Director-at-large, co-chair of Award and Honors Committee, chair of Special Interest Group in Information Needs, Seeking, and Use (SIG-USE). She is an Associate Editor of Information and Learning Sciences and serves on the editorial boards of JASIST and Library and Information Science Research. Rieh is the recipient of the 2019 ASIS&T SIG USE Outstanding Contributions to Information Behavior Research Award and has received ten best paper awards including the Best JASIST Paper Award and the ASIS&T Best Conference Paper Award.
Dr. Jacek Gwizdka was also recognized as one of the ASIS&T’s 2022 Class of Distinguished Members! This elite status is attained by those with a demonstrated commitment to mastering their profession through sustained educational pursuits and a proven track record of service to both their community and the information science and technology field. Dr. Gwizdka joins four other iSchool faculty who were recognized last year in the inaugural 2021 Class of ASIS&T Distinguished Members.
Ph.D. candidate Nilavra Bhattacharya was selected to receive the ASIS&T Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Scholarship Award for his dissertation proposal titled, “A Longitudinal Study to Understand University Students’ Searching as a Learning Process.” Bhattacharya’s research investigates how university students’ information search behavior and information-use for writing a research paper develop over time, as students gain new knowledge about their course’s topic material. This distinguished award recognizes the year’s most outstanding doctoral dissertation proposal while encouraging and assisting doctoral students in the field with their dissertation research.
“I feel deeply grateful, honored, and humbled to receive this prestigious award, and convey my sincere thanks to everyone involved to make this happen,” Bhattacharya said. “Longitudinal studies are very rare in the field of Interactive Information Retrieval. This prestigious recognition gives me great motivation and encouragement, after spending nearly two years (2020-21) in putting together the various building blocks of my dissertation study. The Internet and digital educational technologies offer great opportunities to transform searching, learning, and the education experience. I strongly believe that my line of research will open great opportunities for many-sided contributions to our knowledge, on the relations between search processes and learning outcomes.”
Congratulations to Dr. Rieh, Dr. Gwizdka, and Bhattacharya on their well-deserved recognition for their outstanding research and service to the profession!