2024
Cristina Ligon
MLIS from UIUC (in progress)
Cristina has a diverse professional background in psychology, academic librarianship, and research. She is currently working as a Graduate Assistant at the UIC Library of the Health Sciences while pursuing her MLIS at UIUC. Her goals as a future librarian are to promote health literacy to underserved BIPOC communities and promote equal access to health databases. She is passionate about ensuring all communities, regardless of the language they speak, have access to reliable health information.
Isabel Ryan
MSLIS from UIUC (in progress)
Isabel is passionate about ensuring the design of public resources and information makes education more equitable and accessible across race, class, age, and ability statuses. She is very interested in teaching others how to develop their health knowledge through the creation of accessible tools and supports. She believes libraries are places where members of the community can come to have crucial conversations and advance their health literacy.
Devyn Wilder
MLIS from the University of Washington
Devyn is interested currently pursuing her PhD in Information Science at UIUC. She is focusing on health information behaviors and is interested in leveraging health science libraries to do hands-on community engagement work. Her current research areas are HISBs, information policy, medical misinformation, and community engagement. Professionally, Devyn hopes to research BIPOC and other underrepresented communities’ information needs as well as teaching and participating in community engagement work.
2023
Elisabeth Ayorinde
Elisabeth is enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is excited to make a difference in health science librarianship. She will be working as a graduate assistant with CARLI, in addition to continuing her work at the Springfield campus library during academic year 2023-24. Elisabeth is passionate about making health information accessible to all and ensuring those who need access, have access. She plans to use the funds for both professional development while in school and education expenses related to tuition, books, and living costs.