2026
Rasheed Adigun
Rasheed is currently a student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he works as a graduate assistant at the Grainger Engineering Library and Information Center. His librarianship is shaped by “the genuine belief that access to the right information at the right time can change lives.” In addition to his work at UIUC, Rasheed also worked at the Tai Solarin University of Education Library, where he saw the struggles of students and faculty when access to resources was limited: “It showed me that access to information is not equal everywhere, and that gap can have real consequences, especially in fields like healthcare where accurate and current information is essential.”
Rasheed fulfilled his scholarship requirements by presenting a lightning talk at the 2026 HSLI annual conference titled “From Impact to Access,” which was well received by the conference attendees. You can view his slides on the conference repository website under Lightning Talks – Session 3. He discussed how he got into librarianship, what he is learning now, and some of his intentions for the future.
2024
Cristina Ligon
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
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 literac
Devyn Wilder
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.