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From the Director

A Welcome from Dr. Natalie Taylor

"Welcome everyone to the 2025-2026 academic year! As I begin my second year as the Director of the School of Information, I want to reflect on our many accomplishments of 2024-2025 and to look ahead to the coming academic year.

Our faculty continue to research timely and important topics, demonstrating their expertise in a variety of ways (e.g. serving as a Fulbright Scholar – Dr. Loni Hagen; being awarded grant funding - Dr. Alon Friedman, Dr. Amelia Anderson, Dr. Ly Dinh, and Dr. Randy Borum, among others; and publishing in both academic and professional venues – too many to list!). Adding to our prestigious current faculty, we’re welcoming three faculty members this fall: Dr. Alicia Long, returning as a full-time instructor after serving as a long-time adjunct and a visiting professor last year; Dr. Rebecca Vandewalle, coming to us from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with an expertise in computational geography, and Dr. Mark Abdollahian, an expert in computational modeling and predictive analytics and Chief Executive Officer at ACERTAS, a company that specializes in decision intelligence). Additionally, we have been approved by CAS to search for two additional instructional faculty members and one tenure-track faculty member for the 2026-2027 academic year – a clear sign of the support of the College for our growing programs.

Of course we couldn’t do any of this without our wonderful students. We’re lucky to have successful and growing undergraduate and graduate programs. We had close to 300 students enrolled in our MA in Library & Information Sciences (MLIS) program in Spring 2025, by far the largest graduate program in CAS. Our MS in Intelligence Studies (MSIS) and MS in Cyber Intelligence and Information Security (MSCIIS) programs are selective and highly sought-after graduate degrees with well over 100 students enrolled in classes. Our undergraduate program continues to grow, with over 700 students set to start classes in Fall 2025 (and more than 900 enrolled at various points in the past year). We also have a new undergraduate minor in Health Informatics. Past students continue to make us proud; we have successful alumni all over the world, many of whom you can find out more about on our website and through LinkedIn. 

I also want to thank my colleagues for nominating me for the 2025 American Library Association’s (ALA) Beta Phi Mu award. For more information on the award, CAS Chronicles wrote a nice article this summer and ALA has more information on their website. I’m grateful for the faith that the School of Information community shows in my leadership and strongly believe that the things I’ve accomplished would not be possible without all of SI’s stakeholders, from our wonderful staff to our faculty, alumni, students, and friends.

I’m looking forward to seeing how we continue to grow this year and hope to touch base with many of you. Let’s have a terrific year – go Bulls!"