By: Diane Stirling
(315) 443-8975
A tenure-track faculty position at the University of Kentucky is the next stop on the career path of a School of Information Studies (iSchool) doctoral candidate.
Youngseek Kim has been hired for a newly-added assistant professor position on the Information School faculty at UK. He is set to begin work at the new post this August.
Kim said he will be the only faculty member at UK’s School of Library and Information Science to herald from Syracuse University, and in fact, he believes that the stellar reputation of the Syracuse iSchool was a pertinent factor in his hiring. During the process of interviewing with UK and other schools, he said, it became clear that “other schools believe that the iSchool at SU is the leader in the information field, and they are very interested in what we are doing here at Syracuse. They think that we are very creative and innovative in the information field.”
At the University of Kentucky, the iSchool is part of the University’s College of Communication and Information, and within that college, located in the School of Library Information Science. (SLIS). Kim said UK’s faculty is small and collegial, with 12 full-time faculty members at present. Although it has recently joined the iSchools consortium, UK’s iSchool is planning for growth, a factor that was attractive to Kim. He said he hopes to use his experiences here to help the UK school build and expand. “The SLIS has a lot of potential to grow in the information field based on the synergies among communication, journalism, and information inside the college,” he observed. “I would like to join in the opportunities and enjoy any challenges in its growth, and I hope that I can make a significant contribution to its growth in the information field.”
Kim credited the comprehensive support of the school and its doctoral program, and the wide range of academic experiences he has had at SU as being very helpful to his job search. “I’ve had a lot of opportunities to do research and teach in diverse areas. I have had a number of research opportunities with our professors in their funded projects. I’ve had many opportunities to teach different courses during my doctoral programs. I’ve also learned a lot from my committee works,” he added.
In addition to his doctoral program at the iSchool, Kim has been an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) eScience fellow. He also earned his MS in Information Management from SU’s iSchool in 2008. He obtained his BA in Religious Studies and Information & Multimedia Culture Studies from Seoul National University in Korea in 2006.
Kim’s research interests include scientists’ data sharing and reuse practices, eScience (cyber-infrastructure) adoption and use, and education for eScience professionals, and these are among the course topics he expects to teach at UK. He is currently working on his dissertation, “Institutional and Individual Influences on Scientists’ Data Sharing Behaviors.”
