Elizabeth D. Liddy, Dean of the School of Information Studies (iSchool) has named Professor Caroline Haythornthwaite as the next director of the School’s Library and Information Science graduate program. The program includes master’s degrees in Library and Information Science, and Library and Information Science – School Media.
Haythornthwaite will begin her tenure as program director at the start of the next academic year in July 2017. She will take over from Associate Professor of Practice Jill Hurst-Wahl, who has served in the position since 2012.
“Caroline has a distinguished research, teaching, and administration record,” says Liddy, “and I am confident that she will be a strong leader for the program as we move forward and upward.”
Haythornthwaite came to the iSchool this fall after serving as director of the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia, where she was responsible for overseeing its five degree programs, faculty, staff and strategic direction. Prior to her time in British Columbia, she served in various faculty positions at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“I am very pleased to have been asked to take up the position of program director, following on the able direction of Jill Hurst-Wahl,” says Haythornthwaite. “This is a continuing time of change for the role and duties of library and information professionals, with advances in technology requiring equal attention to the social dimensions of community needs and individual literacy. I look forward to working with colleagues in the iSchool to maintain the excellent quality of this important program.”
“I would like to thank Jill Hurst-Wahl effusively for the exceptional job she has done in her years as director of the library program, especially for leading the iSchool through a successful American Library Association re-accreditation review,” added Liddy. “Jill has been a strong leader, and we are now capitalizing on her excellent work.”
Haythornthwaite earned her Ph.D., her master’s in information science and her master of arts in psychology from the University of Toronto, and her bachelor of science in psychology from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.