Community Informatics Multimedia Archive

Student Staff

Chera Kowalski is a first year Master's student studying Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois. She attended Temple University for her Bachelor of Arts degree in English. Chera has a strong interest in public librarianship and in the development of youth services librarianship in independent and social libraries.

Chera is working with the IMLS grant funded Youth Community Informatics, which includes working with Youth Community Informatics sites, developing cross-site linkages, writing curriculum, and planing and delivering the Youth Community Informatics forum. Chera also enjoys volunteering, reading, and enthusiastically watching Project Runway.

kowalsk3@illinois.edu

Chris Ritzo is a first year PhD student at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Chris is currently a Research Assistant on the Community Informatics for Youth project, working to engage directly with community organizations to find, produce, and share information; assisting with curriculum development; and coordinating practical engagement placements in community libraries, archives, museums, schools, and other settings.

Chris' academic interests include addressing social inequalities through projects and research that challenge the status quo. He is particularly interested in youth and community empowerment through information and media literacy education programs and by collaboration between and with community organizations.

Chris is a certified high school English teacher, was an elementary school media center teacher in a rural South Dakota reservation school, and completed his student teaching with incarcerated youth. He earned a BA and MA in communication from the University of Illinois Springfield and has provided computing support, training and media production professionally in K12 schools, universities and non-profit organizations.

critz1@illinois.edu

Moustafa Ayad is a first year master's student in Community Informatics. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and has worked extensively at several newspapers. His most recent position, as a general assignment reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, covered almost three years and allowed him to report on a swath of topics. Applying his journalism background to the field of Community Informatics has allowed Moustafa to teach youth community journalism based upon his experiences as a reporter. Those experiences and teaching methods, he hopes, will empower youth within communities that are disadvantaged and overlooked to regain a footing with those that are afforded more privileges. Learning writing techniques and research methods, and applying those techniques through digital technologies, allow youth to utilize all the essential components needed to become community-oriented scholars. Journalism, with its emphasis on inquiry, can allow youth who are naturally inquisitive an outlet to begin to solve their community issues. Moustafa intends to research the techniques used within these communities by youth and apply them to further study on digital democracy and the Middle East.

ayad1@illinois.edu

Nama Raj Budhathoki is a PhD student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His undergraduate and master degrees are in computer science and geographic information science (GIS) respectively. Prior joining to the PhD program, he worked 5 years in designing, building, and implementing information systems as an active member of multidisciplinary teams. At UIUC, he taught a 400 level GIS course independently in Fall 2007. Since Spring 2008, he is working as a research assistant for youth community informatics (YCI) project, where he designs and tests course modules to engage youths in GIS learning and their community mapping. His research interests lie at the intersection of information science and GIS. He is studying the recent phenomenon of user-contributed geographic information (many call it volunteered geographic information) for his dissertation. East.

nbudhathoki@illinois.edu

John Vincler received his Master of Arts degree in the History of the Book from the University of London, School of Advanced Study, Institute of English Studies. Before coming to the University of Illinois, John worked for Chicago-area arts and humanities institutions such as the Chicago Humanities Festival and, most recently, the Newberry Library. His research and writing has been presented or is forthcoming at the 4th Annual Community as Intellectual Space Symposium at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (Chicago, IL, June 2008), The Culture of Print in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine (STEM) Conference hosted by The Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America (Madison, WI, September, 2008), and the 5th Prato Community Informatics & Development Informatics Conference 2008: ICTs for Social Inclusion: What is the Reality? (Prato, Italy, October 2008).

Since September 2007, John has been learning, working, and researching within the community of Paseo Boricua in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood. His most recent work has explored the intersection of community informatics and special collections librarianship. In June 2008, an exhibit curated by students from the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School was held at the Newberry Library. The exhibit, Puerto Rican History through the Eyes of Others, was based on a participatory model and involved direct student participation throughout the process. The project enabled students to see themselves in the context of history, to engage in a dialogue with the past, and to reflect critically on their future.

YCI and CIC
vincler2@illinois.edu

Chaebong Nam is a fourth year Ph.D student in the College of the Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her interest is service learning and community engagement. She joined the Youth Community Informatics since 2008 summer and is working for writing the YCI curriculum. One of the most precious times in her life was when Chaebong taught middle schoolers for three and half years in South Korea before coming to the U.S.A. for her doctoral study.

cnam2@illinois.edu