Maryland’s iSchool is pleased to announce two of its distinguished faculty have won awards from the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE).

Professor of the Practice, Dr. Ann Carlson Weeks won the "Award for Teaching Excellence" and Assistant Professor, Dr. Derek L. Hansen won the Methodology Paper Competition.

Dr. Weeks is known for her dedication to teaching and her classroom skills. She is innovative and always ready to pursue new opportunities that will benefit students, the iSchool and the profession. Dr. Weeks also designed the recently approved study abroad program for "Public Library Services and Services to Schools" in Nicaragua and the "Children’s Services Program" with the International Youth Library in Germany.

 Dr. Hansen won the ALISE/Dialog Methodology Paper Competition, for his paper entitled, “Studying Reference Encounters with the Pair Perception Comparison (PCC)”.    This study was conducted with iSchool graduate students and undergraduate students in the Merrill School of Journalism. This paper outlines the Pair Perception Comparison (PPC) method, a new method for studying reference encounters that extends existing reference evaluation techniques. The PPC method allows researchers to identify differences in the ways that reference providers and users perceive the same reference encounter. The resulting knowledge can help train providers to better meet users' needs and more accurately understand user expectations. Perceptions are captured through a survey completed independently by a user and provider soon after they finish a reference encounter.