Highlighting Diversity Scholars

Media contact: Wendy Scott , Assistant Director, Organizational Design & Learning, tel. (919) 515-7188

Judy Allen Dodson and RaShauna Brannon have received North Carolina Central University's School of Library and Information Science Diversity Scholarships for the Class of 2009. Based on an Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant to promote diversity within librarianship, the Diversity Scholars program started in fall 2006. The IMLS grant allows the School of Library and Information Science to partner with public and school library systems from five counties in central North Carolina to recruit minority students to earn master's degrees in library science. The scholarships encourage research in the areas of public and school libraries; there are now a total of nineteen scholars in the program.

Allen Dodson, who lives in Raleigh with her husband and two children, joined the Libraries in October 2006 as a collections assistant in the Special Collections Research Center. She holds a B.A. in communication from Western Michigan University. In her spare time, she enjoys writing short stories for children and gardening. Allen Dodson says, ?I'm honored to have been selected as a 2007-2009 North Carolina Central University Diversity Scholar. I will begin the program this fall, and I expect to have my M.L.S. degree in May 2009.?

Allen Dodson hopes that her acceptance into the program will help fill the void of African Americans within the field of library and information sciences. She adds, ?With the training I receive, in both technology and theory, I will have the ability to guide a new generation of leaders to focus on views taken from every ethnic background. As an African American woman, I take seriously the responsibility . . . to continue this next generation of African Americans into the field of librarianship and to diversify the profession so that all cultural viewpoints are acknowledged. I have a vision that the professional library community will become a more diverse community with a multicultural sense of ideas, views, and leadership.?

Brannon holds an undergraduate degree in English and African American studies from UNC-Chapel Hill. Previously, Brannon taught reading at a Raleigh charter school. She left that position to accept the position of library assistant in the Acquisitions Department in September 2006. She made the career switch with the goal of entering library school to become a librarian. She enjoys traveling and spending time with her family. Brannon is very optimistic about the many options open to her in the field of librarianship, saying, ?I am looking forward to the experience of research in the public library setting, and I am excited to explore the library science field as a whole. I am definitely trying to take in and gain experience with as much as I can. A few of my interests within the field are the dynamics of public and reader/user services and how libraries contribute to the conservation of local community histories.?

See the Diversity Scholars program website for more information.