Applications due no later than MAY 9, 2016
The Paul Evan Peters Fellowship was established to honor and perpetuate the memory of CNI's founding executive director. The fellowship is awarded every two years to students pursuing graduate studies in librarianship, the information sciences, or a closely related field, who demonstrates intellectual and personal qualities consistent with those of Paul Evan Peters, including:
--commitment to use of digital information and advanced technology to enhance scholarship, intellectual productivity and public life;
--interest in the civic responsibilities of information professionals and a commitment to democratic values;
--positive and creative approach to overcoming personal, technological, and bureaucratic challenges, and
--humor, vision, humanity, and imagination.
Two fellowships will be awarded in 2016:
• One to a doctoral/PhD student in the amount of $5,000 per year, to be awarded two consecutive years.
• One to a master’s student in the amount of $2,500 per year, to be awarded two consecutive years.
What Fellowship Recipients Say About the Award:
Jordan Eschler, who received the 2014 Peters Fellowship for doctoral students, used the award to design and execute research that she then presented at conferences. The award supported the research work itself, as well as travel to the events. One of her papers detailed a preliminary illness phase-based information behavior model for young adult cancer survivors, which will serve as the basis for her dissertation.
Olivia Dorsey was the recipient of the masters level fellowship in 2014; her master’s project, “Visualizing Police Brutality,” focused on visualizing data relating to incidents of police brutality against unarmed African Americans from 1979-2014. Dorsey currently serves as Technology Specialist within the IT Department of the Mountain Area Health Education Center in Asheville, NC.
Jessica A. Koepfler received the Peters fellowship in 2010 and she completed her degree in 2014. She now serves as Managing Director at Intuitive Company, a user-centered research, design, and development firm. On winning the award, Koepfler commented, “The fellowship provided a source of funding that allowed me to commit myself to a ‘fringe’ topic like the study of values within the context of homelessness. Without the funding, I would have been beholden to a topic that my advisor was funded in rather than getting to be creative and do something I was truly passionate about. The award is also quite prestigious and put a spotlight on me early on in my program, which had the snowball effect of people noticing me. This very likely impacted the number of great opportunities that came my way throughout my program and academic career. I am truly grateful for the fellowship and credit it with being very instrumental to me particularly in those early years of my PhD program.”
“The characteristics that have often been associated with Paul--positivity, creativity, humor, vision, humanity, and imagination--are, I hope, dimensions that I also bring to the work that I do as a scholar and as a teacher," wrote Phillip Edwards, 2004 fellowship recipient and currently Instructional Consultant at the Center for Faculty Excellence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Edwards credits the award with helping to broaden his professional horizons as a student: "Because of this funding, I was able to travel to conferences which I would have otherwise been unable to attend, and the interactions I had among other researchers and practitioners at these gatherings have been more valuable than I could have ever imagined."
Christopher (Cal) Lee, who received the first Peters Fellowship, is currently Associate Professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he teaches a variety of subjects, including archival administration, records management, digital curation, understanding information technology for managing digital collections, and the construction of digital repository rules.