Come join ILSSA and SILS at the end-of-the-semester Spring Fling gathering on Saturday, April 22nd, from 7 – 9 pm in the FedEx Global Education Center. SILS students, faculty, and staff are invited, as well as any partners, friends, and family. You MUST RSVP in order to attend! Food and (non-alcoholic) drinks will be provided!

Click HERE to send in your RSVP by Wednesday, April 5th, 11:59 pm. No late RSVPs will be accepted! If you have any questions, please contact Amelea Kim at ameleak@email.unc.edu

Event Details: https://ilssa.unc.edu/event/sils-spring-fling/

The Town Hall Survey will provide the framework for the Town Hall Meeting on Wednesday, April 12th, 2017, 5:30 – 7 pm in Manning 307 (free pizza for attendees!). Please provide your candid thoughts on any ideas and suggestions you have for improvement at SILS as well as any questions you have on procedures and processes at SILS. Click to access the survey HERE.

This is your chance to be heard and be involved, so please take advantage! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Amelea Kim at ameleak@email.unc.edu.

ILSSA will be holding a bake (and button/bookmark) sale on the first day of the SCALA Book Sale on Tuesday, April 4th! Please consider signing up HERE – you will have our gratitude eternal!

The SILS All-Staff meeting discussed the following topics:

1. What Should We Be Worried About?: Information and Media in the Trump Era – This joint conference hosted by the School of Journalism and SILS will be open and free to the public. Cal Lee and Zeynep Tufecki have been involved in the planning. If possible, you should attend!
2. Aaron Brubaker gave a quick update on the Office 365 migration. Multiple departments will be migrating in the next few months with the end goal of finishing all campus migrations by June or July.
3. CRADLE Talk: Josh Rice, a BSIS and MSIS alum will be giving a talk on March 24th. Irene Owens, a PhD alum, will be giving a talk on April 7th
4. Symposium for Social Good (4/21): Four professors and their classes will be organizing this symposium where students will be presenting and sharing their work from the semester. Bios are forthcoming, and attendance is encouraged.
5. SILS Project Fair (4/21): This is a great chance for students to showcase their work from the semester. Cash prizes are awarded, so encourage students to participate!
6. Fall Class Schedule: Classes/professors are still being confirmed so it is still in draft mode. It has been suggested to provide evening classes to accommodate those students who work during the day, but that might require a separate evening-degree class program as occasional evening classes will not be enough to get a degree.

The SILS faculty meeting provided updates on a variety of topics. Most notably, SILS is currently interviewing candidates for two faculty positions available and has scheduled visits for them to interview throughout the month of March. Each candidate visit will consist of a public presentation and a student meet-and-greet that SILS students are encouraged to come to, so be on the lookout for information about specific candidate visits.

Other topics discussed:

1. CWS (Community Workshop Series): Meggie Lasher (MSLS ’17) provided an update on the impact that CWS has on the wider community and gave recommendations and ideas on how the program can continue to grow in the future.
2. SILS Website Update: Recently, SILS has added new alumni profiles for 25 people, from all different programs. Check them out here and see what cool things people have done since they graduated! https://sils.unc.edu/people/alumni-profiles
3. Course Name Change: SILS faculty voted to change the course name for INLS 745. Formerly known as “Curriculum Issues and the School Librarian”, the faculty voted in favor to change the course name to “Instruction for Youth in School in Public Libraries” to better reflect the new scope of the class. This class will be available in Fall 2017 for those interested in taking it.
4. ILSSA Survey Update: Tripp Tuttle, ILSSA’s Secretary and Webmaster, gave a short presentation about general trends and observations from the Student Survey that ILSSA administered in February. Tripp focused particularly on scheduling availability and provided analyzed data to faculty so that they might be able to better schedule events and lectures when more people are free.

All-staff meetings for SILS are held every three weeks on Wednesdays in Manning 01. If you have any questions about anything mentioned in this summary, or about all-staff meetings in general, please contact Amelea Kim at ameleak@email.unc.edu