Dalhousie School of Information Management Directorship

April 1, 2015

Dear colleagues, alumni and students,

Louise Spiteri is completing her term as the Director of the School of Information Management on June 30th, 2015 and will be taking her well-deserved administrative leave during the 2015-2016 academic year. She will return to her role as an Associate Professor in the School upon the completion of her leave. Louise leaves the school on a strong footing and many important projects have been completed under her leadership and with the support of her strong team of faculty and staff. Most importantly is the successful re-accreditation of the MLIS program by the American Library Association for the full term of seven years. Louise and the SIM faculty also developed and have successfully implemented the strategic plan designed for the period 2012-2015. The School now has a strong social media presence utilizing tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and the SIMCast blog. The MLIS program has stable enrollment and the MIM program has grown by 125% since 2010. New faculty and staff have joined the school during Louise’s tenure. Outreach continues to be important for the School and our many stakeholders have been engaged to provide insight on program design and efforts for on-going improvement. The Summer Shine Series, designed to give MLIS interns working at Dalhousie libraries an opportunity to present their internship projects, was launched along with the SIM sponsored Toronto Startup program. In addition to her many research interests which span important areas like information privacy, user-generated metadata, the education needs of cataloguers; and knowledge organization systems, Louise has many personal passions including choral singing and animal rights which I know will keep her very busy over her leave. We wish to thank Louise for her many contributions and hard work over the last five years.

We are beginning the search for an Acting Director. We delayed the processes to some degree in the hope that a new Dean would be named for the Faculty of Management. Since the Dean search is still on-going, we thought the best line of action would be to seek an Acting Director who will work to ensure that the School continues along its current positive trajectory.

Yours truly
Peggy

Peggy Cunningham, PhD
R.A. Jodrey Chair
Dean, Faculty of Management
Dalhousie University