KNOXVILLE –- Dania Bilal, an associate professor in the University of Tennessee’s School of Information Sciences, has been honored by the national Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE).
Dania BilalBilal, who was nominated by UT Assistant Professor Susie Allard, received the ALISE Award for Teaching Excellence in the Field of Library and Information Science Education on Jan. 17 at the organization’s annual conference in Seattle.
During her nine years at UT, Bilal has taught 21 courses, including information systems planning and evaluation, information access and retrieval, management of school media centers, mining the Web, electronic information and communications, information organization and representation, user instruction and information network applications.
“Dania sets high standards for herself and her students. She pursues excellence in teaching and expects her student to perform at the highest level possible and to the best of their abilities. She strives to bring the best out of her students because she believes that they are capable individuals with great potential,” Allard wrote in her nomination.
Bilal’s research interests include children’s information seeking, system design, digital libraries, human-computer interaction, usability testing and international students’ information seeking.
Last year, an article authored by Bilal and a former graduate student in information sciences was ranked No. 1 on the Top 10 list of the 80,000 most frequently downloaded articles from the Web site of the leading refereed information science journal, Information Processing & Management (IPM). The article compared and measured children’s and adults’ Web searching behaviors.
“Dania has been a committed mentor to students, alumni and practicing professionals,” Allard wrote in her nomination. “She demonstrates this through her support of student chapters for professional associations such as the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) Student Chapter and she has to been hard at work to help alums by reviving the East Tennessee ASIS&T Chapter.”
Bilal has served as a mentor for doctoral students in ASIS&T’s Doctoral Seminar on Research and Career Development. She is also a mentor for two assistant professors in information sciences.
Bilal has a bachelor’s degree from the Lebanese University in Beirut, and a master’s degree and doctorate from Florida State University.
Prior to coming to UT, Bilal taught at the University of South Florida, the University of Virginia and Valdosta State University.
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Contacts:
Amy Blakely, (865) 974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu
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