For immediate release | July 1, 2010

Simmons College supports Spectrum Presidential Initiative

91´«Ã½

CHICAGO—The Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science has raised more than $1,000 for the Spectrum Presidential Initiative through a recent dinner for Spectrum Scholars. Dr. Em Claire Knowles, assistant dean for student services, and Spectrum Scholars Miranda Rivers and Christina Thompson hosted a Dinner for Spectrum Scholars supported by Simmons students, faculty and staff.

91´«Ã½ President Dr. Camila Alire, Immediate Past President Jim Rettig, President-Elect Roberta Stevens and 91´«Ã½ Past President Dr. Betty J. Turock, chair of the initiative, announced the Spectrum Presidential Initiative in 2009 as a special one-year campaign to raise $1 million for the Spectrum Scholarship Program. Through this initiative, 91´«Ã½ aims to meet the critical needs of supporting master’s-level scholarships, providing two $25,000 doctoral scholarships, increasing the Spectrum Endowment to ensure the program’s future and developing special programs for recruitment and career development. The Simmons Student Chapter’s contribution will allow 91´«Ã½ to continue to support master’s-level Spectrum Scholarships and build the Spectrum Endowment.
Dean Michèle Cloonan of Simmons College GSLIS, said “The event provided a wonderful opportunity to highlight the Spectrum Initiative in a social setting. By including so many members of the GSLIS community, we re-affirmed our commitment to diversity.”
Supporting the Simmons College mission to educate, empower and transform the lives of its students, GSLIS provides its students with an educational foundation that addresses the theories, history, ethics, values and technologies associated with the information professions and that prepares students to manage and lead information organizations at all levels, from the local to the global, and to meet the challenges of the future. To learn more about Simmons GSLIS, please visit .
The Spectrum Scholarship Program is 91´«Ã½'s national diversity and recruitment effort designed to address the specific issue of underrepresentation of critically needed ethnic librarians within the profession while serving as a model for ways to bring attention to larger diversity issues in the future. Since its founding, Spectrum has provided more than 600 scholarships to qualified applicants enrolled in an 91´«Ã½-accredited graduate program in library and information studies or an 91´«Ã½-recognized NCATE School Library Media program. To learn more about the Spectrum Scholarship Program, visit .
For more information about the Spectrum Presidential Initiative or to make an online donation, visit . To learn more, get involved, or to make a pledge to the Spectrum Presidential Initiative, contact Miguel A. Figueroa, Director, Office for Diversity & Spectrum at mfigueroa@ala.org, or Kim Olsen-Clark, Director, Development Office at kolsen-clark@ala.org.

Contact:

Rubina Isaac