Dr. Sarah Beth Nelson on How Brave Spaces Support Free Speech and Diversity
School of Information Studies Assistant Professor Dr. Sarah Beth Nelson recently participated in an EveryLibrary Institute webinar series, discussing her recent publication within The Political Librarian: “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave: Maximizing Free Speech in Brave Spaces to Support Diversity.”
Co-written with her husband, Attorney John Nelson, Dr. Nelson explores how “brave space” practices can help institutions support both free speech and diversity without treating them as competing values. “Brave spaces” are defined as a learning environment where the goal is truth-seeking and open dialogue, and participants are expected to engage honestly and respectfully across differences. In these spaces, discomfort is accepted and often necessary for meaningful conversations about identity, power, and inequality.
The Nelsons argue that “intentional brave spaces are needed to fully include diverse individuals”. Their work outlines the legal foundations of free expression in public settings while emphasizing the importance of open dialogue in diverse communities. By using strategies such as “calling in” instead of “calling out”, acknowledging harmful speech, and encouraging participation, brave spaces can strengthen both inclusion and free speech.
Read the full article here: 
Watch the webinar: 
SOIS Researchers Publish Resource Guide on Ethical AI and Librarianship
School of Information Studies Assistant Professor Dr. Wan-Chen Lee, along with Doctoral Candidates Juliana Hirt and Manan Luo, created an open, comprehensive guide to navigating the ethical challenges and opportunities of AI in libraries. Supported by the , the online guide includes over 100 resources in 10 formats, including articles, videos, events, and courses/tutorials.
Designed for librarians, students, educators, and information professionals, the guide aims to help people make informed decisions, understand emerging issues, and stay current with how AI is shaping libraries and the field of information science.
The guide is freely and openly available at .
SOIS Alumni and Faculty Publish Open Access Journal on Online Ethnography in LGBTQ Research
SOIS alumnus Shengang Wang, Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, collaborated with SOIS Assistant Professor Wan-Chen Lee and Doctoral Candidate Ning-Chiao Wang to publish a new open access journal article.
The research article, titled“Methodological and ethical considerations in LGBTQ-focused online ethnographic research: A systematic review and a human-centered framework,” was published earlier this year. It examines prior scholarly research on LGBTQ communities in online spaces, highlighting areas for improving the quality and impact of future research.
The article can be viewed here:
SOIS Researchers Receive Award for Paper Exploring Student Use of Artificial Intelligence
The presented the award at their annual meeting in November 2025. The award included a certificate from ASIS&T and a cash prize.
The paper, “College students’ credibility assessments of GenAI-generated information for academic tasks: An interview study” was coauthored with four other researchers and published in the Journal the Association for Information Science and Technology. This paper explored how college students assess the credibility of artificial intelligence-generated materials, including how they use them in their own academic tasks, such as writing and programming.
Through interviews with 25 students, Dr. Choi, Dr. Bak, and their coresearchers analyzed the transcripts and offer theoretical and empirical data to determine how students view using tools such as ChatGPT in their academic work. A link to the study by can be found .
First-Time Ranking, National Impact: UW Flexible Option Named Top 50 by Newsweek
We’re excited to share that has been ranked among the Top 50 programs in !
This is UW Flexible Option’s first-ever ranking, based on feedback from more than 10,000 students evaluating satisfaction, support, cost, and overall success.
We’re especially proud that the is one of the programs included in UW Flexible Option—making this recognition a win for our students, faculty, and staff.
51ÁÔĆć Instructor’s Nonprof-IT Brings Alumni Support Full Circle
The School of Information Studies‘ Nonprof-IT program continues to make an impact as former students return to mentor the next generation of information professionals.
Founded by lecturer Adam Hudson, the program pairs 51ÁÔĆć students with local nonprofits in need of affordable technology support. What began as a classroom initiative has grown into a powerful network: alumni return as mentors, nonprofits get professional-quality digital services (often saving around $10,000 per project), and students graduate job-ready.
The School of Information Studies is proud to celebrate our current and former faculty who have been recognized among the world’s top 2% of researchers. The 2024 list, compiled by , ranks researchers by how often their work is cited in other scientific publications, giving a gauge of their impact on their respective fields.
SOIS Assistant Professor Wonchan Choi and emeritus faculty Hope Olson and Dietmar Wolfram are included in this list. Their research contributions demonstrate the School’s long-standing commitment to advancing the field of information science worldwide.
From Classroom to Community: SOIS Nonprof-IT Featured on CBS 58
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Information Studies (SOIS) Nonprof-IT program was recently featured on CBS 58 Sunday Morning. The story highlighted how the program pairs SOIS students with nonprofit organizations to provide valuable technology support, including website development and digital solutions, at no cost.
For more than a decade, Nonprof-IT has helped nonprofits strengthen their capacity while giving students real-world experience working with mission-driven organizations. The CBS 58 feature showcased how the program is making a difference for both students and community partners—most recently helping one crime victim survivor promote healing, understanding, and community action.
The segment includes an interview with Debra Gillispie, Founder of , who partnered with Nonprof-IT students last semester to build a new website for her organization, Mothers Against Gun Violence. The collaboration provided Gillispie’s organization with a vital online platform to support its mission of healing, advocacy, and community action.
CBS 58 Sunday Morning highlights 51ÁÔĆć’s School of Information Studies Nonprof-IT program, where students partner with local nonprofits—like Mothers Against Gun Violence Milwaukee—to provide technology solutions that strengthen community impact.
Watch the full story here:
SOIS Faculty-Student Team Earns NMDSI Student Scholars Award
The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee’s Dr. Xiangming (Simon) Mu, associate professor in the School of Information Studies, and Ph.D. student Manman Luo have been selected as awardees in the Fall 2025 cycle of the Student Scholars program.
Their funded project, “Enhancing Entity Sentiment Analysis in Multi-Entity Contexts Using an Ontology-Based Approach,” aims to advance techniques to accurately detect sentiments expressed towards specific entities (e.g., products, brands, or organizations) when multiple entities co-occur within the same text. The research explores innovative methods based on an ontology that models multi-entity relationships in the product review context by capturing key multi-entity relationship types –work that has applications across information science, artificial intelligence, and other fields that rely on precise data interpretation.
Through the NMDSI Student Scholars program, Luo will receive a $2,500 stipend to support her research over the Fall 2025 term. The program is designed to accelerate student engagement in data science and related research projects while fostering interdisciplinary applications of data-driven solutions.
Dr. Mu said he is excited to collaborate with Luo on this project, noting that the work will “help bridge and advance the application of data science within the field of information and library science.”
The NMDSI is a collaboration between 51ÁÔĆć, Marquette University, and Northwestern Mutual, with a mission to advance southeastern Wisconsin as a national hub for data science research, education, and talent development.
“I’m Surviving Simply out of Spite”: Maxim Medvedev on Meeting Ambitious Dreams
By Al Dickenson
Maxim Medvedev comes to his love of technology naturally. Being born into a family of Ukrainian/Russian immigrants, his father works as a software architect and taught Maxim the basics of computer construction early on. Ever since, Maxim has appreciated getting his hands dirty in his preferred “trial by fire” method of learning.
That desire to continue learning has led him to entertain various professional roles, all within the technology industry. However, it was a part-time role at a family member’s start-up business that engaged Maxim’s twin interests in tech and business. Spurred on by J. Dietenberger, teaching faculty in the School of Information Studies and innovation fellow teaching faculty in the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center, Maxim has been excelling in his role as a Technology Specialist at EUA, a Milwaukee-based architectural firm. As a 2024 graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Information Science & Technology (BSIST), Maxim works full-time while obtaining his dual Master of Business Administration and Master of Science in Information Technology Management.
Even with such a packed schedule, Maxim agreed to be interviewed and share his story.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is a broad overview of what a Technology Specialist at your employer does?
As a specialist, I serve our internal clients by focusing on client service excellence, solving client issues, being proactive to reduce future issues, and research to support the enhancement of our infrastructure. My department head and EUA recognize my professional and academic ambition, and I believe do their best to keep things interesting by providing me challenges.
As an intern I was our help desk lead which involved lots of ticket work but as I went full-time, I was exposed to additional projects. Project scale grew over time from being able to work with Cloud Engineering and device provisioning in Azure to being part of the AI R&D group and focusing on research, security governance, and training internal clients within the firm on how to utilize AI.
A Technology Specialist works to serve those in the firm and is a position that can also complement our other technological teams within the firm. It is a dynamic position that certainly is not the same every day.
What does your day-to-day look like?
As a Technology professional with a keen interest in AI, I need to have a constant pulse on the industry and understand any news that is being released. It is difficult to describe my day to day in depth because my day is simply never really the same. I am thankful to be on multiple projects and be able to bounce around. Common tasks I do find myself doing are maintenance on certain equipment and AV technology, hardware onboarding, and working on tickets when assigned to me.
Tell us a little more about how artificial intelligence (AI) is developing and how you must adjust to it or adjust it to your needs.
AI is chaotic and I love it. At EUA, we started off with AI slowly, but understand it is the future, so we are preparing for it appropriately. We have an acceptable use policy on AI that is quite thorough and have approved and unapproved AI apps. We currently utilize Microsoft Copilot due to its data governance. We want to be careful of our use with AI, we don’t want to feed it sensitive information that will train the model. We also utilize Midjourney for photo generation.
I have hosted a couple of AI training episodes to inform others on the use of Copilot and how it can better their professional and personal processes and continue to do so. AI needs to be correctly and safely implemented as it is a bit of a wild west. We want to respect our information, but we want to recognize there are tools that are available now that are safe to use. Something I have spent a lot of time on is researching tools that can help benefit the firm while consistently sharing my results and experiences with my director. Copilot is essential for enterprise security and integration with M365, but better tools exist that are available for free or paid use depending on what the use case is.
What do you do with AI on a daily basis? In what way(s) does it impact your career?
I research and solve various issues with AI daily, and I also help various individuals and project teams bring their ideas to life with AI or simplify their process. Some things to name have been photo and video generation to intense data analysis and data scrubbing. I try to help anyone I can with AI to show them what it can do but as well as encourage others to use AI.
While working on issues and doing research, I experiment with multiple LLMs—large language models—to understand and see how each one operates. I use free models and pay for models to see how they function all in respect with our acceptable use policy. If I believe I am working with sensitive information in any sense, I utilize Microsoft Copilot. I have played around with Agent Automation and utilizing Copilot and Microsoft’s Power Platform. My other research is done at 51ÁÔĆć or outside of work.
Do you feel as though your 51ÁÔĆć education prepared you for your career?
My 51ÁÔĆć undergrad education has taught me theories and principles. It has introduced structure in my professional life and helped me refine my soft skills and research ability along with decision making. In terms of day-to-day process, no college or university can truly prepare you for the real professional world. Working experience will take you farther than education, but education helps create a solid foundation to continue building upon, both go hand in hand, but I don’t think one is better than the other. There needs to be synergy to maximize both educational and professional experience.
My master’s degree, a year into the program, has taught me so much. I am going for an MBA and MS-Information Technology Management and my first year was grueling, being a student and employee, but it was valuable and taught me things that could have taken me a lot longer to learn on the job.
Also, I must give a shoutout to my former professor Dijo Alexander. Professor Alexander teaches AI for Business in grad school and helped me get on track with AI and helped me understand the foundations of this technology. He was a huge help and met with me to talk about my professional path.
What are some ways the school could potentially improve its offerings that would have helped you in your career?
Introduce more cloud-oriented courses, offer more technical lab time in classrooms, and with the introduction with AI, more AI and machine learning classes. From what it seems like, 51ÁÔĆć is focusing on Cybersecurity but includes a good amount of information in other areas. As I mentioned, learning Cloud, Active Directory, more Engineering/Analysis focused skills would be very helpful as it is all important in IT.
Technology changes, but the art of communication doesn’t.
Maxim Medvedev
Could you provide an example of how an IST course or experience directly translated to professional preparedness?
The capstone absolutely translates to skills in my career. Funnily enough, it wasn’t the technical aspects of the capstone that helped me, but it was all the soft skills we ended up learning and refining. We learned business, entrepreneurship, communication skills, and so much more. Learning how to communicate between technical and non-technical parties is huge. We learned how to pitch ideas and focused on public speaking. Being able to sell yourself in an interview or sell an idea in a meeting is critical. Many people have great ideas but can’t get them out in a concise way. I would argue that the soft skills we are taught in school go further than any primary technical experience we learn. Technology changes, but the art of communication doesn’t.
What have been some educational or career highlights thus far?
On-going career highlight is surviving a double master’s degree with full-time work. I was planning on going for one degree, but J. Dietenberger convinced me to go for two. I think I’m surviving simply out of spite.
Throughout my college career I have been the captain of 51ÁÔĆć Panther Rugby. I have been highlighted in 51ÁÔĆć’s Graduation video of Spring 2024 and talked a bit about my story and advancement in my career.
I have successfully completed FUSE’s AI boot camp hosted by the Milwaukee Tech Hub Coalition. My group and I worked on an AI solution to help fight Avian Flu. We won the biggest impact award, and I won an award for my leadership.
What do you do outside of work?
Outside of work, I suffer at the hands of my own curiosity. Work does not often satisfy my hunger for learning more things, so I typically spend my days doing tasks, random projects, and falling into a deep hole of random research of something that caught my eye. Bless my amazing girlfriend for dealing with my spontaneity. These other interests include cooking, investing, working out, and fixing up a 1983 Honda CB550 Nighthawk. In the time I owned it, I believe I have frustratingly become a better mechanic than motorcyclist.
