What are the most impactful things you have done during your graduate program at Simmons?
In 2025, I had the honor of serving as the president of the Library and Information Science Student Association (LISSA), the student government for Simmons’ School of Library and Information Science (SLIS). As an introvert, I found it to be challenging in the best way possible. It required being present at many events and meetings, taking the time to connect with students to understand how to advocate for their needs and interests, and a lot of trial and error to figure out what kind of programming students wanted.
I’m proud to have fostered a sense of community, connected students with campus resources, and inspired change within SLIS. For myself, it instilled a sense of self-confidence in my leadership, public speaking, and project management skills that I didn’t really have before. While I went into library and information science initially because I wanted a job that would be more removed from people, being the LISSA president has inspired me to apply for roles with outreach and instruction duties.
Tell us about your research and area of specialization (in layperson’s terms).
As a dual degree student, I have two areas of specialization. On the LIS side, I focused on visual literacy, a part of information literacy that focuses on a person’s ability to create and interpret visuals. For LIS professionals, our role is to help people develop information literacy through instruction, curating materials, and creating resources like LibGuides [an online content management system that gathers information and resources on a given topic].
I was fortunate to receive a grant from the Simmons Center for Information Literacy last year to conduct an independent study on visual literacy in LIS educational programs and create a LibGuide of my findings that anyone can use. Additionally, I’m grateful for the opportunity to put these skills into practice by working as one of the Simmons Tutoring Center’s Information Literacy Consultants this past year.
As for the history side, I’m interested in American women’s military history, public history, and representations of gender and power in memorials and historic sites. As an Army veteran myself, I often find that people aren’t aware that women have officially served in the US military since 1901, or that many US war and veterans memorials include the names of women. In some cases, it is because efforts to commemorate service were solely focused on men, but typically it is because their stories weren’t included in curricula or history scholarship.
My history thesis focuses on Wellesley College during World War I and how students and alumnae were engaged in the war effort domestically and overseas. It has been nice to return to my undergraduate alma mater this past year to conduct research in its archives, uncover these stories, and flesh them out in my writing.
Did you participate in any internships during graduate school?
Yes! I was the Graduate Research Intern at Historic New England, and the Veterans Heritage Digitization Assistant at the City of Boston Archives (for which I wrote this blog post). I wrote this blog post in my role as a Massachusetts State Historical Records Advisory Board Archival Field Fellow at the Franklin Historical Museum.
For my field placement for “Introduction to Archival Theory and Practice” (LIS 438), I was the Local History Intern at the Watertown Free Public Library. This was my field placement for “Introduction to Archival Theory and Practice” (LIS 438), and it is my favorite internship during my graduate studies. I processed, rehoused, and made accessible the Lewandos Dry Cleaners collection, including making a finding aid and MARC record so that researchers could find the collection from both the library’s website and catalog.
I also digitized materials and uploaded them on Digital Commonwealth, which is a website full of materials from Massachusetts libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies. Yet the experience wasn’t limited to learning how to process a collection. My supervisor was very supportive of my professional development, so I also got to write a blog post about the collection, co-curate a window display with her for the library lobby, and assist with a bookmobile event at the Browne House, a historic house museum in Watertown, MA. In addition to gaining hands-on experience with collections processing and archival standards, I also had opportunities to engage in outreach for the local history collection.
My last internship was as Phillips Library Digital Projects Intern at the Peabody Essex Museum, where I made this website of materials from the town of Salem's Tercentenary celebration in 1926.
How did you find your community at Simmons?
I was very involved in student leadership and primarily took classes in person, so it may be surprising to hear that I found my closest Simmons friends among my co-workers at Beatley Library. I was a reference assistant, so I worked at the library service desk helping circulate materials, assisting students with research, processing interlibrary loan requests, creating social media content, and assisting with the library-sponsored Little Free Library located in Roxbury.
My shifts were typically four hours, and on evenings and weekends, which are some of the slowest blocks, so the other desk worker and I would have a lot of time to chat and get to know one another. We bonded over bizarre occurrences, like a giant can of olives being found in the stacks, and would cover the desk while the other took a quick break to eat dinner in the library’s break room.