Current and Previous Atkins Fellows

Brian Powell is the Education Collections and Technology Fellow at Atkins Library. Brian is currently an MLIS student at Louisiana State University. He recently moved to the Charlotte area from Louisiana, where he worked as a school librarian in East Baton Rouge Parish. Brian holds a MA in Education from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Samford University. In his role as a school librarian, he was also the Site Technology Facilitator and School Testing Coordinator. Prior to entering the world of librarianship, Brian served as a middle school English teacher in both East Baton Rouge Parish and Boston. In his work as a teacher, he earned a Fulbright Award from the U. S. State Department for his participation in the Teachers for Global Classrooms program. He is interested in exploring the connections between libraries and student-centered learning experiences.

Sarah Hensler is the Open Access Usage Fellow at the Atkins Library. She is working with the Collection Services team to research how the Atkins Library can use open access (OA) usage data to support decision-making for existing collections and further acquisitions.

Sarah holds BAs in History and French from Indiana University, and is also pursuing her MLS there. When at IU, she works at the Lilly Library, which houses the university’s rare books, manuscripts, and special collections. She also works at the Hamilton-Lugar School for Global and International Studies. There, she coordinates the Windows to the World project: a cross-institutional digital humanities platform which brings archival materials into K-12 classrooms. In both workplaces, she found an interest in database organization and records management. When she’s not swimming in data, Sarah can typically be found dancing, drawing, or playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Sydney is the Digital Humanities Fellow at Atkins Library. She will be surveying other staff and faculty both at UNC Charlotte and at other peer institutions as well as researching different digital humanities projects and centers to write up a proposal for recommendations as to how the university can better support digital humanities.

She is currently getting her MLIS degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and works as a Public Service Assistant at the iSchool front desk, and has previously worked as an Oral History Project Coordinator at the University Archives. Sydney received her Bachelor's degree in English Literature from Kansas State University, and after graduation, went on to work at the Olathe Public Library in Kansas City, Kansas. At UW-Madison, she is currently involved in the Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums (TLAM) organization, and is interested in pursuing a career in academic libraries.

Brigid is the Open Access Fellow at Atkins Library. She is currently an MLIS student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she works as a Teaching Assistant at the iSchool and a Reference Student Assistant at College Library.

She holds a BS in Ecosystem Science & Sustainability and a BA in Journalism & Media Communications, both from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. She studied sustainability and scientific communications, and worked for several years in copywriting and graphic design roles for water quality, higher education, and nonprofit organizations.

At UW-Madison, she is involved with student groups including iQueery and Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums (TLAM). She is passionate about research, information access, and education, and looks forward to pursuing a career in academic libraries.

Amanda Janke is the Textbook Affordability Fellow at the Atkins Library. She will be working to better understand how other colleges and universities are implementing Open Educational Resources (OERs) into their curriculum in the hopes that UNCC will be able to adapt them as well. This will allow students to have completely free textbooks, no matter the subject. UNCC is implementing First Day Complete in collaboration with Barnes and Noble this upcoming fall semester, which is a great start towards more affordable textbooks, but it is the hope that with the research Amanda is doing, it can be seen that completely free textbooks are better for students and faculty alike.

Amanda received her Bachelor's degree in History from Queens University of Charlotte and is currently getting her Master's in Library and Information Science from University of North Carolina at Greensboro. After interning at South Piedmont Community College's library during her first year of the MLIS program, who is also moving towards only using OERs, Amanda found a passion for textbook affordability. She is also interested in archives and special collections. She hopes to stay in an academic library environment once she has graduated.

Charlotte Peterson is the Collection Assessment Fellow at Atkins Library. She will be working with the Collection Services unit to create a process that supports decision making around the library’s Big Deal journal packages.

Charlotte recently earned her MLIS from St. Catherine University, and holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked as an analyst supporting education research studies, an instructor at a public access art glass studio, and a services assistant at a public library. While at St. Catherine University, Charlotte developed a digital library of faculty resource materials for the School of Health, and was involved with the Special Libraries Association (SLA) student group. She is interested in many areas in libraries, including research data services, information retrieval, and information ethics.

Claire Macomson is the Digital Media Literacy Fellow at Atkins Library. She is working with the Research and Instruction team to develop digital media literacy modules for instructional use, conduct an environmental scan of the current digital media literacy instruction landscape at UNC Charlotte and elsewhere, and design social media content for the library to promote digital media literacy among the university community.

Claire is a recent graduate of the School of Information & Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has previously worked in public libraries and higher education administration. She received a Bachelor of Arts in History and Women & Gender Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. When she is not living in Charlotte for the summer, Claire assists fostering kittens for the Orange County Animal Shelter.

Owen King is the Wikidata Fellow at the Atkins Library. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in information science at UNC Chapel Hill. His main interests relate to digital collections and their metadata, and he sees well-designed metadata systems as the key to expanding collections’ reach and impact. In assisting the Atkins Library’s contributions to Wikidata, Owen will help ensure that accurate information about authors from the UNC Charlotte community is broadly accessible across the Internet.

Before his Atkins Fellowship, Owen was an intern at the State Archives of North Carolina, where he analyzed and developed systems for digital preservation metadata. Prior to his work in information science, Owen was a philosopher, with research focused on value theory, especially well-being and information ethics. He received a PhD in philosophy at The Ohio State University in 2016, and he has held teaching and research positions in philosophy departments at Oberlin College and the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

Steph Regenauer is the Open Access Fellow at the Atkins Library. She will be working with the Technologies and Digital Strategies team to help preserve open access research from UNC Charlotte scholars and promote Niner Commons, UNC Charlotte’s institutional repository.

Steph holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Latin American Studies from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire. She is pursuing her MLIS from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. She has spent over a decade working in various roles for the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Foundation. She is currently the Foundation’s scholarship administrator, where she oversees the awarding of donor-funded scholarships.

Tania M. Ríos Marrero is the Digital Humanities Fellow at the Atkins Library. Working within the Public Services and Technology & Digital Strategies units, the goal of her project is to increase access to North Carolina artists' books through the use of 3D modeling, descriptive metadata, curriculum planning and outreach.

Tania recently earned her MLIS from the University of Washington and holds a BA in writing, literature and publishing from Emerson College. Her interests are in digital archives, rare books and special collections, Latin American and Caribbean studies and the digital humanities. She works as a digital archivist with the Puerto Rico Architectural Heritage Archive and resides in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Before pursuing a career in academic libraries, she worked as a community organizer. She has facilitated workshops and presented her work about the intersection of public libraries and community organizing at the Next Library Conference in Berlin, the University of Pennsylvania Climate Change, Resilience, Environmental Justice in Latin America and the Caribbean Conference, among others.

Jude is the Transfer Student Success Fellow at Atkins Library. They are currently an MLIS student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and work as a reference student assistant at College Library. They graduated with a BA from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington where they studied political economy, social justice education, and disability studies.

In Olympia they organized Queer Rock Camp -- the world’s first music camp for LGBTQ youth, eventually expanding the program into Seattle (now called the Queer & Trans Youth Music Project). During their time in the Pacific Northwest they also worked with LGBTQ teens as a peer social justice educator, and as a support group facilitator in local high schools. They have previously worked with people experiencing homelessness, young families, and immigrant youth. They first became interested in librarianship after witnessing the transformative impact of public libraries on the lives of young people in their community, and they see libraries as uniquely positioned to provide resources to underserved populations. They are passionate about the liberatory potential of libraries, and are looking forward to supporting Atkins Library in contributing to transfer student success.

Christin Lampkowski is the Technology and Digital Media Fellow at Atkins Library working to identify digital imaging technologies that can be used to create 3D models of items in the collection for conservation and access purposes. She holds an MLIS from UNC Greensboro and a BA in anthropology from Arizona State University. Information access and education has been a focus of Christin’s professional and volunteer life. Prior to receiving her Master’s degree she worked at a public radio station, a nonprofit that promoted high quality early childhood education, and a children’s museum where she presented programs on world cultures. During her time at UNC Greensboro she worked on digitization projects and processed archival collections with the Forest History Society and Richland Library’s Walker Local and Family History Center. She also worked on collection management and cataloging with the Harriet Hancock LGBT Center’s Sam Nickles Memorial Library. Christin’s work on these projects focused on increasing people’s ability to find and access information available in institution's collections.