Candidate for President Elect:

Dr. Rong Tang
Associate Professor
Simmons University, USA

Candidate's Statement:
It is a great honor to be nominated for the ALISE President Elect. I deeply appreciate the opportunity to contribute to an Association which I value profoundly. We are at a pivotal moment, when an unprecedented global pandemic has taken millions of lives. We are facing not only the biggest public health crisis that we have seen in a hundred years, but also tremendous challenges to the economy, daily life, social and political situations, and, more pertinent to us, teaching and learning in LIS.

As a LIS educator for 20 years, I believe in ALISE’s vision and mission. In order to be a global leader and to promote innovation and excellence in LIS education, especially during challenging times, ALISE needs to cultivate and promote not only platforms that support, showcase, and share LIS scholarship and pedagogical best practices, but also encourage and foster thought experiments on ground-breaking ideas or unique perspectives, as well as provide opportunities for creativity, collaboration, and global partnerships that advance and enrich LIS education. For ALISE to grow its membership and increase its impact, ALISE leadership should be keen to interact and motivate its members frequently, promote exemplar activities, and hold a great vision for the long-term impact of the Association on its constituents, and within the LIS field and beyond.

My term as the Director of ALISE External Relations ended last year. While I was on the board, I felt truly empowered to advocate for our profession as well as promote social justice, diversity, and inclusion. The years serving on the ALISE Board provided me with great insights into the operation of ALISE, including its financial viability and outreach effectiveness. I believe that my love and commitment to ALISE, my belief in the LIS field and what we do as educators, and my vision of what ALISE could be, make me a strong candidate for this position. I became an ALISE member in 1999 when I was a doctoral student. ALISE helped me to get connected with people who were highly esteemed scholars in the field and whose publications I read in my classes. Over the years, I have attended “Birds of a Feather” sessions, attended doctoral poster and work-in-progress poster sessions, served as a faculty advisor for resume review, and presented my papers and organized panels at ALISE Conferences. I served on the “ALISE Research Grant Competition” Committee, and chaired the Committee in 2010. In 2016 I co-convened ALISE International Library Education Special Interest Group. I was the Director of ALISE External Relations from 2017 to 2020, and currently the Vice-Chair of the ALISE Advancement Committee. People who have worked with me on the ALISE board, a committee, or a SIG will tell you that I am a dedicated person who works diligently and effectively. If I am chosen as President-Elect, I will strive to serve and contribute to ALISE, its members, the Board, and LIS communities, to the best of my ability. Thank you for your support and your vote.

Biography:
I am an associate professor at the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS), Simmons University. I am Co-Director of the SLIS Doctoral Program and the Director for the IMLS funded IPI (Interprofessional Informationist) post-master’s certificate program. I am also one of the co-leaders of community driven free online learning program (under the CC-BY-NC-SA licensing) Research Data Management Librarian Academy (RDMLA) which was launched in October 2019, and currently has more than 4700 registered learners from over 155 countries around the world. I have been an ALISE member since 1999. One of my papers received 2008 Bohdan S. Wynar/ALISE Research Paper Competition award. I received the OCLC/ALISE Library & Information Science Research Grant in 2008. I served on the “ALISE Research Grant Competition” Committee for three years and was the Chair of the Committee in 2010. I also served on the ALISE Board of Directors as the Director of External Relations from 2017-2020. Currently I am the Vice-Chair, ALISE Advancement Committee. I have also served in a number of capacities for ASIS&T: I served on the ASIS&T Membership Committee from 2010 to 2012 when I organized or helped to organize the New Members Brunch for two years. I was the Chair of ASIS&T SIG-USE 2013-2014. I served as a Co-Chair of ASIS&T Publications Committee since 2015-2017. My research interests center on user behavior research, including paradigm shifts in the field of information, cognitive styles and user experience, usability evaluation, collaborative user behavior, and mobile news information behavior. Published in top- ranked journals, I teach primarily in areas of usability and user experience research, theories of information science, digital information searching, evaluation of information services, and research methods.

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