About Kate McDowell
Kate McDowell regularly teaches both storytelling and data storytelling courses, and is the 2022 recipient of the ASIS&T Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award. She researches and publishes in the areas of storytelling as information research, social justice storytelling, and what library storytelling can teach the information sciences about data storytelling. Her projects engage contexts such as libraries, non-profit fundraising, health misinformation, social justice in libraries, and others. Dr. McDowell has worked with regional, national, and international nonprofits including the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO, part of WHO) and the Public Library Association (PLA). Her nationally-funded project Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians with co-PI Dr. Matthew Turk is under development (https://imls.gov/grants/awarded/re-250094-ols-21). Her storytelling research has involved training collaborations with advancement with both the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and the University of Illinois system (Chicago, Springfield), storytelling consulting work for multiple nonprofits including the 50th anniversary of the statewide Prairie Rivers Network that protects Illinois water, and storytelling workshops for the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). She formerly served as Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Assistant Dean for Student Affairs and has led multiple transformative projects for the School.
Current CV, updated fall 2022
Kate McDowell is Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.
Her research project Storytelling at Work, examined the role that story plays in professional life. What stories do we tell and what stories do we hear in the everyday world of work? When does a story make or break the success of a workday, a project, or even an organization? How can storytelling thinking improve our story structures, our telling, and our ability to connect? This multi-faceted research effort aims to understand how storytelling matters in the workplace.
Through interviews, talks, and workshops, she merges qualitative methods with action research, bringing concepts from narrative theory to new audiences, and workshopping stories for wide-ranging applications from university fundraising to water conservation to graduate student career success.
Previous research analyzed historical and innovative ways to engage young people with reading, learning, and exploring our information world, with a special emphasis on the art of storytelling as a means of engaging people of all ages. She has published articles in Library Quarterly, Library Trends, Children & Libraries, and Book History, and has several book chapters, including an examination of evolution in children's science books published in Culture of Print in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine. McDowell's research on the history of children's reading was funded by the University of Illinois Campus Research Board and awarded the Arnold O. Beckman Research Award. Her article "Surveying the Field: The Research Model of Women in Librarianship, 1882-1898" won the biennial 2010 Donald G. Davis award of the American Library Association's Library History Round Table.
McDowell has also co-PI on previous grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Closing the App Gap, which developed a model for combating summer reading losses by bringing tablet-based reading experiences to underserved populations during summer reading programs, and App Authors: Closing the App Gap II.
McDowell's students have frequently placed her on the List of Teachers Ranked Excellent by Their Students. In spring of 2018, she received the annual Excellence in Online & Distance Teaching Award from the University of Illinois, In fall of 2022, she received the international Outstanding Information Science Teacher award from ASIS&T.
Contact:
Dr. Kate McDowell
kmcdowel@illinois.edu
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