Kate McDowell

Kate McDowell regularly teaches both storytelling and data storytelling courses and was 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, nonprofit fundraising, health misinformation, social justice in libraries, and others. McDowell has worked with regional, national, and international nonprofits, including the Pan-American Health Organization, the Public Library Association, and the Research Institute for Public Libraries. Her nationally funded project, the Data Storytelling Toolkit for Libraries, with co-PI Matthew Turk, is currently under development. McDowell’s storytelling research has involved training collaborations 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 waterways); and regular storytelling workshops for the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois. She formerly served as the interim associate dean for academic affairs and as assistant dean for student affairs at the iSchool and has led multiple transformative projects there.