LaVerne Gray MLIS ’05 wins awards for doctoral dissertation

Photo courtesy of Syracuse University

January 27, 2020



LaVerne Gray MLIS ’05, assistant professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, has been winning awards for her doctoral dissertation titled, “In a Collective Voice: Uncovering the Black Feminist Information Community of Activist-Mothers in Chicago Public Housing, 1955–1970.”



Her work took second place in the 2019 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) doctoral student poster competition and won the 2019 University of Tennessee Knoxville College of Communication and Information Outstanding Dissertation Award.



After graduating from Dominican, LaVerne worked as a diversity resident librarian at the University of Tennessee Knoxville and several years as a reference and learning outreach librarian at the University of Illinois Chicago and Texas A&M University. She later entered a doctoral program at the University of Tennessee and graduated with her PhD in May 2019.



Before her library studies and work, LaVerne earned a master’s degree in education (2000) from Northern Illinois University and a bachelor’s degree (1993) from Wilberforce University. She also served a term in the Peace Corps, working in West African communities in Ivory Coast and Togo.



Read more: LaVerne Gray: New SIS Lecturer, Lifetime Pursuer of Knowledge