School of Information Sciences Associate Professor Dr. Kafi Kumasi was honored with the President’s Award at the Michigan Association for Media in Education’s MAME 48 conference.
SIS students Artisa Coleman, Yolanda Crawford, Kristin McLean, Michelle Smith, Angela Stanley, and Michelle Zmich attended the conference in conjunction with their work on Dr. Kumasi’s grant project Restoring Urban School Libraries (RUSL).
Together with SIS adjunct faculty member Gwenn Marchesano and school library practicum coordinator Kathleen McBroom, Dr. Kumasi presented on Hip Hop in the School Library: Rationale, Resources and Radical Teaching. This work reimagines what supporting youth literacy and information behaviors looks like through a hip-hop framework that Dr. Kumasi developed called InFLOmation.
Read more about Project RUSL here.
Read Dr. Kumasi’s research article InFLOmation: A Model for Exploring Information Behavior through Hip Hop here.
Photo 1: Dr. Kafi Kumasi, recipient of the Michigan Association for Media in Education’s President’s Award, is pictured with School of Information Sciences alumna Kathy Lester. Lester, who is advocacy chair for the MAME Board of Directors and president-elect of the American Association of School Librarians, has worked as a mentor on Kumasi’s Project RUSL.
Photo 2: Kafi Kumasi, associate professor and Project RUSL director; Kathleen McBroom, practicum coordinator and RUSL staff member; Michelle Zmich, student/RUSL fellow - River Rouge; Artisa Coleman, student/RUSL fellow - River Rouge; Gwenn Marchesano, adjunct faculty member; Angela Stanley, student/RUSL fellow - River Rouge; Youlanda Crawford, student/RUSL fellow - Harper Woods; Michelle Smith, student/RUSL fellow - Harper Woods; and Kristin McLean, student/RUSL fellow - Harper Woods attend the MAME 48 conference.
Photo 3: Student Angela Stanley is pictured with a painting done by Detroit multi-creative artist DeMaciiio (@demaciiio on Instagram). Dr. Kumasi contracted the artist to do a live painting via Zoom of the grant’s summer kick-off workshop. A Swivl camera was used to track the artist’s movements so the virtual audience could see his work in real time.