Melissa Gross is a professor in the School of Information at Florida State University and past president of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE). She received her PhD in library and information science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1998, received the prestigious American Association of University Women Recognition Award for Emerging Scholars in 2001, and received the ALISE Award for Professional Contribution to Library and Information Science Education in 2019. Dr. Gross teaches and conducts research in the areas of information-seeking behavior, information literacy, library program and service evaluation, and information resources for youth.
Cindy Mediavilla is an author and library consultant who recently retired from the California State Library as well as the UCLA Department of Information Studies. She is also a former public librarian. Her areas of expertise include community assessment, outcome-based planning and evaluation, after-school homework programs, library residency programs, and grant writing. Her most recent book is Libraries and Gardens: GrowingTogether (ALA Editions, 2019), coauthored with Carrie Banks. Cindy’s MLS and PhD are both from UCLA.
Virginia Walter holds an MLS degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a PhD in public administration from the University of Southern California. She is a past president of the Association for Library Service to Children and a former public librarian and professor of information studies at UCLA. She has written more than ten professional and academic monographs, two books for young people, and numerous articles. Her most recent book is Young Activists and the Public Library: Facilitating Democracy (ALA Editions, 2020).