ALA announces fourth annual Spectrum Leadership Institute

Contact: Wendy Prellwitz


312-280-5048

For Immediate Release


May 2002

ALA announces fourth annual Spectrum Leadership Institute

The American Library Association (ALA) is pleased to announce its fourth annual Spectrum Leadership Institute. The Institute, a major component of the Spectrum Initiative, supplements the $5,000 annual Spectrum Scholarships with a three-day intensive training and professional development conference. This year's Institute will be held in Atlanta, June 11-14.

The current cohort of Spectrum Scholars strengthen the diversity of the profession through their varied geographical, ethnic, cultural and individual backgrounds. The Institute is designed to empower scholars to draw on that vast and rich collective body of experience; to attain and retain positions of leadership; and to thereby ensure the quality and validity of library and information science for our increasingly diverse population of users.

At the Institute, scholars will be joined by speakers and presenters from an array of professional interests and cultural backgrounds. These presentations and sessions, combined with participation in discussion and workgroups, form a curriculum proven to be a vital tool in instilling leadership skills in the scholars as they embark on their library careers. Topics include diversity awareness; cross-cultural leadership skills; professional development; career options; and much more. Creativity, openness and knowledge building set the tone.

To learn more about the Spectrum Initiative and its efforts to recruit, train and retain library leaders of color, see the
Spectrum Web site. We encourage you to help us welcome this new cohort of Spectrum Scholars to ALA and the profession, by taking a moment to speak with them at the ALA Annual Conference - attending scholars past and present will be identifiable by a red Spectrum ribbon.

For more information, contact Hector Escobar, Jr. 574-631-6561, email: hescobar@nd.edu or Sandra Rios Balderrama, 312-280-5020, email:
sbalderr@ala.org.