Dr. Ruth Small, Syracuse University
Ruth V. Small, Laura J. & L. Douglas Meredith Professor and Director of the iSchool's nationally ranked school media program, received a doctorate in instructional design, development, and evaluation and has been on the faculty of the iSchool since 1989. From 2003-2007, she created and directed the Preparing Librarians for Urban Schools (PLUS) program, a distance learning program for library service in high need urban schools. The PLUS program has graduated more than 120 new teacher-librarians in New York State for service in New York City, Binghamton, Rochester, and Syracuse.
Ruth is also founding director of Syracuse University’s Center for Digital Literacy, Center for Digital Literacy (CDL), an interdisciplinary, collaborative research and development center partnering the School of Information Studies, School of Education, and S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. The mission of CDL is to explore the need for and acquisition of multiple literacies, develop tools to foster these literacies in a variety of contexts, and study the consequences of having or not having these literacies on children, youth, and adults.
Ruth’s research is in the application of motivation theories and models to information contexts. Ruth has received two national research awards for her scholarly work, the 2001 Carroll Preston Baber Research Award from the American Library Association and the 1997 Highsmith Research Award from the American Association of School Librarians. Her current research focuses on the motivational influences on and information resource needs of innovators.
Ruth has received three awards for her teaching including the School of Information Studies Professor of the Year in 1996, Teacher of the Year from the Syracuse University Alumni Association and, in 2006, the prestigious Meredith Professorship for Teaching Excellence, the first such recipient from the iSchool.
Before coming to the iSchool, "Dr. Ruth" (as her students affectionately call her) worked as a college administrator, high school principal, librarian, teacher, and instructional design and evaluation consultant. Ruth is president of SMALL Packages, a consulting business specializing in motivational design and evaluation.