Welcome to our iSchool Help Desk monthly newsletter!! We use this to share updates about what we’ve been up to. Whether you’re a current student, faculty, or staff; or maybe even an alumni or friend of the iSchool Help Desk and want to keep in-the-know about us, we’re glad to have you! You can expect updates about the major initiatives and projects we are working on, pictures and updates from our fun social events, and anything else up and coming at the iSchool Help Desk!

Accessibility Advocate Shoutouts

We have been helping support the iSchool as they work towards more accessible class materials to meet changing federal standards. We would like to celebrate those who have been stepping up to become Accessibility Advocates at the iSchool – whether they have been educating others about accessibility for years, or they’ve recently made the commitment to jump in and try their best, we think it’s important to recognize the effort and amazing impact that we can make as an iSchool community if we all do our part!

In March, we began spotlighting some of these advocates on a monthly basis. This is a great chance to recognize and uplift these efforts, to encourage one another as a community to keep striving, and to help students get to know our instructors a little better! Please check out our shoutout from April, lecturer Craig Evans, and keep an eye out for our last Advocate of this semester to be shared later in the week! Feel free to email us at ischool-support@illinois.edu to nominate any instructors and let us know their impact!

Check out the blog post here!

Black background with a spotlight, and a headshot of Craig Evans in the center. It says “Craig Evans” at the top and “April ’25” at the bottom.

Help Desk Social Event- Game Night

We had another successful Help Desk social event, a game night! We enjoyed snacks and some fun board and video games as a group, including Quiplash, as you can see below.

Quiplash prompt on a TV screen that reads “You need three things to live: food, water, and [blank]”. The answers below read “Spite” and “Federal Grants”. Beneath them it reads “Pick your favorite on your device now!”.

Exciting Life Updates!

We have several exciting life updates as our GAs continue to search for jobs, prepare to graduate or to train our incoming GAs in August, and more!

Help Desk GA Audrey has accepted a position as the Librarian for Creative and Instructional Technologies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee!! She is very excited to be starting this position in July! We will be lost without her, but we’re so excited to see her take her amazing skills and positive personality and use them to succeed.

Help Desk GA Victoria has accepted a position as Research and Learning Librarian & Assistant Professor at Stetson University in Florida!! She will be starting in June. We are going to miss her warm presence so much, but we know that no one is more qualified than her and she will do an amazing job wherever she is!

First-year GA Elliot is also very excited to share that they have recently gotten engaged and will be married in October!

We hope you will keep on cheering on our GAs who are about to graduate and looking to find their next steps! We know they’ll all do great, and we all appreciate how supportive our community is.

April Fools Day

As per tradition, the Help Desk partook in many April Fools Day shenanigans. For the day, we became the Psychic Help Desk – offering cootie catchers to tell your fortune, tarot readings by absolute amateurs, and lots of fun graphics on our signs. Check out just a few of them below! Thanks to everyone who entertained our silly endeavors.

Graphic that reads “Psychic Readings Presented by the Help Desk” at the top. It lists the Zodiac signs and various silly, made-up readings or advice for each one.

Graphic with a meme on it. The meme includes a man with his partner. The man has been labelled “my anxiety” and is looking away from his partner, who’s labelled “calling the Help Desk on the phone” and towards a woman who is labelled “using tech chat”. Underneath the meme the graphic reads “Getting assistance with tech service needs? More likely than you think…”.

Graphic that reads “it looks like you emailed the help desk- do you need help?” with an image of Clippy next to it. At the bottom it reads “Spread messages of love and support on this special occasion”.

Hygiene items in bathrooms

While this is not directly Help Desk related (although we like to think we had a hand in pushing for this to get done), after months of waiting, the bathrooms in our building on the 4th floor now have hygiene supplies in them! We are excited for this building to be just a little bit more inclusive and accessible. Thank you to our awesome Facilities team!

Plastic receptacle holding pads and tampons on a bathroom wall. Taken in one of the gender-neutral bathrooms in the new iSchool building.

Help Desk Menu

Lately, we have had several creative presentations given at our Team Meetings. If you’ve ever wondered what sort of coffee shop drink one of us Help Desk-ers most embodies, or if you’re curious to get to know us a little better, this presentation about the “Help Desk Menu” by Elliot might be of interest to you. Maybe you will even be motivated to try out one of the Help Desk-er inspired drinks!

Upcoming…

Thank you so much for reading our newsletter, and for all of your support! We are excited to be able to keep everyone updated on the fun things happening at the Help Desk and in our community. Keep an eye out for next month’s newsletter!