Dr. S. Craig Watkins Will Deliver the Keynote Address at the 2012 Information Fluency Conference at the University of Central Florida

Dr. S. Craig Watkins studies young people's social and digital media behaviors. He teaches at the University of Texas, Austin, in the departments of Radio‐Television‐Film, Sociology, and the Center for African and African American Studies. Craig is also a Faculty Fellow for the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement and a Global Fellow for the IC2 at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan.

His book, The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future (Beacon 2009), is based on survey research, in‐depth interviews, and fieldwork with teens, young twenty‐somethings, teachers, parents, and technology advocates. The Young and the Digital explores young people's dynamic engagement with social media, games, mobile phones, and communities like Facebook.

His other books include Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement (Beacon Press 2005), and Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema (The University of Chicago Press 1998).

Addressing issues that range from the social impacts of young people's participation in digital media culture to the educational implications, Craig has engaged a dynamic mix of communities. Among them: the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Drug Addiction, IBM Center for Social Software, SXSW Interactive, the National School Boards Association, Smart Mixed‐Signal Connectivity, the Austin Forum on Science and Technology for Society, iCivics, MacArthur Foundation, and the Cooper‐Hewitt, National Design Museum (NYC). He also blogs for the Huffington Post and DML Central, the online presence for the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the systemwide University of California Humanities Research Institute and hosted at the UC Irvine campus.

He is a member of the MacArthur Foundation's research network on Connected Learning. Among other things his work in the network will include leading a team of researchers in an ethnographic study of teens and their participation in diverse digital media cultures and communities. Craig is also developing a project that looks at the connection between youth, digital media, learning innovation, and civic engagement. Finally, he is conducting a series of case studies that examine how educators are using social, digital, and mobile media to design the future of learning.

Dr. Fay Cobb Payton Will Deliver the Plenary Address at the 2012 Information Fluency Conference at the University of Central Florida

Dr. Fay Cobb Payton is an editor for Health Systems, an OR Society journal, and Associate Professor of Information Systems at North Carolina State University.  As a 2009-2010 American Council on Education Fellow, she worked with the NCSU Institute of Emerging Issues and North Carolina Central University.   She earned a Ph.D. in Information & Decision Systems (with a specialty in Health Care Systems) from Case Western Reserve University.  Prior to joining the academy, she worked in corporate IT and consulting for IBM, Ernst & Young/Cap Gemini and Time, Inc. Dr. Payton was featured in Diversity Careers in Engineering and Information Technologyfor her mentoring work with minority doctoral students. 

Her research interests include healthcare informatics and disparities; data management, analytics and data quality; and the digital divide, STEM careers and workforce development.  Her recent health care publications have appeared in the European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Health Disparities and Practice, Health Care Management Science, and Telemedicine and eHealth.  She recently received an NSF grant to explore the use of social media to disseminate HIV awareness among African American female college students. 

She was a 2007 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Fellow where she worked on data management and communications strategies for a breast cancer study.  She was awarded the first SAS Institute Fellow in 2006 for her work in analytics and teaching in the IS classroom, the 2006 & 2007 NC State University Alumni Extension Award.  She is a member of the IEEE Medical Technology Policy Committee, Decision Science Institute Strategy International Planning Committee.  She is the co-editor of Adaptive Health Care Management Information Systems.

In the digital divide and inclusion domain, she recently published, “Considering the political roles of Black talk radio and the Afrosphere in response to the Jena 6:Social media and the blogosphere”, in Information Technology & People.  Her work has appeared in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Communication of the ACM and Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology.

Dr. Payton serves on several local and national boards and has been recognized in NC State and other media outlets for research and mentoring work. 

See recent press releases:

http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wmspaytonkthiv/

http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wmspaytonhiv/

http://naf.org/khalia-braswell-and-kamar-galloway

http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wmspaytonhiv/

http://www.diversitycareers.com/articles/pro/09-junjul/mentors_payton.htm