What was your first job?
I worked in the Pool & Tennis Center for Greater Washington Area Parks and Recreation in Washington, Pennsylvania.
If you were to write a personal memoir, what would you name it?
“Not THAT way!”
Where did you grow up?
I spent the first 18 years of my life in Washington, Pennsylvania, but I continued to grow up after I left there and I hope I still grow as a person every day.
What is your favorite class you’ve taught?
Information organization. No question.
What is your favorite place to grab dinner in Tallahassee?
Ooohhhhh!!!! That’s a tie: Clusters and Hops or Avenue Eat and Drink.
What are your hobbies outside of work?
Say what, now?
Have you always wanted to teach?
No, not at all.
What is your favorite place you’ve traveled to or where would you like to go?
Hoover Dam is my favorite of the places to which I’ve traveled. I want to go to Colonial Williamsburg.
How many football games have you attended?
Southwestern Pennsylvania, where I’m from, is a huge football place (not like Texas or Florida, but where I come from is near where Joe Montana is from and where the 1983 football film “All the Right Moves” was set). So I went to a LOT of high school football games, and I saw the Steelers play once in the old Three Rivers Stadium.Where I went to undergrad, the football team was just coming off a 44-game losing streak, and football wasn’t really a thing (the football field was also a very long subway ride from campus). Then I did my PhD at a basketball school…. So FSU was a real eye-opener, and while I watch most of the games on television, I’ve only been to one in person: November 11, 2006. Any Noles fan will know why I’ve not been to another (spoiler: we got shut out, at Doak, in the freezing rain, by Wake Forest, 30-0).
Proudest career/life moment? Life: having my babies.
Career: winning the ASIS&T Thomson Reuters Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award in 2014.
What’s your favorite band?
Favorite band? The Kenny Hill Band.
Favorite musical artist? Prince, by a landslide.
Favorite vocalists: Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, together.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
From my mom, drilled into me from day one: “The only person who can bore you is yourself.”
If money were no object, how would you spend your days?
Watching crime TV re-runs of all kinds and eating Frito’s corn chips dipped in sour cream.
What is your favorite book and why?
To Kill a Mockingbird. It wasn’t assigned to my class in school, but I used to stay late after school and do homework in the detention room, and someone left a copy there. I took it home (against school rules) and read it twice in one weekend. It’s one of the only books of which my husband (Dr. Paul Marty, also a professor in the iSchool) and I kept multiple copies when we combined our libraries.
If you could be famous for something, what would it be?
Please don’t shatter my illusions. “Could be”?
What Jeopardy category could you clear, no problem?
Agatha Christie for $1 billion, Alex.
Do you have any pets?
Yes! I am horribly allergic to them, and they are exclusively indoor, but yes: Pyewacket (cat, age 13) and TrixieBelle (cat, age 3). Growing up I had guppies. I yearn someday to have guppies again, but not in a house with two cats.
When did you start working at Florida State University?
August, 2002. Dr. Marty and I deposited our dissertations in Illinois at the end of July, loaded up the cars, and drove to Tallahassee. Illinois was in a heat-wave and it was unseasonably cold in Tally, so the daytime high temperature dropped by 20 degrees Fahrenheit (from 107F to 87F) as we drove south.
What was the last movie you saw in theaters?
Annie (2014).
What is the best part about your job?
Can I finesse this one by saying “the people”? Having to pick between my students, former students, and colleagues would be impossible.
’20 Questions with CCI’ brings faculty and staff from the College of Communication & Information into a new light. Learn more about your favorite professors – their hobbies, interests and favorite Tally places.
Do you know someone at CCI you’d like to see featured? Submit their names to kate.mullen@cci.fsu.edu.
