Nicole cooke biography
College of Information and Communications
Education
B.A., Communication, Rutgers University
MLS, Master of Library Services, Rutgers University
M.Ed., Adult Education, Pennsylvania State University
Ph.D., Communication, Information, and Library Studies, Rutgers University
Background
Nicole Cooke is the Augusta Baker Endowed Chair and an associate professor at the School of Library and Information Science. She was a practicing librarian for 13 years before completing her Ph.D., She has experience in public, medical and academic libraries.
Awards
Cooke was the recipient of the 2024 Joseph W. Lippincott Award. This award is sponsored by Joseph W. Lippincott III and presented by the American Library Association (ALA) for distinguished service in the profession of librarianship.
Cooke was named a Mover & Shaker by Library Journal in 2007. She was awarded the 2016 ALA Equality Award, and she was presented with the 2017 ALA Achievement in Library Diversity Research Award, presented by the Office for Diversity and Literacy Outreach Services.
She has also been honored as the Illinois Library Association’s 2019 Intellectual Freedom Award winner in recognition of her work in combating online hate and bullying in LIS, and she was selected as the Association for Library and Information Science Education's 2019 Excellence in Teaching award winner.
In 2021, she was presented with the Martin Luther King, Jr., Social Justice Award by the University of South Carolina.
Research
Cooke’s research and teaching interests include human information behavior, fake news consumption and resistance, critical cultural information studies, and diversity and social justice in librarianship.
Funded Research
2018 - American Library Association Carnegie Whitney Grant
2017 - American Library Association Diversity Research Grant
2016 - Marantz Fellowship for Picturebook Research, Kent State University
Teaching
Whenever possible, learning should be relevant and accessible to Librarian and educator. Nicole Amy Cooke is an African-American librarian and the Augusta Baker Endowed Chair at the University of South Carolina. Her research focus on critical cultural information studies in libraries and her advocacy for social justice have earned recognition in the library profession. Cooke attended Rutgers University for her bachelor's degree in communication in 1997. She continued at Rutgers for her Master of Library Science in 1999, and a Ph.D. from the School of Communication and Information in 2012. Cooke was a librarian for 13 years before pursuing her Ph.D. She was part of the first cohort of the American Library Association Spectrum doctoral fellows during her program at Rutgers. Cooke earned a M.Ed. from Pennsylvania State University. Cooke's research interests include human information behavior, critical cultural information studies, and diversity and social justice in librarianship. Her early service work focused on increasing the number of librarians of color in the profession in order to make libraries and librarians more reflective of the communities they serve. Cooke felt it would be "tantamount to malpractice" to send library students into the workforce without educating them about social justice issues. She has published about the struggles she and other librarians of color face in predominately white spaces like academia. In 2010, Cooke and Trevor Dawes founded the New Jersey chapter of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Cooke began teaching at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2013. Her class, Information Services to Diverse Populations, addressed a gap in the curriculum to meet the needs of the student body. This inspired her book, Information Services to Diverse Populations: Developing Culturally Competent Library Profes Welsh cyclist For the African-American librarian, see Nicole A. Cooke. Nicole Denise Cooke, MBE (born 13 April 1983) is a Welsh former professional road bicycle racer and Commonwealth, Olympic and World road race champion. At Beijing in 2008 she became the first British woman to win a Gold Olympic medal in any cycling discipline. Cooke announced her retirement from the sport on 14 January 2013 at the age of 29. Cooke was born in Swansea, and grew up in Wick, Vale of Glamorgan. She attended Brynteg Comprehensive School in Bridgend, where she gained the Rankin Prize, awarded each year for the highest academic achievement by a girl at GCE A Levels. She began cycling at 11, starting at Cardiff Ajax Cycling Club of which she is a life member. At 16 she won her first senior national title, becoming the youngest rider to take the senior women's title at the 1999 British National Road Race Championships. At 17 she became the youngest rider to win the senior women's title at the 2001 British National Cyclocross Championships. Later that year Cooke won her second senior women's title at the 2001 British National Road Race Championships. She won four UCI World Championship Junior titles, the road race in 2000 (Plouay, France), and the unique treble of mountain bike (Colorado, USA), time trial and road race (both Lisbon, Portugal) in 2001. As a result of this achievement she was awarded the 2001 Bidlake Memorial Prize for outstanding performance or contribution to British cycling. Cooke turned professional for the Spanish-Ukrainian Deia-Pragma-Colnago team at the start of the 2002 season, basing herself in Forli, Italy where she shared a house with Australian rider and future Wiggle High5 founder Rochelle Gilmore and learned Italian. In he Nicole started 2008 as one of the favourites for the Olympic Road Race on paper, but had a difficult start to the season with the knee injury continuing for most of the winter. Nicole gradually built up towards the Olympics, honing her preparation on training courses at home that recreated the same challenges she would face in Beijing. On the start line in central Beijing, heavy rain had already caused some parts of the course to flood, and at 136km this was going to the longest of any women’s competition at the Beijing Olympic Games. “I knew I had to be very careful to save as much energy as possible for the finale, so I was very selective about which attacks to cover or not. The course included two long ascents which would suit the climbers, but the finish was a short 800m hill that suited my punchy style. As we neared the summit of the final climb the attacks were becoming continuous with one rider then another launching all-out attacks that were whittling down the bunch to just the strongest. Over the summit Austrian rider Christiane Soeder attacked, and although I was already on the limit I knew I had to be in that group that was forming. “I sprinted so hard across the gap to the leading group to try not to give anyone in the peloton a free ride across to the break. I bridged the gap which made five of us in the break with only a handful of seconds lead on the peloton. I encouraged the others to work together, doing a huge turn on the front to get the speed up as high as possible for the descent, and then we all worked together to share the pace. “With 1 km to go at the bottom of the descent there was a series of turns through a toll booth and I eased off, there had been a big crash here the lap earlier and I didn’t want to take any chances. My breakaway companions went full speed round the corners so I had to launch into a chase, and as I was closing, with about 600m to go, I had to decide how I wou Nicole A. Cooke
Biography and education
Research and career
Nicole Cooke
Early life
International cycling career 2002–2007
Racing Career
Olympic Champion