Celebrating Our Scholarship Recipients!
The Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA) Scholarships and Awards Committee is delighted to announce our 2025 APALA Scholarship and APALA Sage & JCLC NALCo LIS Student Scholarship recipients.
APALA Scholarship
The APALA Scholarship is an annual $2,000 award that provides financial assistance to a student of Asian or Pacific background in support of a master’s or doctoral degree program in library or information science.
Megan Bauerle (she/her) is the 2024-2025 APALA Scholarship recipient. She is working towards her Master of Library and Information Science degree at Simmons University. She is currently working at Analysis Group in a corporate research library and at Ithaka S+R as a Strategy Intern. She has recently completed an internship as an OER for Social Justice Assistant at Loyola Marymount University.
Megan is interested in academic librarianship and hopes to work in roles that contribute to more creation, adoption, and advocacy for Open Access/OER materials. Megan shares, “This scholarship award will help me to continue my degree and pursue a future career that promotes equitable information and resource access. Thank you to APALA for this scholarship award!”
APALA Sage & JCLC NALCo LIS Student Scholarship
Elaine Kong has been selected as the 2025 APALA Sage & JCLC NALCo LIS Student Scholarship recipient! This scholarship recognizes students who demonstrate academic excellence, leadership, and a strong commitment to a career in librarianship.
Elaine Kong (she/her) is a second-year PhD student in Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Computing and Information. She previously served as a Systems Librarian at Georgetown Law Library, where she led initiatives in integrated library system management, discovery platform optimization, and digital resource accessibility. Her research focuses on how cancer survivors in underserved communities seek information about Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and the challenges they face in accessing reliable resources. Committed to health equity, she aims to design culturally and linguistically sensitive, AI-powered information systems that deliver trustworthy CAM information, supporting informed decision-making. She also explores the detection of misinformation on social media using natural language processing techniques to enhance information quality and user trust in digital health communication. In her leisure time, she enjoys Chinese calligraphy and playing the saxophone.
Please join us in congratulating Megan and Elaine on these well-deserved honors and in celebrating their bright futures in the field of librarianship!
For more information on each scholarship award, please visit the APALA website: https://www.apalaweb.org/awards/