Melissa Gross is a professor in the School of Information at Florida State University and past president  of the Association for Library and Information Science Education. She received her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1998, received the prestigious American Association of University Women Recognition Award for Emerging Scholars in 2001, and the Outstanding Faculty Member Award for 2002-2003. Dr. Gross has published extensively in the areas of information seeking behavior, information literacy, library program and service evaluation,  information resources for youth, and teacher/librarian collaboration. Her teaching interests include research methods, the information needs of children and young adults, reference, and the development and evaluation of information programs and services. Her research specialty is information seeking behavior and concentrates on understanding user information seeking behavior as a basis for the design, evaluation, and improvement of information resources, programs, services, and systems.