Amanda McKay Williamson Honored by EIU

(AMANDA McKAY WILLIAMSON WITH DR. CHRIS MITCHELL, ASSOCIATE DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES)

The Graduate School and the Graduate Alumni Advisory Board at Eastern Illinois University has honored Amanda McKay Williamson, ’01, ‘02 with a 2019 Outstanding Graduate Alumni Award.

The awards were established in 2005 to recognize exceptional professional and personal achievement by an EIU alumnus of a graduate program. Alumni are nominated by graduate programs and the selections are reviewed and chosen by the Graduate Alumni Advisory Board.

Williamson was nominated by the graduate program in English. She earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English from EIU and a master’s in library and information science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She currently serves as the director of the Effingham Public Library and was named Librarian of the Year in 2015 by the Illinois Library Association.

Alumni were invited back to campus for an evening dinner and awards ceremony in the Doudna Fine Arts Center on EIU’s campus in Charleston. Along with Williamson, nine other alumni were honored at this year’s event. Williamson and her husband Michael reside in Effingham with their son Evan and daughter Emma.