Chandra McKenzie is the Assistant Provost and Director, RIT Libraries.  An RIT alumna with a B.S. in Criminal Justice and M.S. in Instructional Technology, along with a master’s of Library Science from State University of New York at Buffalo, Chan McKenzie joined the library in 1977 as Assistant to the Head of Circulation. She moved up through a series of appointments to Associate Director of Wallace, where she oversaw four departments while managing the reference department, the coordinators for library distance learning, electronic resources, RIT archives, library marketing and library user services. With Patricia Albanese, she served as co-project manager for the creation and launch of Java Wally's Cafe.

McKenzie, a published poet well known in the community for her work and public readings, was a certified sign-language interpreter and has provided signed bibliographic instruction for RIT’s deaf population. She has also taken the Institute Mediator Training program and is an RIT campus mediator.

In 2006 the RIT Libraries received the Excellence in Academic Libraries Award sponsored by Blackwell’s Book Services and The Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association. The RIT Libraries was recognized in the university library category. This national award is given to the staff of a university, college, or community college library for programs delivering exemplary services and resources to further the educational mission of an institution, and acknowledges staff collaboration and innovation in particular. RIT Libraries became the first in the Rochester region and only the second library in New York State to earn this distinction.

“We put as much into the pursuit of innovative ideas as we do into offering personalized service to our community,” McKenzie says. “Great collaboration and individual dedication to excellence is the key to successful accomplishments of our initiatives.”
Link to the Wallace Library website:  http://wally.rit.edu