Darion McCloud, Nia Theatre Company, Executive Director, Melanie, and City of Columbia's Mayor Steve Benjamin at a Mayor's Books 2 Boys event.

Melanie Huggins

Public Library Association

Candidate for President Elect

EMAIL: melanie@melaniehuggins.com


Girl Scouts honoree
As a former Brownie and Girl Scout Troop Leader, I was excited to be honored by Girl Scouts, Mountains to Midlands as a Woman of Distinction for my work in the community. This video has some insight into my influences as well as some adorable pics of me as a kiddo!

 
Liberty Fellowship Project
As a Liberty Fellow here in South Carolina, I was tasked with creating something that would have lasting impact on my state. In support of our state’s Read to Succeed legislation, which mandates summer reading interventions (or retention) for children who are behind in second grade, I created an opportunity for staff and teachers who run the summer reading camps to learn from each other and ensure the interventions they were offering were effective and family-centric. In its first year, the Read to Succeed Symposium was developed and run by Richland Library as a multi-agency partnership with the SC Department of Education and the SC After-school Alliance, among others. Now in is third year, it attracts over 300 teachers from all 85 districts and is an essential planning, learning and innovation opportunity for the staff critical to the success of our state’s struggling readers.

 
Interview with UofSC
I’m a graduate of the UofSC’s School of Library and Information Science, in the College of Information and Communications. Here’s a recent interview I gave about the transformation of Richland Library.

 
Resume
The standard stuff in case you are interested.