Senior Alyssa Bunting is someone you should know around Davis College. Armed with a passion for research, an interest in the intersections of information science and geography and more than a few scholarships and awards to her name, Bunting brings a lot to the iSchool community.  

The Summerville, South Carolina native started at the university as a computer engineering major but quickly realized that it wasn’t the major for her. An advisor encouraged her to meet with instructor Elise Lewis to learn about information science. “Elise is ultimately the reason,” Bunting says about her switch to the iSchool. 

In her first class for the major — Darin Freeburg’s Information Literacy course — a discussion of bias sealed the deal. “When I started learning and figuring out what research papers are and how to dissect them, I started thinking, ‘Well, everything inherently has bias,’ and then I thought about research and is there any way that research is 100 percent accurate when there’s a little bit of bias sprinkled in everywhere? So, I think that it was the challenge — it just kind of intrigued me.” 

Bunting took that challenge and has since discovered her enthusiasm for research. Her time in the iSchool has paired exceedingly well with her studies in geography, too. She has found that professors, specifically in the geography department, enjoy her perspective. “They like the way that information plays into geography,” she says. “There’s a lot of play there, and they’re always really interested in what I have to say and things I’ve learned and how I can take my experiences from information science classes and bring them into the geography field.”  

Outside of school, she is an avid offshore fisherwoman, saying this is a product of living 30 minutes from the harbor. She also has a dog named Brees and loves to play with him. 

In the future, Bunting says she will pursue a graduate degree but is taking time to hone her interests in the job market. She is particularly interested in research and data analytics careers, and thanks to the iSchool, she has the broad range of skills needed to pursue them. 

“Within your classes you’re learning about other things that aren’t directly related to one concentration,” she says. “You’re learning about knowledge management but maybe you want to do knowledge management with a business admin perspective or maybe an information filtration perspective. There’s just so much you can do with it.”