A room of their own

Abigail McFee, School of Information

When best friends Kenlee Ray (BA ’67, AMLS ’68) and Susan Quackenbush (BS ’69, AMLS ’75) saw their names engraved on a plaque outside a new student lounge at the University of Michigan School of Information, the moment held extra meaning.  

As undergraduates at U‑M in the 1960s, they weren’t allowed to enter some rooms—including the popular billiards room in the Michigan Union, where their male classmates would go to unwind and socialize. Women weren’t given full, equal access to the Michigan Union until fall 1968.

“At that point, I lived in the apartment building next door, and my roommate and I would go over with the Sunday New York Times and sit in the lounge because it was beautiful there,” Ray says. “And it was such a big deal for women to be able to be there.”

A room of their own

Both earned their master’s degrees in library and information studies from UMSI and forged prominent careers. Ray became the first law librarian at the World Bank, where she went on to work for 25 years before retiring as a senior information officer. Quackenbush held wide-ranging technical roles that evolved with the internet, including leadership at an early dot-com health care company. For a while, she was the only woman in the internet engineering group at Microsoft.

But seeing their names engraved side-by-side brings them back to the first thing they ever had in common.

“We’re two kids from a small town on the west side of the state,” Ray says, describing Allegan, Michigan, where their own friendship began with their mothers’ lifelong friendship.  

“I was the little kid following you around, trying to hang out with the big girls,” recalls Quackenbush, who is two years younger. She figures Ray stopped trying to get rid of her around the time they got to college. 

In addition to sharing a hometown, alma mater and field of study, both sit on the UMSI Advisory Board. And most recently, they made a shared gift to name a student lounge in the new Leinweber Computer Science and Information Building, a state-of-the-art complex designed to support UMSI’s growth in enrollment. 

“I'm hugely excited about where the school is now and where it's going,” Quackenbush says. “And about the opportunity to give a little thing like a student lounge, which is bigger than I thought it would be.”

 
 

The Kenlee Ray and Susan Quackenbush Student Lounge (LCSIB 2511) is spacious and sunlit, with a modern kitchen, day-use lockers and shared tables with cushioned benches. 

Seeing how nice the kitchen is, Quackenbush suggests baking cookies for the students, but Ray points out it only has microwaves—no oven.  

“Well, we could bring cookies sometimes for the students,” Quackenbush says. “That would be fun.”

For the lounge’s namesakes, who remember hauling piles of books around between classes and eating hurried lunches on the steps outside the Hatcher Graduate Library, the physical details of the space are important. 

“I hope students feel comfortable. That it’s a place to relax, collaborate, form community with their fellow students and interact with people they don’t know,” Quackenbush says.

They’ve seen firsthand how the relationships you make as a student will shape what you go on to do, more than any one class or tool.

“I wouldn't have had the career I had without the connections I made through UMSI,” Ray says. “It is life-changing. Coming from a small town, I never would've envisioned the things I've been able to see in the world, and do.”  

Both agree on the differentiator of a UMSI education: It taught them how to learn. They graduated ready to adapt to changing technologies, ask good questions and take risks. 

“I’ve gotten into a number of jobs where I had no clue what the job was really going to entail, but I always had the confidence that I could learn quickly, because I understood people,” Quackenbush says.

Ray and Quackenbush hope the lounge is a place where UMSI students will spend time face-to-face, whether they’re working on an assignment, sharing a meal or joking around.

Those small things can leave a lasting mark.