Jessica DeSpain, CODES Director
Jessica DeSpain, PhD, is a professor of English and co-director of SIUE’s IRIS Center. SShe is the author of Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Reprinting and the Embodied Book. In many of her projects, she works with local citizens and middle and high school students to tell stories about their lives and communities using the medium of digital storytelling. She is the director of the CODES Program.
Andrea Barajas, Community Coordinator
Andrea Barajas is the Community Coordinator for the CODES program at SIUE. As a proud first-generation Mexican American, she received her Associate of Arts from Southwestern Illinois College and her Bachelors in Animation from Webster University. From the lively nonprofit world of City Year Philadelphia—where she wore many hats under the AmeriCorps umbrella, blending creativity, operations, and social-emotional learning—she’s returned to her home in the Midwest, bringing inclusive practices to lift others up and create meaningful connections through mentorship, education, and building vibrant communities.
Margaret Smith, Technical Director
Margaret Smith, PhD, is interim director of the IRIS Center at SIUE and a research assistant professor of digital humanities. A medieval historian by training, both her historical and digital humanities scholarship interrogate the relationship between authority, identity, and place. With Dan Schreiber, she develops and maintains the technical infrastructures for CODES and Compass.
Dan Schreiber, Web Developer
Dan Schreiber is a web developer in the IRIS Center at SIUE. Dan comes with a long background in software, both as a developer and project manager. With Margaret Smith, he develops and maintains the technical infrastructures for CODES and Compass.