Open Oregon Educational Resources recognizes OER champions who have done outstanding open education work in Oregon’s community colleges and universities. Congratulations champions!
| Addie Clark, Oregon Institute of Technology | Innovative Grant Project | Dr. Addie Clark has taken the Chemistry 201-203 series from expensive textbooks that were not uniformly used across the curriculum to creation of open materials via LibreText. This is a fantastic example to the rest of us of how to change our own classes and course materials to be more open and accessible to not only the Oregon Tech population, but also the greater academic community. |
| Bruce Kauss, Blue Mountain Community College | OER Leadership | Bruce Kauss, E-Learning Coordinator at BMCC, has done great work to educate teachers, students, and administrators about open resources. He has helped teachers find resources that work for them, and helped teach administrators about the value of funding work in open resources. Bruce has also worked statewide to share and collaborate on open resources. Bruce works on behalf of students to make college materials more accessible and affordable. Bruce Kauss Rocks! |
| Cara Lee, Portland Community College | Publication | Cara was the lead instructor for creating our Math 105 text for PCC. She did so much extra to make sure our book was ready for Fall term. She edited the final copy, created the cover, cheered us on, helped us stay focused. This project wouldn’t have been completed if it wasn’t for her. She also made sure that the text was gender neutral so that everyone could and would feel included. She lead discussions regarding what content we needed in the text that were the best professional development discussions I have had in 28 years of teaching. |
| Colleen Sanders, Kerry Leek, and Jane Littlefield, Clackamas Community College | Advocacy | Thank goddess for the librarians at CCC! ;) As Barnes and Noble eyes the bookstores at Oregon’s community colleges, the advocacy work and publishing from Clackamas’s librarians is shining a light into a great unknown. They have shared invaluable information on what OER advocates at other institutions should expect when B&N comes knocking. It is very much appreciated. |
| Dawn Lowe-Wincentsen, Oregon Institute of Technology | OER Leadership | Dawn Lowe-Wincentsen was nominated three times! Dawn has been the driving force behind Oregon Tech’s OER initiatives. She piloted an OER grant program, brought OER speakers to campus, and continues to engage faculty through presentation and professional development opportunities, while making sure the bookstore is also helping support this effort. A faculty member wrote, “Without these efforts, I would not have been motivated to do anything to help combat rising textbook prices for our students. Dawn is working hard to change the perception of OER and encourage their use at our institution and her work deserves recognition.” |
| Heather White, Mt Hood Community College | OER Leadership | Heather White, Technical Services Coordinator at Mt. Hood Community College, is the co-lead for MHCC’s Textbook Affordability Team. In this role, Heather has consistently engaged students in advocating for OER, secured over $50,000 in OER funding from the MHCC Foundation, and provided hours of support to MHCC faculty creating and adapting OER for their courses. Heather’s OER work has saved MHCC students well over $500,000 in textbook costs. Recently, Heather earned certification as an OER Librarian and is working on developing metadata standards for OER to increase discoverability and access to OER in library catalogs. Heather is truly an OER champion on the MHCC campus and beyond. |
| Jennifer Sacklin, Lane Community College | Innovative Grant Project | Jen has been a champion in the development of OER material for our college’s most marginalized students, our English as a Second Language learners. Despite being a part-time employee, Jen has secured grant funding and has successfully motivated colleagues to work together to do this very impactful work. To date, Jen’s leadership has resulted in the transition of two of our courses from expensive textbooks to relevant, no-cost OER materials. |
| Karen Bjork, Portland State University | Publication | Karen has worked extensively with authors at PSU to create OER, and has 20 completed textbooks to her credit. Additionally, she has spoken at numerous workshops, webinars and conferences, sharing not only the philosophy and need for OER but practical knowledge and experience. In all her endeavors she handles herself and her responsibilities with grace, humor, professionalism and a great deal of passion. I cannot imagine anyone else being more deserving of this award than Karen! |
| Lori Rowton, Linn-Benton Community College | OER Grant Support | Lori was nominated because of the administrative support she provided for the OER initiatives at LBCC and for Open Oregon Educational Resources from 2015-2019. She has played an essential role in OER grant administration. Since these are new programs, the work can be complicated, and Lori has approached it with patience and a can-do attitude. Her dedication is apparent because, even after she transferred to another department, she continued to provide support until new people were hired and trained. OER grants couldn’t happen without people like Lori! |
| Meggie Wright, Lane Community College | OER Leadership | Meggie’s nomination was short and to the point: “Super awesome tireless promoter of OER.” Agreed! |
| Michaela Willi Hooper, Linn-Benton Community College | OER Leadership | Michaela holds an integral position at Linn-Benton Community College as our OER and Textbook Affordability Librarian. Michaela excels in working with faculty in their journey of developing OER content and with the LMS Administrators in developing sound and repeatable processes for publishing the content in a well-documented and streamlined manner. Michaela is a true champion on campus for OER, and is helping our students save money on textbooks in the face of rising tuition. |
| Mick (Lawrence) Davis, Umpqua Community College | Innovative Grant Project | Mick authored the open textbook Body Physics: Motion to Metabolism, which approaches basic physics by using the human body to illustrate the concepts. He wrote this textbook through the eyes of a student taking a basic science course rather than from the perspective of the instructor who is already expert. He has truly worked in the open, sharing a draft version of the text for feedback from colleagues and students. |
| Monique Babin and Nicole Rosevear, Clackamas Community College | Innovative Grant Project | Monique and Nicole are two of the coauthors of The Word on College Reading and Writing by Carol Burnell, Jaime Wood, Monique Babin, Susan Pesznecker, and Nicole Rosevear. Monique did an amazing job of managing all aspects of the PressBooks work, including HTML coding and formatting the book. Nicole goes one step further by assigning WR 121 students to edit and write for Wikipedia, which is an excellent example of Open Pedagogy. |
| Rebecca Olson, Oregon State University | Open Pedagogy | Professor Olson developed an OER project where students created the text and annotations to a popular Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet. In order to create a friendly text for new readers, students carefully selected language from the various early editions of the play, modernizing some (but not all) spelling and punctuation, and occasionally replacing obsolete words or words whose meanings have changed. In the end, they created a text that is both totally Elizabethan and surprisingly easy to read. Open Oregon State Romeo and Juliet is the only edition of a Shakespeare play, edited for students, by students. |
| Shanell Sanchez, David Carter, Brian Fedorek, Alison Burke, Lore Rutz-Burri, and Tiffany Morey, Southern Oregon University | Publication | Shanell Sanchez and the entire Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at Southern Oregon University are recognized for their collaboration while creating one of the first OER in CCJ for faculty and students, Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System. Dr. Sanchez is commended as the lead on this project. Her colleague writes: “It was her willingness and resoluteness that propelled the department to complete an OER text, which was needed in our discipline. Her resiliency and tireless should be rewarded. Not only did she bring in all of her colleagues, she took the lead as an assistant professor. Her courage to take this on should be commended.” |
| Tim Krause, Portland Community College | Publication | Tim has developed clear, useful, engaging, and innovative OER materials for ESOL students, including a reading about Portland’s Unipiper, exercises to practice grammar, and H5P exercises to accompany some of YouTube’s most popular English language videos. He works hard to make these materials accessible and available to all students who want to learn English, including making sure that students don’t need to spend money on a textbook. |
| Ziko Rizk, Linn-Benton Community College | Publication | Ziko has created no fewer than 7 OER courses as computer science faculty at LBCC. He is a long-serving member of LBCC’s textbook affordability steering committee, bringing systems thinking and innovative ideas to the table. He also conducted and shared action research on OER in his classes while pursuing his M. Ed. |
