Open Oregon Educational Resources recognizes OER champions who have done outstanding open education work in Oregon’s community colleges and universities. Congratulations champions!
| Steve Smith, Linn-Benton Community College | Statewide Advocacy and Leadership | Way back in 2014, Steve Smith recognized the powerful potential of OER to enhance student success in Oregon. He played a key role in establishing and funding a dedicated OER librarian position to support coordination across Oregon’s 17 community colleges. His leadership—alongside the support of the Oregon Community College Distance Learning Association—was instrumental in turning this vision into reality. Drawing on his understanding of OCCDLA and the complexities of Oregon’s biennial budgeting process, Steve helped shape and secure the funding needed for the role. As the first supervisor of this new position, Steve offered support and space to experiment that set the program on the runway to celebrating a ten-year anniversary today. Without his foresight and commitment, this impactful work might never have taken flight. Cheers to Steve! |
| Shanell Sanchez & Jessica René Peterson, Southern Oregon University | Outstanding Publications | Southern Oregon University recognizes two OER champions for outstanding publications in Criminal Justice.
Shanell Sanchez demonstrated exceptional dedication to developing the forthcoming open textbook Race, Crime and Injustice for the Targeted Pathways Project. Shanell is also a wonderful colleague, sharing her experience as an open educator at Southern Oregon University and beyond. The amount of time, energy and enthusiasm that Shanell has invested in open education make her a true leader. Bravo! Jessica Peterson worked tirelessly to complete a new open textbook, Introduction to Criminology: An Equity Lens. Through this open textbook, Jessica promotes equity by highlighting diverse cultural experiences and dismantling structures of power in classroom materials. Her commitment to culturally responsive teaching, accessibility for all learners, and meaningful student engagement is highly commendable. Well done! |
| Luciana Diniz, Jennifer Snyder, & Elise McClain, Portland Community College | Outstanding Publication | Portland Community College recognizes three OER champions for an outstanding publication in ESOL.
Portland Community College ESOL Instructors Luciana Diniz, Jennifer Snyder, and Elise McClain are the authors of Vocab ASAP: Intermediate Vocabulary for English Language Learners. They worked together to create an outstanding collection of readings, exercises, discussion questions, slides, games, and more, all based on a list of frequently-used words from the COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English). With slideshows to introduce each vocabulary word list with definitions and culturally-responsive visuals which draw in students, “Vocab ASAP” is scaffolded and ready to go for a brand-new teacher to use as-is or for a seasoned teacher to dip in and out of as needed. Besides being useful, the materials they have created are fun, engaging, and very well-organized. And because it’s an OER, it can be updated, revised, and adapted by each person who uses it. Thank you, Luciana, Jennifer, and Elise, for generously sharing your creativity, hard work, and pedagogical expertise! |
| Will Fleming, Linn-Benton Community College | Outstanding Publication | Will Fleming has been one of LBCC’s greatest faculty OER advocates over the years! His many publications include Technical Writing at LBCC, Technical Writing for Technicians, and TPW: Technical & Professional Writing. He has received multiple OER grants, mentored colleagues, and served on the LBCC Textbook Affordability Steering Committee. Will’s labor and commitment have been instrumental in sustaining LBCC’s OER program and shaping the English & Writing Department culture towards affordable and OER-enabled pedagogy. Thank you, Will! |
| Andreas Schmittner & Lauren Dalton, Oregon State University | Outstanding Publications | Oregon State University recognizes two OER champions for outstanding publications.
Andreas is a long-standing supporter and advocate of affordable learning materials at Oregon State University. His work, Introduction to Climate Science, is OSU’s most adopted openly-licensed textbook, with 25 reported adoptions in the US and internationally. Andreas’s long-standing commitment to teaching students about climate change and its consequences have made this a highly sought-after resource. Andreas is also dedicated to making the work as accessible as possible, working with a visually impaired student to ensure its usefulness for low-vision individuals. Andreas is currently working on an updated edition of this very timely textbook. Lauren Dalton and her colleague Robin Young at UBC-Okanagan wrote an exceptional textbook called Fundamentals of Cell Biology, currently being used at 14 institutions. It is an excellent introductory textbook on the topic, incorporating custom-designed illustrations alongside embedded animations to visualize concepts. When the text was introduced to the students at OSU and UBC, the faculty authors got a round of applause. At OSU, the textbook has saved the annual estimated enrolled students over $50,000 a year. |
| Ki Russell, Blue Mountain Community College | Leadership for Equity | Ki Russell is a writing instructor who has saved students tens of thousands of dollars in her course since 2021. She co-advises a Gay Straight Alliance for students at BMCC and in the surrounding community. Many students say her office and the club area in the library are the only places they feel fully safe and welcome on campus. Ki also sits on the college DEI committee where she often reminds people of student concerns and advocates for inclusion of all student identities. |
| Kate Lajtha, Oregon State University | Leadership for Equity | Kate Lajtha was using a commercial textbook for the high-enrollment course Sustainability 102 (Introduction to Environmental Science and Sustainability), but became aware that “a significant number of students were unable to purchase or even rent the book and were willing to get a lower grade in the course.” Recognizing this inherent inequality, she showed persistence and patience in her search for OER textbooks that she has now fully integrated into her Canvas course shell, including developing new discussion board questions and quiz questions. She selected these texts based on their content but also because she knew that her non-native English-speaking students were struggling with the commercial textbook and that the language of the OER textbooks was much more approachable. In addition, the change saved her students over $13,000 a year. |
| Jenna Rojas, Western Oregon University | Leadership for Equity | Jenna Rojas, faculty member in the Criminal Justice Sciences program at Western Oregon University, exemplifies the spirit of open education through her commitment to equity, student success, and innovative pedagogy. She has transitioned all of her courses to use open educational resources (OER), eliminating cost barriers for students, and embracing creative, student-centered teaching. One standout course is Criminal Justice Communications, which prepares students for real-world communication—interviewing, de-escalation, body language, and more—based on input from the CJ Professional Board, a group of Oregon-based justice professionals. Kind, generous, and driven by a deep care for her students and colleagues, Jenna is a true open education champion. |
| Isabelle Havet & Kanoe Bunney, Linn-Benton Community College | Leadership for Equity | Linn-Benton Community College recognizes two OER champions who demonstrate Leadership for Equity.
Isabelle is a faculty leader who brings integrity and a focus on students to all that she does, demonstrating that equity and high-quality teaching are synonymous. She led a collaborative OER grant project to create a shared course shell for ART 102, Understanding Art, that is now widely used and relieves students of the burden of expensive textbooks. OER for Visual Arts poses particular challenges for accessibility, copyright, cultural sensitivity, and access, and Isabelle meets these challenges with an unwavering commitment to quality and innovation. She has participated in the Open Education Network’s pilot Open Pedagogy certificate program and the Open Oregon Educational Resources Course Redesign Sprint, and is currently building new courses in the forthcoming Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program to use OER. Thanks for all you do for our students, Isabelle! Kanoe is an exceptional instructor and relentless OER champion! She’s a model of student-centered design and delivery who is many students’ favorite instructor. She teaches her students about the textbook crisis, OER, and information injustice. Kanoe has spent years retooling the Early Childhood Education program to use OER at LBCC. She is also a leader in the state, pulling together groups for Special Education, investing in community members to become educators, and ensuring that OER and access are part of the conversations. As a teacher of teachers, her work is having a wide impact on the future of education in our region, and our communities will be better for it. Thank you, Kanoe! |
| Deron Carter, Linn-Benton Community College | Open Pedagogy Innovator | Deron not only teaches with OER but practices open pedagogy by co-creating his open textbook with students. He partnered with interdisciplinary faculty (and 2021 OER Champion Liz Pearce) to co-teach his Environmental Justice course with Liz’s Contemporary Families course. The final project for this collaboration involves students contributing their knowledge to the open textbooks Contemporary Families in the US: An Equity Lens 2e and Environmental Justice: An Open Student Anthology. He and Liz documented their scaffolded open pedagogy final project in a Faculty Toolkit to enable others to adopt this teaching model.
Deron is a mentor and leader among his colleagues, and other faculty across disciplines attend his students’ final project presentations to learn from Deron’s approach. Deron has presented at national conferences on his work in open education, teaches his Difference, Power, and Oppression courses with OER, and continues to move the needle in favor of access, equity, and excellent teaching. Thank you Deron! |
| Rorie Solberg, Oregon State University | Open Pedagogy Innovator | Rorie Solberg is one of OSU’s most prolific OER authors, having authored Civil Rights and Liberties and Government Powers and Limitations in conjunction with her students, replacing expensive legal texts with more accessible and free course materials. Both of these works are examples of how a faculty member can include students in the creation of openly licensed course materials. Between them, these texts have been accessed 20,000 times in the last year. And, despite their focus on the U.S. legal systems, the texts are being used internationally.
Rorie is also the co-editor and an author of the multi-volume work Open Judicial Politics (Volume 1 and Volume 2), currently in its third edition. This multi-authored work, written by a highly diverse group of contributors, replaces textbooks that can cost as much as $150, creating a significant savings for students. One of the highlights of this work is that it integrates the research training students receive with actual political science work. As Rorie has noted, “it prepares (students) for the idea that they can do this kind of research. It helps them discover what kinds of research questions to ask.” Rorie’s contributions demonstrate her strong support for free and openly-licensed course materials. |
| Forrest Johnson, Linn-Benton Community College | Open Pedagogy Innovator | Forrest Johnson has been a critical player in building, sustaining, and elevating LBCC’s OER Program over the years! He has worn many hats as a librarian, English faculty member, co-chair of the Textbook Affordability Steering Committee, and developer of the CTE-STEM Hub Makerspace. In all these roles, Forrest is a leader and innovator who has changed LBCC for the good by helping innumerable faculty find their way to OER.
Forrest’s reputation for being a thoughtful collaborator has earned him the respect of his colleagues across disciplines and led to fruitful partnerships that benefit students and advance open education culture at LBCC. Known for his creativity and deep dedication to students, his leadership on the iFixit Technical Writing project gave students an opportunity to practice skills in the real world, while his work at the MILL improved teaching and learning across disciplines. Forrest is a reliable partner and thought leader who fosters emergent ideas, active learning, and engaged pedagogy wherever he teaches. Thank you Forrest! |
| Jessica Maddox, Linn-Benton Community College | Open Education All-Star | Jessica Maddox deserves recognition for her stellar OER work and all-around commitment to textbook affordability. She teaches with OER whenever possible and is a fearless advocate in the Math department for student-centric course materials. Her innovations include inviting students to author multimedia narratives about math in every life. She serves on the Textbook Affordability Steering Committee, where she helps her fellow faculty access OER Grants and supports textbook affordability initiatives outside the classroom. Our students are lucky to have Jessica in their corner. |
| Daniel Faltesek, Oregon State University | Institutional Advocacy and Leadership | Daniel Faltesek is one of OSU’s most committed champions of open educational resources. He has written a successful OER textbook, New Media Futures, and is currently developing a second edition. This champion award also recognizes his work in raising awareness of OER at OSU through his role as Co-Chair of the committee that revised the required Baccalaureate Core Curriculum to meet the learning needs of 21st-century learners. Daniel helped establish the requirement that any faculty member proposing a course for the new Core must indicate in the proposal if an effort was made to use OER materials for the course. Faculty are still free to choose the most appropriate course materials, but this requirement has significantly increased OSU faculty awareness of OER as an alternative to commercial textbooks. |
| Michelle Bagley & Michael Reis, Portland Community College | Institutional Advocacy and Leadership | Portland Community College recognizes two administrators for their institutional leadership.
Michelle, a long-time presence on Portland Community College’s OER Steering Committee, has tirelessly elevated the college’s decade-long OER initiative in her role as Library Dean. Her leadership supports PCC’s Textbook Affordability Plan, local outreach efforts, development of funding proposals, and PCC’s OER Coordinator. Michael demonstrated decisive leadership as Executive Dean of Teaching & Learning Support. A passionate OER advocate, he partnered with Michelle to secure stable, ongoing internal funding for PCC’s OER efforts. This local funding marks the beginning of a revitalized era for OER at PCC. As a result of their advocacy, since Spring 2024, PCC has funded 71 faculty grants to implement and maintain OER, including supporting past Open Oregon Educational Resources grantees with much-needed project maintenance. This funding will also support our new faculty mentor program and enable progress toward z-degrees. Michael and Michelle exemplify the vision needed to transform educational resources for student success, demonstrating how administrative leadership can create truly accessible education for all students. |
