Thursday, August 8, 2019 News

SPARC Welcomes 2019-2020 Open Education Leadership Fellows

Open Education

SPARC is pleased to welcome the 2019-2020 cohort for the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program, our professional development initiative for advancing open education in academic libraries. The cohort is comprised of 27 fellows from a diverse group of institutions spanning 17 U.S. states and Canadian provinces. Fellows include a wide range of backgrounds, spanning from OER librarians to metadata specialists to faculty coordinators. The fellows were selected from a competitive application pool. 

2019-2020 SPARC Open Education Leadership Fellows

The SPARC Open Education Leadership Program offers intensive training to empower library professionals with the knowledge, skills, and connections to lead successful open education initiatives that benefit students. The two-semester program blends online, peer-to-peer, and project-based learning to build a comprehensive understanding of the open education space coupled with practical know-how to take action on campus and beyond. Fellows participate as part of a cohort that becomes a vibrant community of practice, enhanced by expert instructors and mentorship support. The program has graduated two cohorts in 2017-2018 and 2018-2019.

The incoming cohort will begin the program on September 24. During the first semester, the cohort will attend the annual Open Education Conference in Phoenix, AZ in late October, where they will complete a leadership seminar and immerse in the open education community. Throughout the program, each fellow will develop and implement a capstone project that advances open education locally and publish an openly-licensed resource that benefits the broader community. Each fellow gets paired with a mentor to provide one-on-one leadership development, many of whom come from the program’s growing alumni pool.

SPARC launched the Open Education Leadership Program in 2017 in response to a need identified by our membership. The program is funded by tuition to ensure that it can be offered sustainably. Given that interest in the program continues to grow, we anticipate running the program again for a fourth year in 2020-2021. Applications will be available in the spring of 2020. More information about the program’s openly-licensed curriculum, outcomes, tuition, and instructors is available on our website here

To receive updates about the program, sign up here.



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