SPARC is thrilled to congratulate the third cohort of the Open Education Leadership Program on completing the program! Our 2020 graduating class includes 27 library professionals from 17 states and provinces, representing our largest cohort yet and bringing the program’s total graduate count to 64.
The 2019-2020 cohort began their journey in September 2019 in a very different world than we are experiencing today. During the fall, they completed an online course designed to build subject matter mastery on open education and formulate a roadmap for a capstone project. The cohort also attended the 16th annual OpenEd conference together in Phoenix, Arizona where they spent time as a cohort and networked with others working in the open education field.
Just as fellows got paired with their mentors and started their capstone project work, the pandemic hit. Overnight, the education landscape was turned upside down, presenting a completely new set of unforeseen challenges that put leadership skills to the test. Members of the cohort stepped up at a time when policy and decision makers were looking to libraries for support, and in turn worked to support each other through an extraordinarily challenging time.
All 27 fellows who started in the fall completed the program. Emerging themes from the cohort’s capstone projects included fostering student advocacy, conducting institutional needs assessments, workshops and toolkits to equip faculty with the tools they need to adopt OER, the creation and dissemination of OER grants, and many others. We are pleased to share a list of their capstone projects in the form of a slideshow presentation below.
We are so proud of the resilience, determination, and leadership that carried our fellows through an unprecedented year. We know that they will continue to do great things and can’t wait to see where they go next!
2019-2020 SPARC Open Education Leadership Fellows
Angela Perkins, Lafayette College
Ariela McCaffrey, Connecticut College
Beth Rugan Shepard, University of South Alabama
Bobby Bothmann, Minnesota State University, Mankato
Ching-jung Chen, City College of New York
Christine Faraday, Nassau Community College
Dawn (Nikki) Cannon-Rech, Georgia Southern University
Helen McManus, Northern Virginia Community College
Jamie Hazlitt, Loyola Marymount University
Jennifer Beamer, The Claremont Colleges
Joe Askins, University of Missouri
Judith Thomas, University of Virginia
Julie Reed, Central Piedmont Community College
Justin Kani, IUPUI
Karla Fribley, Earlham College
Kellam Ayres, Middlebury College
Kimberly Davies-Hoffman, University of Rochester
Lisa Anderson, Muskegon Community College
Lisa Louis, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
Marisa Petrich, University of Washington Tacoma
Maura Valentino, Central Washington University
Michael L. Porter, Lawson State Community College
Michelle Beechey, SUNY OER Services
Sarah Shujah, University of Toronto
Sonya Lockett, University Arkansas Pine Bluff
Teri Koch, Drake University
Tracy Stout, Missouri State University
