Christina Riehman-Murphy has joined the SPARC team as a Visiting Program Officer for Open Educational Leadership. Christina is the Sally W. Kalin Librarian for Learning Innovations and Open & Affordable Educational Resources Librarian at Penn State University, and will serve part-time for the next year in this newly-created SPARC VPO role.
“One of the things I love about SPARC is that their whole ethos is about being a catalyst, using their power to generate change, and responding to the needs of the community,” said Christina, who is a graduate of the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program. “I’m excited to be able to contribute in some capacity and work with the network of open educational leaders that are out there to be part of figuring out what’s next.”
In her new position as VPO, Christina hopes to engage the alumni network of SPARC Open Education Leadership fellows to expand their influence on others invested in open education. She hopes to collaborate to build a community of practice and mentoring program for leaders in open education.
Christina has been at Penn State since 2015. On campus she serves as the co-program manager of OER Leads, a university-wide faculty adoption grant, is embedded in multiple open pedagogy projects, and is a member of the University’s Open and Affordable Working Group.
It was at OpenCon in 2016 that Christina said she became enthused about open education. “It completely changed how I thought about information, access to information—and who has access to not only using information but also creating and being contributors of information,” she said.
Christina went on to help on the planning committee for OpenCon Philly in 2019 and the 2021 Affordable Learning PA Summit. She is a graduate of the inaugural cohort of the Open Education Network’s Certificate in OER Librarianship, a campus partner for Affordable Learning Pennsylvania, and completed the Creative Commons Certificate for Librarians. Christina earned her Masters of Science in Library Science from PennWest Clarion University and her bachelor’s in English and secondary Education from Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
