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Open CU is based on a premise of openness and collective impact across CU’s four campuses and beyond.

Each campus brings Open Educational Resources (OER) expertise, resources, and practices for awareness and adoption to the shared table, all of which are customized to meet campus needs and cultures. By working together, the campuses succeed in their common goal of increasing the reach of quality OER experience and cost savings for students.


 

In 2020-2022, the Open CU initiative continues to:

 

  • Ensure that the Open CU campus teams (including teaching and learning centers, libraries, offices of information technology, and accessibility units) continue to deliver high-quality awareness and adoption workshops to additional educators and assisting educators with their course redesign efforts.
  • Provide financial incentives to faculty to adapt or create OER content that is fully accessible, discoverable, and openly-licensed.
  • Targeting educators teaching high school concurrent enrollment courses for participation.
  • Build a cadre of educator experts and advocates who will integrate open education principles into campus academic culture.

 

The Open CU initiative serves students across Colorado, including urban and rural populations, non-traditional and underrepresented students, and high school students across the state. This initiative has garnered over $200K in grant and in-kind funding.


 

OER Champions

The award recognizes significant achievements of CU faculty, staff, and students in expanding the use of open educational resources. The honor celebrates an educator from each of the four CU campuses who contributes to the open educational movement through the creation of open access learning materials, and in so doing, increases OER awareness and interest in exploring, adopting and creating OER to benefit CU students.

Learn more about award recipients:

 

2024 OER Champions

Jiayue Cecilia Wu, CU Denver

Photo of Cecilia Wu
   Jiayue Cecilia Wu
   Assistant Professor, College of Arts & Media

 

 


Awarded for: Creating course materials for Digital Music Techniques and Music, Meditation, & Tech courses 

Notable: 
- Creation of OER course materials for Digital Music Techniques and Music, Meditation, & Tech courses enhances the courses’ effectiveness by providing students with high-quality, cost-free learning materials tailored to the subject matter
- Continuous project funding since 2021
- Projected cost savings to students for nearly $250,000 in synthesizer sound design students

Teresa Connolly, Anschutz

Photo of Teresa Connolly
   Teresa Connolly
   Assistant Professor, College of Nursing

 

 


Awarded for: Creation of nursing OER materials and being a fierce advocate of OER on the AMC.

Notable: 
- Applying with Fort Lewis for a collaborative CDHE OER grant of $100k to work towards a z-degree BSN.
- Creating an open site for nursing OER ancillary materials to which nursing faculty can submit their OER.
- Spreading the word of OER within the College of Nursing and inspiring other faculty to create or adopt OER.

Niki Juhl and Tisha Mendiola Jessop, UCCS

Photo of Niki Juhl
   Niki Juhl
   Associate Teaching Professor, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry

 

 

Photo of Tisha Mendiola Jessop
   Tisha Mendiola Jessop
  Teaching Professor, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry

  

 


Awarded for: Creating an open chemistry lab manual

Notable: 
- Creating an OER lab manual for CHEM 1201, 1211, 1402, and 1412
- Increasing inclusive and digital access to lab manuals for hundreds of students while increasing student engagement in chemistry
- Applying OER principles learned through their participation in the UCCS OER SUCCESS Program as well as perpetuating the advocacy and use of OER campus wide.

Alexander Saltzman, CU Boulder

Photo of Alexander Saltzman
   Alexander Saltzman
   Teaching Assistant Professor

 

 


Awarded for: Open Chemistry Online - CHEM 1 and Open Chemistry Online - CHEM 2

Notable: 
- Alexander has participated in CU Boulder’s Open CU Course OER Adaptation and Creation Initiative in 2021, 2022, and 2023. This year, he created a final output as a learning management system Canvas cartridge file that can serve as a starting point for Introductory Chemistry and General Chemistry 1 courses in learning management systems.
- Saltzman advocates on behalf of students and students’ rights. He is passionate about educators taking action in response to the financial burdens and barriers of higher education. He shares his experiences creating OER with colleagues, encouraging them to participate in the CU Boulder Open CU Course OER Adaptation and Creation Initiative.
- Salzman’s approach to creating OER is considering accessibility and ease of use. All of his videos have closed captions, and he provides instructions and details of what is provided, so educators may easily integrate the materials into their own courses. 

2023 OER Champions

Baye Herald, UCCS

Picture of Baye Herald
   Baye Herald
   Senior Instructor, Technical Communication & Information Design

 

 


Professor Herald has been awarded for the creation of the open Technical Communications Across the Professions textbook, which was co-created and co-edited with students. She incorapted universal design for learning principles and represented diverse perspectives through adequate samples, examples, and links.

Also recognized: Joshua Ferguson, undergraduate student, Technical Communication and Information Design

Troy Butler, CU Denver

Picture of Troy Butler
   Troy Butler
   Associate Professor, Mathematics and Statistical Sciences

   

 


Troy Butler has developed open course material for two undergraduate courses: Programming for Data Science and Partial Differential Equations. Butler utilizes the free cloud-based Jupyter notebooks and Colab that ensures that every student has access to the same content and computing platform. The live code makes the interaction with the course materials transformative by bringing an experimental mindset into mathematics and statistics curricula previously reserved for physical science disciplines.

David Paradis, CU Boulder

Picture of David Paradis
   David Paradis
   Associate Teaching Professor, Department of History

 

 


David Paradis created the Origins of European History open textbook in collaboration with students Sheena Barnes and Abby Lagemann. This customized course text directly addresses students’ needs. Paradis has also saved CU Boulder students approximately $15,750 annually.

Also recognized: Sheena Barnes, former graduate student, Department of History; Abby Lagemann, former graduate student, Department of History

Chloe Page, Anschutz

Picture of Chloe Page
   Chloe Page
   Instructor, Department of Psychiatry

 

 


Chloe Page has been awarded for the creation and open licensing of 3D augmented reality brain models that afford spatial and holistic interaction with important regions of the brain, typically not available to neuroanatomy students. This neuroendocrinology educational content has greatly benefitted medical residents.

2022 OER Champions

 

Katherine Cliff, UCCS

Picture of Katherine Cliff
   Katherine Cliff
   Senior Instructor Mathematics at UCCS

 

 


Katherine’s work on curating, revising, and creating OER for mathematics education has lessened the financial burden of math classes for hundreds of students. Her advocacy for open source online homework platform MyOpenMath has led to several colleagues adopting this system which closes the feedback loop and offers students the chance to make sure they are understanding content while they work on their homework. In the 2021/2022 school year, Katherine officially rolled out a fully interactive OER trigonometry textbook.

Dennis Debay, CU Denver

Picture of Dennis DeBay
  Dennis DeBay
  CTT Assistant Professor of Math Education

  

 


Dennis DeBay is a CTT Assistant Professor of Math Education in the SEHD. His  perspective on learning goes further than numbers. It is about using an equity approach to encourage lasting wonder Din higher ed learning. 

Maureen Stabio, Anschutz Medical Campus

Picture of Maureen Stabio
   Maureen Stabio, Doctor
   Vice-Director | Modern Human Anatomy Program 

 

 


Dr. Stabio is vice-director of the Modern Human Anatomy program and a leader in neuroscience education at the Anschutz Medical Campus, where she teaches master’s students, dental students, and medical students.  In 2016 she started a small collection of plastinated human organs as well as a free lending program for CU educators.  In 2019, Dr. Stabio received an OER creation grant to digitize the models into a virtual library under a creative commons license now available at https://www.anatomylibrary.org/. Since then, the use of these specimens has exploded.  The lending program has over 50 physical specimens that have been utilized by over 10,000 students across 10 professional programs and is continually growing.  Importantly, Dr. Stabio is passionate about involving graduate students in the creation of innovative anatomy OER.

Ryan Curtis, CU Boulder

               

Picture of Ryan Curtis

   Ryan Curtis
   Teaching Associate Professor | Dept. of Psychology & Neuroscience

 

 


Ryan Curtis is currently a Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. Curtis has been been using, and developing, Open Educational Resources in his classes for about 10 years.

 

2021 OER Champions

 

Eleanor Haberl, Boulder

   Eleanor Haberl
   Research Associate, Boulder

 

 


Haberl is a research associate on an NSF project on Artificial Intelligence and Ethics (PI Tom Yeh and Co-PI's B.Dalton and S. Forsyth). She authored 5 short stories with embedded AI ethical dilemmas to develop students' critical understanding of AI ethical issues. These stories are open source digital materials and are being used in two CU Boulder (Computer Science and English) courses taught by T. Yeh and B. Walsh, as well as in high school English Language Arts classes and Science Discover summer camps on AI. 

Debnath Chatterjee, MD, FAAP, Anschutz

   Debnath Chatterjee, MD, FAAP
   Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, Director of Fetal Anesthesia, Colorado Fetal Care Center,

   Program Director, Pediatric Anesthesiology Fellowship, University of Colorado

 


Dr. Chatterjee has given presentations to his department about how to find openly licensed images and OER. He was recently awarded an OER creation grant from the CU Anschutz OER committee to fund the creation of an OER pediatric airway course.  The comprehensive OER pediatric airway course will include case studies, quiz questions, and recorded presentations that will be accessible to anyone. The course will be linked to OER repositories.  

Stephen Hartke, Denver

   Stephen Hartke
   Associate Professor, Department of Mathematical and Statisical Sciences

 

 


Professor Hartke has used and developed OER and OSS (open-source software) materials in his courses for many years, primarily in Math 3000 Introduction to Abstract Mathematics and Math 4110/5110 Theory of Numbers.  In both courses, Professor Hartke uses OER textbooks and has developed a series of class handouts to present material and guide classroom discussions.  The Math 3000 handouts have been shared with the other instructors of Math 3000 and used in every section since Spring 2016.  Other instructors have added their own additions to the handouts, which have been incorporated in the primary versions maintained by Professor Hartke. (So far, no other instructor has taught Math 4110/5110, since it is only taught every other year.)  Professor Hartke also uses open-source software (primarily Sage or Python and SymPy) in his number theory course.

Lynnane George, Ph.D, UCCS

               

   Lynnane George, Ph.D
   Professor, College of Engineering and Applied Science

 

 

 


Dr. Lynnane George has progressively integrated OER into her astrodynamics course over the last five years which has culminated into a custom eText using Pressbooks. She has revised, remixed, and created her own material to create a comprehensive and relevant curriculum for the subject matter.

 

2020 OER Champions

 

Linda Button, UCCS

Image of Linda Button

Joanne Addison
Senior Instructor, College of Education

 

 

 


Dr. Button utilizes a variety of OER, not only using it as her curriculum but introducing it to her education students and requiring them to locate, select, and evaluate OER for their course projects in hopes that they will incorporate it into their own classrooms. Her resources are highly rated by participating students, and she is dedicated to giving her students a rich educational experience.

Julia Dixon, Anschutz

Image of Julia Dixon

Julia Dixon
Assistant Professor Emergency Medicine
 


 

 


Dr. Dixon has developed OER used to support the WHO Basic Emergency Care Course, EMED 6631 Wilderness Advanced First Aid, Pre-Health Wilderness and Emergency Medicine Course. The videos provide hands-on examples with clear guidance for essential skills. Her commitment to OER has shown what a force multiplier open source innovative educational resources can be to different contexts.

Brad Hinson, Denver

Image of Brad Hinson

Brad Hinson
Assistant Dean & Senior Instructor, Digital Learning & Technology, School of Education & Human Development


 

 


Brad is a tireless advocate for open educational resources and open education through teaching, organizing, oversight, imagining, and partnering. As Assistant Dean & Senior Instructor of Digital Learning & at the School of Education and Human Development (SEHD), Brad runs IT operations in the SEHD, leads faculty professional development and support centered on digital education, and serves as faculty in the SEHD Learning Design & Technology program.

Brooke Huibregtse, Boulder

Image of Brooke Huibregtse

Brooke Huibregtse
Instructor Psychology & Neuroscience, Institute for Behavioral Science

 

 

 


Dr. Huibregtse completely overhauled materials for the Behavioral Genetics course, offered by the department with the largest number of declared undergraduate majors in the CU system. She was able to curate a complex set of OER materials that actually improve and update the longstanding curriculum of the course, and thus was able to drastically reduce costs for students, while also actually increasing the quality of course content.

 

Campus Web Resources and Information

CU Boulder Campus

 
OEWeek Activities: https://libguides.colorado.edu/openedweek

Websites/libguide pages
Open educational resources: https://libguides.colorado.edu/oer
Creative Commons licenses: https://libguides.colorado.edu/cclicenses
Open pedagogy: https://libguides.colorado.edu/openped
CU Scholar Open Educational Resources Collection: https://scholar.colorado.edu/collections/qf85nc31p

OER Award
Open educator award: https://libguides.colorado.edu/openeducator

News Posts

Call for applications
Open Educator Award story

Additional Resources
2020–2021 Course OER Creation/Adaptation Initiative call for proposals (widely distributed via university communication channels)
Accessibility check-list
Memo of Understanding (2021-2022 version)
Canvas course for grant participants


CU Anschutz Medical Campus

UCCS Campus

CU Denver Auraria Campus

 

Open CU Committee Members

Anschutz

Boulder

 

Denver 

 

UCCS