Open Education Resources Symposium

Andrea Scott

OER Coordinator
Office of Learning Advancement
Salt Lake Community College

Andrea is the OER Coordinator for the Office of Learning Advancement and Co-Chair of the Open SLCC Advisory Committee at Salt Lake Community College (SLCC). She has worked with OER at SLCC since 2013. In her current role, Andrea provides leadership and strategic direction including overseeing program development, implementation, and expansion for Open SLCC. Andrea is passionate about OER partner relations and has served on several national OER committees and boards. She currently serves on the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) Executive Council as the Co-Vice President of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee, where she advises on EDI-related strategic priorities and Co-leads efforts in exploring the intersections of OER and EDI.

Andrew McKinney, PhD

Open Education Coordinator
City University of New York (CUNY)

Andrew McKinney, PhD is the OER Coordinator for the Office of Library Services at the City University of New York's Central Office. In this role, he helps oversee the CUNY OER Program, a $4 million a year initiative that supports, promotes and incentivizes the use of OER and Zero Textbook Cost materials at all the undergraduate serving institutions of the City University of New York. Andrew is also a member of the steering committee of Driving OER for Sustainable Success (DOERS3), a collaborative of higher education systems and statewide/provincewide organizations that are committed to supporting student success by promoting free, customizable open educational resources (OER). As the chair of the DOERS3 Capacity Building Working Group, he has led projects including the DOERS3 OER Contributions Matrix, a tool to help faculty talk about their open education work in their tenure and promotion dossiers. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate.

Andrew Stapley

Course Materials Specialist
Weber State University: Stewart Library

Andrew is the Course Materials Specialist within the library. Andrew manages course reserves, leads the Stewart Library's OER team and initiatives as well as coordinates with other campus departments in anything regarding course materials.

Brenda Gardner, MA

Associate Professor of Mathematics
OER Faculty Fellow
Salt Lake Community College

Brenda Gardner is currently serving as the OER Faculty Fellow at Salt Lake Community College. In her pursuit of making math more accessible to all students, Brenda was one of the first faculty at SLCC in 2013 to formally start curating and creating OER materials, and she was hooked. Brenda believes grassroots efforts, a supportive administration and taking advantage of inflection points has led to wider adoption of OER at SLCC.

Brenna Hellewell

Student OER Program Assistant
Utah State University Libraries

Breanna is a senior majoring in History and recipient of the Student of the Year Award in Classics. As an OER Program Assistant at USU Libraries, she enjoys searching out OER and helping instructors create, adopt and adapt their own OER. She hopes to go into teaching after she graduates and intends to use OER in her own classroom as much as possible.

Chris Younkin

Scholarly Communications Librarian and
Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science
Southern Utah University

Chris joined the SUU Library faculty in June 2019 as an instruction librarian, then transitioned to scholarly communications in fall 2022. His previous work includes first-year experience instruction at the Ohio State University Libraries, and college writing instruction at Miami University.

David Hubert, PhD

Associate Provost of Learning Advancement
Salt Lake Community College

Active as a professor of Political Science, Dr. Hubert is the author of Attenuated Democracy, an openly licensed textbook for introductory U.S. government and politics courses. He has been engaged in High Impact Practices such as study abroad, learning communities, and service-learning. He led the development and implementation of SLCC's ePortfolio requirement in its General Education program and directed SLCC's Faculty Teaching and Learning Center. He serves as a faculty member at the AAC&U's Summer Institute on High Impact Practices, and the Summer Institute on General Education. In his spare time he loves tennis, photography, camping and stargazing in Utah's southern desert.

Deborah Keyek-Franssen

Associate Vice President and Dean for University Connected Learning
Assistant Professor of Library and Information
University of Utah

Deborah is a creative educator and thought leader with over two decades of experience in IT and higher education. She began her career at the University of Colorado in 1998, where she served as director of academic technology; oversaw strategy and research in the use, implementation and evaluation of educational technologies; and managed a team of consultants and technologists. Working across the CU System as the AVP for Digital Education and Engagement, she was instrumental in furthering CU campuses' implementation of digital and online education solutions, including MOOCs, and served as the director of the Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology (COLTT) Conference. In her current role, she is developing, evolving, and assessing a vibrant, nimble and relevant curriculum of non-credit, for-credit and lifelong learning opportunities for Utahns and beyond.

Diana Meiser

Assistant Professor, Engineering, Applied Sciences Technology (EAST) Librarian
Weber State University: Stewart Library

Diana is the librarian for the College of Engineering, Applied Science and Technology and an Assistant Professor teaching Information Literacy at Weber State University. Diana is a member of the Stewart Library’s OER team and works to spread awareness of OER across the WSU campus. Diana is also the main editor of the Stewart Library’s Information Navigator textbook. Recently, she headed the team that worked on the migration of the textbook content from Adobe Illustrator to the Pressbooks platform.

Donna Harp Ziegenfuss, EdD

Faculty Services Librarian Librarian
J Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

Donna Ziegenfuss has over 10 years of experience working in academic libraries, 18 years of experience in instructional design and teaching in traditional, hybrid, and online formats, and almost 25 years of experience working in the area of faculty and professional development. She was one of five University of Utah Teaching Award recipients in 2021. As a qualitative researcher, she is interested in understanding how conceptual change theory can be applied to develop reflective, engaged, and forward-thinking librarians and faculty. Her research interests focus on librarian identity, instructional design, online teaching and learning and assessment, and technology-integrated pedagogy, especially how Open Education intersects these interests. As a librarian, Donna is particularly interested in the practice of crossing boundaries in higher education, especially between disciplinary silos, to develop effective and innovative transdisciplinary teaching and research practices in libraries.

Emma Lanners, MLIS

OER & Graduate Support Librarian
Utah Tech University Library

Emma Lanners is the Open Educational Resources (OER) & Graduate Support Librarian for the Utah Tech University campus. She received her Master of Library & Information Science from the University of South Carolina in 2020 and has been leading the planning and implementation of the OER initiative at UT for the past three years. She is passionate about the equitable access of information, aiding students in their research, and assisting faculty to adopt, adapt, and create open resources.

Jason Pickavance, PhD

Associate Provost for Academic Operations
Salt Lake Community College

In 2013, Jason, then Director of Educational Initiatives, began SLCC’s OER initiative with pilot funding from Project Kaleidoscope. Under his leadership, Open SLCC employed scaling strategies, including a grassroots faculty-driven movement, horizontal growth and a flexible development structure which led to the program's exponential growth. As Associate Provost for Academic Operations, he is still an avid supporter of Open SLCC and of inclusive and equitable access to learning materials, helping to make college more affordable and accessible to all.

Jenn Gibbs, PhD

UEN Pressbooks Product Manager
UETN

Jenn Gibbs is Operations Manager of Education Services at the Utah Education and Telehealth Network, where she coordinates implementation of the statewide license of PressbooksEDU for Utah higher education partners.

Jen Hughes, MSIS

Librarian, NMedia & Educational Initiatives
Salt Lake Community College

Jen has been working with OER at Salt Lake Community College since 2014. She assists the Open SLCC Team by providing leadership and support in the areas of: OER discovery; online publishing; JEDI concepts; creation of and assistance with professional development opportunities; the application and interpretation of open licenses; and guidance regarding current laws and trends in copyright, fair use and intellectual property. She also participates in state and regional OER committees and has been a facilitator for the Creative Commons Certificate program since 2021.

John McLeod

Account Manager
Pressbooks

John has spent most of his career supporting students, faculty and staff of higher education institutions. Spanning four decades, he has worked with institutions across North America to work toward better learning outcomes. John resides in Edmonton, Alberta and when he isn't working he can be found in the kitchen preparing meals for friends and loved ones or at the curling rink trying to find his draw weight.

Justin Kani

Business and Economics Librarian
Weber State University: Stewart Library

Justin serves as an OER liaison to Weber State University. In this role, he helps facilitate the conversation about OERs on campus through initiatives, awards and consultations.

Maralee Carlin, MLIS

Learning Experience Librarian
Southern Utah University

Maralee is passionate about teaching, gardening, and nerdy things. After getting her MLIS at Wayne State University, she started working at SUU, first as the Instructional Design Librarian and now as the Learning Experience Librarian. Her main focus is teaching information literacy, both academic and everyday, through teaching and designing university courses, workshops, and other instructional opportunities.

Rebecca Sansom, PhD

Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Brigham Young University

Rebecca is the coordinator for general chemistry laboratories, teaches general chemistry and chemistry teaching methods, and is active in discipline-based education research. Three main foci for her work are: improving the success of students in general chemistry, improving the instructional practices of STEM faculty, and supporting professional learning for K-12 science teachers in rural Utah. She uses OER as the primary instructional materials for her general chemistry courses and has customized a textbook using the open.byu.edu platform. Dr. Sansom earned her Ph.D. in Educational Inquiry, Measurement, and Evaluation from Brigham Young University. She holds a master's degree in Educational Leadership from Southern Utah University, a master's degree in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from Harvard University, and a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Boston University. Prior to her work at BYU, Dr. Sansom was a high school chemistry and biology teacher, and served as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow at the National Science Foundation.

Stephanie Western (she/her)

OER Program Manager, Digital Initiatives
Utah State University Libraries

Stephanie is the OER Program Manager for USU Libraries, based at the Logan campus. She works with instructors and collaborators across the statewide campus to increase awareness, adoption and creation of OER at USU, including managing an OER grant program. In her free time, Stephanie enjoys traveling, reading, knitting, and hanging out with her family and dog.

Thomas Chase Hagood, PhD

Senior Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs
University of Utah

Chase is a notable historian, award-winning teacher and innovative administrator who values the promotion of liberal education and research-based, data-informed practices in undergraduate education. He joined the U in July 2021, after serving in multiple administrative and faculty positions at the University of Georgia. As a first-generation college graduate and a cultural historian of early America, Thomas is committed to seeing American higher education work for and with every student.

Timothy Chenette

Associate Professor of Music
Utah State University

Timothy teaches music theory and aural skills at Utah State University. His research seeks to improve aural skills instruction through a better understanding of the brain and a quest for broader accessibility. In 2022 received a USU Libraries OER Grant and published his first OER textbook, Foundations of Aural Skills. Tim enjoys gardening, hiking and spending time with his family.

Tracy Fawns, DNP, MSN Ed, RN, CNE

Assistant Professor of Nursing
Utah Tech University

Tracy's teaching specialties lie in research as well as organizational leadership and health systems.