OpenOKState Fellows: OER Champions

Congratulations to Chris Francisco, Aimee Parkison, Richard Sears, and Heather Yates on having been selected by OSU students, faculty, staff and administrators to receive the 2023-2024 OSU Libraries' OpenOKState OER Champions Award.

The OpenOKState OER Champions Awards provide recognition to faculty, instructors, and staff who have made outstanding contributions to advance open practices and OER at OSU. These awards honor those whose open course materials and professional and research practices have had an impact on the student experience and influenced peers to share more openly. Awardees were recognized by students at the April 2024 OSU Student Government Association meeting.

Chris Francisco, Vice Provost and Professor

Dr. Francisco played a crucial role in helping faculty using OER to secure funding from the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. His leadership has helped increase student access and manage educational costs, goals highlighted in Blueprint 2030: Innovating and Elevating Oklahoma Higher Education for Tomorrow's Workforce and We Are Land-Grant: Uncommon Preeminence for the Common Good.

Aimee Parkison, Professor, Creative Writing

Professor Parkison has chosen to teach using open and library resources rather than requiring students to purchase commercial textbooks. She also mentors students publishing the openly licensed literary journal Frontier Mosaic.

Richard Sears, Teaching Assistant Professor, English Department

Dr. Sears advocates for and uses open and library resources rather than requiring students to purchase commercial textbooks. He has also been instrumental in the continued use of OER in first-year composition courses, ensuring that all OSU Stillwater students taking Composition I and Composition II can begin their higher education experience with at least two general education courses that do not require students to purchase commercial textbooks.

Heather Yates, Professor, Engineering Technology

Dr. Yates was nominated and selected because of her leadership in advocating for and using open and library resources rather than requiring students entering engineering to purchase expensive commercial textbooks. She has also made extraordinary contributions to advance open practices and OER at OSU as chair of the Student Affairs and Learning Resources standing faculty council committee.

The OpenOKState OER Champion Award honors OSU faculty and instructors for their innovative use of OER and library resources as an alternative to traditional proprietary textbooks and course materials.

Faculty, instructors and staff eligible for nomination have supported some or all of the practices below in their teaching, learning, and research:

• Use existing OER and/or library resources in their classes
• Create and share teaching materials that are ancillary to existing open textbooks, for example, test banks of questions, presentations, multimedia content, simulations, instructor and student manuals, study aids, or additional learning activities
• Revise and share syllabi, assignments, and other course-related resources necessary for the transition to traditional proprietary textbooks and course materials
• Modify/Create, share and use OER in their classes

Administrators, colleagues, and students are encouraged to nominate faculty and instructors. Self-nominations are also accepted. The nomination process for the 2023-2024 awards has concluded. The nomination process for the 2024-2025 OpenOKState OER Champions will open January 2025. 

2023-2024 OpenOKState OER Champions

Chris Francisco, Aimee Parkison, Richard Sears, and Heather Yates

2022-2023 OpenOKState OER Champions

Aubry Huff, Dr. Sarah Hollingsworth, and Gala Lackey.

2021-2022 OpenOKState OER Champions

Dr. Ashley Burkett, Dr. Katie Constantin, Dr. Joshua Daniel and Dr. Jessica Turcat

Page updated 6.2.24, Kathy Essmiller