Amy Gay, Assistant Head of Digital Initiatives for Digital Scholarship, has been selected as a fellow in the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program, an intensive professional development program to empower academic professionals with the knowledge, skills and community connections to lead successful open education initiatives that benefit students. The two-semester program blends online, peer-to-peer and project-based learning to build a comprehensive understanding of the open education field coupled with practical know-how to take action on campus and beyond. Gay is one of 21 fellows selected from a competitive application pool for the program’s 2022-2023 cohort.
“The Binghamton University Libraries is proud to have Amy participate in this leadership program to explore how to grow our open education resources at Binghamton,” said Interim Dean of Libraries Jill Dixon. “With this opportunity for promoting open access, we strengthen the Libraries’ Vision of advancing research, learning and academic growth for all.”
The SPARC Open Education Leadership Program spans two semesters, beginning with an intensive online course in the fall to build open education subject matter mastery. In the spring, Gay will work with a mentor to implement a capstone project that will help advance open education at Binghamton University and contribute back to the broader open education field. She will join the rest of the cohort in attending the 2022 Open Education Conference virtually in October.
“I am very excited to be accepted into this program as it aligns with my goals of how to make educational material more accessible through the use of freely available open education resources,” Gay shared in a written statement. “This program can help me better assess where these learning gaps exist and how to design resources while keeping the greater goals of equity and inclusion in mind.”
Binghamton University Libraries has been working over the years to expand access to open educational resources. Most notably, the Open Repository at Binghamton (ORB), creates open access to scholarly and creative works generated by our faculty, students, staff and affiliates. The ORB provides global visibility to works, persistent URLs that will never change and content on the ORB is indexed by major search engines like Google. This partnership with SPARC will help Binghamton Libraries expand our services like the ORB.
“Open education is a powerful catalyst for expanding access to knowledge and making educational opportunities more equitable,” said Nicole Allen, director of open education for SPARC. “A large part of what makes our leadership program successful is the unique and valuable perspective each participant brings to it, and the vibrant community of practice that develops amongst the cohort. We are proud to have Amy among our 2022-2023 class.”
SPARC is a global coalition dedicated to making open the default in research and education. For more information about the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program, visit sparcopen.org/our-work/open-education-leadership-program.