OAT Award Recipients for Spring 2021

Gail Caputo, Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Sociology

Dr. Caputo will expand and update the curriculum for her “Masculinities” course further expanding its use of open and affordable materials. She will integrate full text classics in the field, chapters from textbooks in the field, digital images, sound, and other media most of which has been vetted for classroom use and which can be sorted and selected with the aim of creating a diverse anti biased curriculum.

Taught: Fall 2021, Summer 2022

45 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $0

Abdollah Dehzangi, Assistant Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Computer Science

Dr. Dehzangi will use an open-source book to make it more accessible and affordable for students enrolling in machine learning courses both at the graduate and undergraduate level. This book provides more suitable material for students to become familiar with the machine learning concept, methods, and their application. Additionally, he will use articles licensed through Rutgers University Libraries and other freely available online materials.

Taught: Spring 2022

32 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $4,160

Edward Duffy, Associate Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Psychology

Dr. Duffy will develop a set of open resources (open access readings, assignments, projects) that can easily be encapsulated as a single manuscript. It will be available on the web as a free download. He will also create original material and rely upon other open source, open access work to supplement the final text for the course.

Taught: Fall 2021

25 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $3,750

Bonnie Jerome-D'Emilia, Associate Professor, Camden School of Nursing, Nursing

In the past Dr. D’Emilia used an older text which was relatively inexpensive. She updated the content with multiple articles, videos, and online information. As she added more online resources she realized her students could likely do without the text completely. Therefore, she will supplement sections of the text with new freely available resources while continuing to update the other course materials related to changing conditions in public health.  

Taught: Fall 2021, Spring 2022

60 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $1,800

Evan Jewell, Assistant Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, History

Dr. Jewell will enrich his course (“Western Civilization I - Prehistory to Charlemagne”) which already uses open and affordable materials. He currently provides students with a mixture of scanned materials and links given in study guides on Canvas. However, he has discovered this can sometimes be disorienting for students, even when instructions are provided in study guides. Some of the translations are also dense or outdated. As a result, he intends to compile one document containing all the sources for the course, derived from open access translations. He will supplement, update and edit these translations, and provide relevant notes, all for the purpose of increasing accessibility to the readings for students. 

Taught: Fall 2021

50 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $0

Jamille Nagtalon-Ramos, Assistant Professor, Camden School of Nursing, Nursing

The “Seminar in Professional Nursing” course is a writing-intensive class designed to educate the student with a foundation in nursing knowledge that will provide the basis for ensuing theory and clinical nursing courses. It uses two expensive textbooks. Dr. Nagtalon-Ramos will utilize open access resources available from professional nursing and medical organizations and incorporate open access resources and databases from federal and state agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, United States Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Library of Medicine, among others. These resources will address course objectives related to health protection and health promotion, strategies for changing social determinants of health, and promoting lifestyle behaviors and health patterning with clients, families, and communities.

Taught: Fall 2021

90 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $21,504

Jillian Sayre, Assistant Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, English

“Introduction to English Studies” serves as an introductory course to the major and a popular general education course. Because it addresses a variety of fields gathered under the umbrella of English Studies it has been challenging to find single touchstone textbooks that would serve the learning goals of the class. Dr. Sayre’s goal is to limit required texts to purchase or borrow to one popular press novel. Instead of a textbook, she will refocus the class through supplemental materials from the library databases and highlight engagement and practice with ideas rather than lecture and memorization.

Taught: Fall 2021

35 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $1,610

Christina Bergey, Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Genetics

Dr. Bergey’s new course, “Evolutionary Medicine”, is a wide-ranging, inter-disciplinary investigation of the ways that evolution in the past continues to influence modern health. There will be zero-cost access to required materials for the students. She will publish all teaching materials (including syllabus, slides, and recordings of portions of lectures) on a course materials website online under a Creative Commons license. The OAT award will provide compensation for two Ph.D. students to review the syllabus and suggest open and available materials for the course readings. 

Taught: Fall 2021

60 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $9,537

Matthew Charnley, Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Mathematics

Dr. Charnley will make all the resources needed by students freely available online. He will modify a currently available open-source textbook to accommodate what is normally covered in this class. As an example, some topics normally discussed in class are missing from this textbook and need to be supplemented. Additionally, the course is undergoing a redesign and the revised materials will be written to fit this new iteration. 

Taught: Summer 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Summer 2022

1,225 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $137,200

Richard Contrada, Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Psychology

Dr. Contrada’s course currently only uses open and affordable materials. Readings are available through the library, and a few videos to supplement the readings are also freely available. He plans to significantly augment the use of free video materials from multiple sources (i.e., Public Television, YouTube, TED Talks). The addition of these materials will reduce the length of some lectures and occasionally replace reading material whose content is well covered by a video or audio recording.  

Taught: Fall 2021

200 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $0

Stephanie Cronenberg, Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Music

Dr. Cronenberg’s “Foundations of Music Education” course covers the historical, philosophical, and sociological foundations of American music education. Currently, the textbook used for the historical portion of the class is challenging for the students to navigate and lacking in diverse perspectives. She will develop a "course pack" of book chapters and articles that replaces the textbook and can be posted on Canvas through the library system. The hope is that these new readings provide diverse perspectives on the development of US music education and features readings that are both challenging and accessible to undergraduate students. 

Taught: Spring 2022

35 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $1,750

Xiangmin Liu, Associate Professor, School of Management and Labor Relations, Labor Studies and Employment Relations

Dr. Liu’s course currently uses OER materials. She has carefully selected a collection of affordable, multi-media learning materials from various sources instead of traditional textbooks and are accessible to all enrolled students in Canvas. She will work with specialists from the Rutgers University Libraries to enrich and improve the course content by incorporating more affordable, high-quality resources (especially a free textbook) from open-source platforms. She will explore opportunities for incorporating diverse forms of learning materials into the course. Her hope is to empower students with open source tools, especially students with disabilities and special needs.  

Taught: Fall 2021, Winter 2022, Spring 2022

85 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $0

Carmela Scala, Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Italian

“Elementary Italian 101” uses a very expensive textbook. Dr. Scala believes the traditional Italian textbooks do not represent the way language has evolved. She will create a textbook that promotes an inclusive (gender-inclusive and racial-inclusive) language. She will implement a conversational and culturally inclusive approach. Her intention is to use this textbook across all of Italian language elementary courses.  

Taught: Fall 2021, Winter 2022, Spring 2022, Summer 2022

175 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $57,750

Celines Villalba, Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Spanish & Portuguese

Dr. Villalba will make available electronic materials such as articles, short stories, and videos, normally available to language students via publisher ancillaries. By having these materials accessible to students 24/7, she will be able to expand the requirements of the curriculum and work more with learning objectives related to critical thinking (analyzing, creating, and evaluating). She will create a lesson page with all links available from materials from the libraries and create a link of sources, hard copies, that students could use in their final projects. 

Taught: Fall 2021, Spring 2022

50 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $5,000

Patricia Akhimie, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, English

The textbooks used in Dr. Akhimie’s course most often include a large anthology of Renaissance drama, individual play-texts or anthologies of plays by a single playwright, and an introduction to Renaissance literature with chapters by one or more critics to supplement recent journal articles. These are expensive texts. Her goal is to remake students’ experience of this fun but rigorous survey course by offering them freely available editions of the works covered in the course through various sources.

Taught: Spring 2022, Summer 2022

40 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $11,904

Leyla Amzi-Erdogdular, Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, History

“History of Islamic Civilization II” is a core curriculum course offered twice a year. Existing textbooks will be replaced by free and open access materials, while the course objectives will remain unchanged. The curriculum will include podcasts, videos, digitalized museum and archive resources. It will also take advantage of materials available through the Rutgers libraries. All selected materials are freely available. In collaboration with the library, she will work to identify and acquire suitable resources to be included as this approach to curriculum development evolves over time.

Taught: Fall 2021, Spring 2022

80 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $8,400

Sterling Bland, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, English

Dr. Bland’s objective is to fully replace traditional course reading materials by assembling relevant articles, primary texts (books and short stories), open access and freely available online materials. He will completely replace traditional course materials with free alternatives that are made available and distributed to students on Canvas on the first day of class. These resources include all course readings, course syllabi, multimedia, assessment tools, or any other materials that can be used for educational purposes. 

Taught: Summer 2021, Spring 2022, Summer 2022

130 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $19,500

Jesse Liss, Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, Sociology and Anthropology

Dr. Liss’ new course, “Sociology of Health Care”, will rely on open and affordable educational resources. He will partner with the libraries to locate readings, media, and other course content through the libraries' subscription services, online open access books, as well as supplementary popular sources available online, and to ensure compliance with university policy, especially copywrite laws.

Taught: Summer 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Summer 2022

130 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $14,950

Stephanie Rodriguez, Teaching Instructor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, Spanish and Portuguese Studies

Ms. Rodriguez plans to redefine and restructure the academic curriculum, pedagogy, and course structure to provide students with free-of-charge resources to successfully engage with the fundamental theories as tools to confront the most significant practical problems that may arise in specialized translation. She will provide students eBooks, resources from the Libraries, academic journals, recent and relevant articles, and eLearning videos. This format will allow students better retention for course topics, ability to view audio and visual resources multiple times, exposure to technology, and offers access to the latest content, which will set the foundation for sustained success.

Taught: Fall 2021, Spring 2022

40 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $10,000

Amy Sweeney, Lecturer, Rutgers School of Nursing, Entry to Baccalaureate Practice Division

Dr. Sweeney will replace the current textbook with one freely available from the Open Textbook Library. Students may access the assigned readings from this book either online or by downloading the pdf version of the book. This resource will work well with the student population of Rutgers School of Nursing on the Blackwood Campus. These students attend community college for two years, then apply and transfer to the baccalaureate nursing program through Rutgers. The open access resources in this book are specifically designed for students transitioning from associate to baccalaureate level nursing education.

Taught: Summer 2021, Summer 2022

120 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $7,800

Ellen Anderson, Associate Professor, RBHS, Rehabilitation and Movement Sciences

Dr. Anderson will make substantive changes to Understanding Development Across the Lifespan, an iBook she previously wrote. Her textbook streamlines details of the biological systems while still highlighting the developmental changes that occur within those systems from in-utero through older adulthood. Among the changes she proposes are adding new relevant content, updating chapters based upon the latest research, and ensuring accessibility for students with visual impairments.

Sean Bailey, Coadjutant/Part Time Lecturer, Camden, College of Arts and Sciences, Visual, Media, and Performing Arts

Mr. Bailey’s textbook will help students majoring in the arts better understand how to succeed in an industry where entrepreneurial thinking and business acumen are increasingly critical. It will cover topics such as how to cultivate revenue streams, manage expenses, and develop personal careers through good business practice. His connections with other higher education organizations will help the textbook create an impact not only within the Rutgers community, but in the arts sector at large. It will also allow those in the arts to engage in a meaningful way with the national arts education community. 

 

Young-mee Yu Cho, Associate Professor, New Brunswick, School of Arts and Sciences, Asian Languages and Cultures

Hee Chung Chun, Assistant Teaching Professor, New Brunswick, School of Arts and Sciences, Asian Languages and Cultures

Korean-English translation/interpreting is a new and emerging discipline. There are no textbooks or OER resources relevant and comprehensive enough to be used for the entire span of the program. To address this, Professors Cho and Chun will collaborate on a spiral sequence of multimodal units in five modules. These open-ended and student-centered materials will allow for dynamic updating and provide an advantage over traditional paper-based published textbooks. The modular design will accommodate flexibility in selecting topics and materials that are of particular interest and relevance each semester. These modules will replace the current textbooks. 

Marcia Meixler, Associate Teaching Professor, New Brunswick, SEBS, Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources 

General consensus among conservationists, professors, and agency administrators is that environmental management practices be based on science. Science provides the facts, guidance, and methods to protect and improve our environment. However, science and management are not necessarily close in perspective, values, methods, and considerations. Dr. Meixler’s textbook will focus on the differences in science and practices for common and emerging ecological management approaches. Thus, there will be two dimensions to the book: science and practice, and a review of approaches with a record of applications. By acknowledging the differences between science and management across management approaches, this book will promote more effective ecological management. Dr. Meixler notes some of the book’s content will come from the late Dr. Mark Bain of Cornell University.