Meet our 2023 OER Faculty Fellows!

As our OE Week ’24 coverage continues, let’s take a look at Touro’s OER Faculty Fellowship!

The Library’s Open Educational Resources (OER) Faculty Fellowship helps guide faculty through the process of selecting, adapting, or creating OER for use in their classes, instead of using expensive commercial textbooks. This fellowship has been the primary driver of OER use at Touro University for the past three years.

In January, we officially closed the book on our 2023 fellowship. This was an exciting year for the fellowship, as we had 9 faculty fellows, our largest cohort yet! This cohort includes faculty from Touro University New York’s undergraduate and graduate programs, Touro Law Center, Touro University Nevada, Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Touro’s Physician Assistant program. Their completed OER projects will all be published on Touro Scholar’s Open Touro-created resources page.

Congratulations to the 9 OER Fellows from 2023 for completing the 6-month fellowship and developing OER for use in their classes!

Meet our 2023 cohort of OER Faculty Fellows below:

It’s Open Education Week 2024!

It’s that time of year again… Open Education Week! This week, all week, schools and organizations all over the world are taking the opportunity to share the latest developments & achievements in Open Education.

2023 OER Faculty Fellowship Announcement

Touro University Libraries, in collaboration with The Office of the Provost, is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023 Touro University Open Educational Resources (OER) Faculty Fellowship. This fellowship awards faculty a stipend of $500 to develop OER for use in their courses. At the end of the fellowship, the fellows’ OER projects will be published on Touro Scholar and in public OER repositories. Our 2023 OER fellows are:

Gena Bardwell, MFA
Director, General Education
Chair and Assistant Professor, Speech and Communication
Touro University NY, NYSCAS

David Nussbaum, MA 
Assistant Professor, Speech and Communication 
Touro University NY, NYSCAS 

Michelle Buccinna, OTD, OTR/L 
Director, Long Island Campus, Occupational Therapy MS 
Assistant Professor, Occupational Therapy MS 
Touro University NY, School of Health Sciences 

Regina Burch, AB, MSA, JD  
Interim Assistant Dean for Academic Excellence and Bar Success   
Visiting Professor of Law 
Touro Law Center 

Stephanie Klinesmith, MS  
Instructor of Anatomy and Neuroanatomy 
Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, Middletown 

Jacqueline Randa, PT, DPT, PhD, NCS, OCS 
Assistant Professor, School of Physical Therapy 
Touro University Nevada 

Deborah Ratti, PhD  
Assistant Professor, Sociology 
Touro University NY, NYSCAS 

Tom Rozinski, JD, MA 
Associate Professor and Deputy Chair for Lander College for Men 
Department of Political Science 
Touro University NY 

James Van Rhee, MS, PA-C 
Associate Professor and Chair of Assessment and Remediation  
PA Program 
Touro University  

Ancillary Resources for OER: More than just Textbooks!

Did you know that open educational resources (OER) can be more than simply textbooks? Many people think of a textbook, that standard tool for teaching and learning, when they think of OER. But did you know that OER can be much more than just textbooks? There are great many ancillary resources available as OER as well, and the depth and variety of what’s available is only growing.

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

Apply now! 2023 OER Faculty Fellowship

It’s that time of year again!

The Touro University Libraries, in collaboration with The Office of the Provost, is pleased to announce the Touro University Open Educational Resources (OER) Faculty Fellowship 2023.

This fellowship is intended to support faculty to develop OER for use in their courses. All full-time faculty, across all Touro University departments and campuses, with anticipated teaching responsibilities for the 2023-2024 academic year are eligible to apply. The fellowship period will be from July 2023 to December 2023. The deadline for submission is June 16, 2023. We strongly encourage interested faculty to contact Kirk Snyder (OER & Instruction Librarian) before submitting an application. Apply here! 

Fellows receive a stipend of $500 for their full participation in the fellowship program and finished OER to be used in their course within the next calendar year. The fellowship period is six months long. 

Participants will: 

• Develop an open educational resource for a specific course; completing the work by the end of the fellowship and publishing the finished work via Touro Scholar 
• Retain copyright to their materials and all resources will be released under a Creative Commons license allowing derivatives 
• Use their OER project materials in their course within the next calendar year
• Attend meetings with the OER librarian as needed and meetings with the cohort of OER Fellows monthly, during the fellowship term; these meetings will be held via Zoom 
• Complete trainings and short assessments during the fellowship term 
• Present their work to the campus at a to-be-determined event/date 
• Engage in OER advocacy efforts at Touro, as an OER ambassador during the fellowship term and beyond 
• Receive faculty development digital badges

Eligibility: 

• Any full-time faculty member in the Touro University System with anticipated teaching responsibilities for the following academic year.

Apply by June 16th to be considered for the fellowship, and please share this great opportunity with colleagues across Touro far and wide!

[post contributed by Kirk Snyder, OER & Instruction Librarian, Cross River Campus]

Meet Our OER Faculty Fellows

The Library is pleased to introduce our second cohort of faculty fellows! These three Touro instructors recently completed the Touro University Open Educational Resources Faculty Fellowship, presented by Touro Libraries in collaboration with the Office of the Provost. The fellowship has been successful in lowering the cost of education for our students and filling subject gaps, providing open educational materials in disciplines where they were previously lacking, like Health Sciences and Law.

Textbook Heroes: Kenneth Bigel

Kenneth S. Bigel, Lander College for Men.

Welcome to our series recognizing champions of free and affordable course materials at Touro! These “Textbook Heroes” have made a difference in the lives of our students by lowering the cost of their degrees. Do you know someone who fits the bill? Nominate them (or yourself) by contacting the Libraries.

Dr. Bigel has partnered with Touro Libraries to publish a series of peer-reviewed open textbooks on the Pressbooks platform. Introduction to Financial Analysis, the first book in the series is available here.

Who are you? Tell us more about you and the course you teach. 

I am a former Wall Street executive who did stints in Asset Management, International Commercial Lending, Corporate Strategic Planning, and Forensic Finance. I hold M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from NYU and am a Certified Financial Planner^TM registrant. I taught Finance at NYU from 1989-1998 and since 2000 have been teaching Finance with pleasure at the Lander College for Men, Touro University. I have published two e-books in a series which will eventually number five OER volumes. Over the years, I have found that my students ask questions from perspectives that I had not considered. I have endeavored to inculcate these questions into my books. These texts were written for them and the students have taught me so much. Thus, the texts are written in a most friendly manner and are replete with examples and exercises so that the learner can proceed smoothly through the material.  

Over Half A Million Dollars Saved!

It’s Open Education Week, and this year we’re kicking it off with a bang. We will be sharing posts throughout the week about what the Touro University community has been doing with open education in the past year. We’ve been busy! But first, we are thrilled to share the news that we have just reached a big milestone…

Open Education Week 2023

March 6-10th, is Open Education Week!

It’s that time of year again, where the global education community comes together to highlight open educational practices. It’s all about celebrating successes, highlighting innovations, and sharing resources! This whole week, on the blog, we will be shining a light on what’s happening with open education at Touro. In addition to our posts, you can check out the official Open Education Week website to see what others around the country (and world!) are doing, find open resources you can use, and learn more about open education.

Textbook Heroes: William Finn

Welcome to our series recognizing champions of free and affordable course materials at Touro! These “Textbook Heroes” have made a difference in the lives of our students by lowering the cost of their degrees. Do you know someone who fits the bill? Nominate them (or yourself) by contacting the Libraries.