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:

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.