OAT Award Recipients for Spring 2022

Nathan Fried, Assistant Teaching Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Biology

Dr. Fried plans to replace the current textbook for “Statistics in Biological Sciences” with curated and free available online materials. This will enable students to view the material as a resource in perpetuity without needing to find a book to which they may no longer have access.

Taught: Fall 2022, Spring 2023

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

Charlotte Markey, Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Psychology/Health Sciences

The current text for Dr. Markey’s “Psychology of Eating” course is no longer being updated. She will replace it with a collection of no-cost materials (i.e., articles, podcasts, book chapters, news articles) and organize them on Canvas for student access. This will eliminate to need for students to purchase a physical book.

Taught: Spring 2023

25 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $1,250

Christopher Maute, Part Time Lecturer, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Psychology

With help from the Libraries Mr. Maute will use a variety of books, stand-alone chapters, and articles as class materials to replace the costly texts currently required. He will also employ the Crash Course series of educational videos, along with creating his own videos for lectures he would like to standardize.

Taught: Fall 2022, Spring 2023

150 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $30,000

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. Dr. Nagtalon-Ramos, a previous OAT award recipient for this course, will continue to refine the OER materials she uses and strongly encourage her students to make use resources freely available through the Libraries.

Taught: Fall 2022

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

Shauna Shames, Associate Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Political Science & Gender Studies

“Global Gender Issues” will include a focus on women and girls in Nigeria. This is an area that lends itself well to articles and online sources (especially multimedia) rather than a static textbook. Since the course will be taught fully online Dr. Shames envisions teaching it entirely with online materials, with a preference for sources that include visual and audio components. In the past she has had success teaching with podcasts, YouTube videos, art, and other nontraditional texts to supplement the academic writing that will still be included. (Please note Dr. Shames will be on leave from Rutgers during AY23. She will enact her course resign upon her return.)

Taught: Summer 2022, Winter 2024, Spring 2024, Summer 2024

105 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $18,375

Lorrin Thomas, Associate Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, History

Dr. Thomas plans to revamp the “What is History?” course to emphasize guest lectures by other members of the History Department, followed by discussions about how each scholar worked differently -- with different sources, different questions, and different constraints -- within the same discipline. He will offer these guest lectures bi-weekly and change the assigned readings to articles available on the Libraries’ databases, along with a selection of scanned book chapters by both members of the History Department here and several other authors. 

 

Taught: Fall 2022

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

Zhang-Chao Han, Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Mathematics

“Mathematical Analysis II” is required for the honors-track math majors. Textbooks traditionally used for this course often present critical aspects which are outdated in their approach or written for a different audience. Dr. Han has developed notes to add to background discussions and provide motivational material. His proposal is to rewrite and expand upon these notes to make them self-contained. He will use OAT funding to hire an undergraduate student as a project partner.

Taught: Spring 2023

20 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $4,040

Ebelia Hernandez, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Educational Psychology

Dr. Hernandez’ course, “Student Development and Learning Theories”, is currently available to students with no cost for class materials. She proposes to enhance this by creating an online website where course modules are developed to include supplementary materials (videos, websites, online articles). Students will be able to contribute to it as part of their class facilitations. It will also be an accessible  resource for them throughout their graduate program, especially for the culminating papers they write during their final term as a requirement to complete their master’s degree.

Taught: Fall 2022

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

Rong Li, Instructor, School of Arts and Sciences, History

The price for the conventional textbook used in Mr. Li’s “World War II in World History” course ranges from $99 to $160, depending on whether it is rented or purchased. Adopting library resources and open-access materials will immediately relieve students’ burden of securing an expensive text. Scholarly articles, primary sources, and book chapters assigned as required readings are available from the Libraries’ databases and open-access resources.

Taught: Summer 2022, Fall 2022, Summer 2023

120 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $15,600

Norah MacKendrick, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Sociology

Instead of relying on a textbook for her “Social Inequalities” course, Dr. MacKendrick will use open access journal articles, online blogs, newspaper articles, and YouTube videos produced by sociologists or online media producers such as Vox Media. She will also explore using a readily available and popular used book to help reduce cost to her students.

Taught: Fall 2022

45 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $3,375

Marci Meixler, Associate Teaching Professor, School of Environmental and Biological Studies, Intermediate Environmental Geomatics

Dr. Meixler intends to incorporate open and affordable resources into “Intermediate Environmental Geomatics”, a required course for undergraduate students wishing to earn a Geomatics Minor or Geomatics Certificate. Currently, some class topics are taught using labs from expensive texts. She will switch to materials for labs from the ESRI Learn ArcGIS Lesson Gallery, a free and open resource with content covering many of the important topics of the course.

Taught: Fall 2022

25 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $3,650

Karthik Srikanta, Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Computer Science

Dr. Srikanta’s “Introduction to Discrete Structures I” course uses two texts, one required and one suggested. Although the suggested volume is freely available online under a Creative Commons license, it lacks in certain areas and does not fully replace the required one. His plan is to develop high quality lecture notes for the course topics not covered in the suggested text, thereby eliminating the need for the required text. The lecture notes of the selected topics will be structured and developed such that they form an entirely self-contained resource for the students.

Taught: Spring 2023

240 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $14,880

Paul Takhistov, Associate Professor, School of Environmental and Biological Studies, Food Product Development

“Food Product Development” is the core discipline in the Food Science curriculum. Its complexity explains why there is not a commonly accepted FPD textbook exists in the food science academic community. Usually, instructors adopt two books which is cost-prohibitive for many students. Dr. Takhistov will develop a comprehensive package of free materials including articles from open access journals as case study materials, lab exercises developed and adapted to the equipment in the Department of Food Science, and a list of the online reference sources students can use for their projects.

Taught: Spring 2023

40 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $10,440

Gabriel Zenarosa, Assistant Professor of Professional Practice, School of Arts and Sciences, Management Information Systems

Dr. Zenarosa’s “Management Information Systems” course already uses free educational resources, including a textbook and software. He will enrich this course by adding current, real-world, race- and gender-inclusive datasets via DataPlanet in lectures and assignments. These datasets are more progressive and organized than the ones currently referenced in the text. The OAT award will enable him to hire a graduate student to help curate/catalog these datasets.

Taught: Fall, 2022, Spring 2023

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

Arlana Henry, Graduate Teaching Instructor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, Criminal Justice

Incorporating open and affordable materials into both her “Race, Crime, and Justice” and “Contemporary Policing” courses allows Ms. Henry to include current news, events, and programs into her curriculum while also referencing historical and current literary texts. She will provide a variety of free course materials to her students including documentaries, podcasts, films, and news articles, many available through the Libraries.

Taught: Summer 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023

90 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $9,900

Minseok Kim, Lecturer (Instructor), School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, Management Information Systems

Currently, Mr. Kim uses a text for his “Production and Operations Management” course which is not entirely suited to his undergraduate students. He will replace the textbook with freely available material offering more practical knowledge and exercises. Additionally, his PowerPoints presentations will be redesigned, and the course’s contents will be reallocated into seven different topics resulting in significant savings for his students.   

Taught: Summer 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023

250 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $58,750

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

Dr. Liss’ “Sociology of Law” course already uses OER materials. He envisions this OAT cycle as an opportunity to significantly increase the effective use of OER materials to support student success measures. His refresh of the open and affordable material used will focus on cultivating student’s ability in social scientific legal analysis by building course objectives into the final project, develop new lessons and assignments on social science theories of the law, and create policies with the intention of equity among traditional and non-traditional students.  



Taught: Summer 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Summer 2023

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

Jojy Cheriyan, Assistant Professor, Biomedical and Health Sciences, Health Professions

Currently the course materials for Dr. Cheriyan’s “Health Care Finance Systems” are compiled from eight different textbooks, along with updated financial reports downloaded annually from federal and state health departments. Since healthcare finance is an everchanging area with new models of payment and value-based programs, it is imperative students understand the healthcare market and how financial transactions evolve. She will reduce student costs by substituting the text with relevant electronic materials available through the Libraries.

Taught: Fall 2022, Winter 2022, Spring 2023, Summer 2023

120 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year:  $30,000

Sherri Cirignano, Associate Professor, New Brunswick, SEBS, Family and Community Health Sciences

Most of the text currently used for Ms. Cirignano’s “Community Interventions in Obesity-Related Chronic Diseases” course is outdated and the publisher has no plans to update it. She will create Open Education Resources (OER) to supplement the text. This includes planning, writing, and developing content for all the course’s modules and incorporating the content into the existing Canvas course template. The OER format allows for changes to information as needed while at the same time providing an affordable “low cost” option for students.

Vanessa LoBue, Professor, Newark, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, Psychology

Dr. LoBue will create a new digital textbook focusing on advanced statistical methods to be used by graduate students in her program or any similar program on campus. She will offer different faculty members a small stipend to create a video lecture, along with digital written materials and a tutorial for each topic that can be freely accessed online. She will create an online Canvas course page to host the materials so that anyone on campus can access them for free. Further, she will provide a video overview of the course materials and written narrative (introduction to the digital materials) that summarizes each method, along with when and why it is used.

 

Ines Rauschenbach, Assistant Teaching Professor, New Brunswick, SEBS, Biochemistry and Microbiology

Dr. Rauschenbach will develop a textbook for her “Introduction to Microbiology” course. While the course has been based on the OER OpenStax Microbiology, a recent redesign makes it necessary to create a custom textbook that focuses on the specific course topics and can be easily updated to remain current with advancements in the field. The new text will include links and QR codes to websites for activities and videos, tutorials on how to construct mind maps, links to current microbiology news, and student-created review questions for each unit. This content will be accessible in one place and downloadable to any electronic device.