Announcing the 2021 Awardees of the Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program

Dear Colleagues,

The Office of the Provost and the University Library are proud to announce the awardees for the fourth year of the Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program.  This program encourages faculty to use and develop open educational resources (OER) as alternatives to traditional textbooks for undergraduate courses. The incentive program is part of UIC’s student success initiative and was developed in response to student concerns about the high cost of course materials.

The awarded faculty members will each receive a portion of the funds allocated for this initiative by the Library and the Office of the Provost. This year, the Undergraduate Student Government also generously donated an additional $10,000 to the fund, making a total of $30,000 available. Faculty members’ plans include adopting open textbooks and other open education resources, modifying open textbooks and creating new open access supplemental material. Instructors will be able to use resources more pertinent to their courses and tailor exercises and quizzes to their syllabi. Applications were received from the colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Business Administration. More than 1130 students who enroll in the faculty awardees’ courses could potentially save approximately $260,000 by using the OER materials instead of purchasing new textbooks. The Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program 2021 awardees are:

• Jeffrey C. Kessler, LAS, Department of English; ENGL 200, English Grammar and Style
• Kate Boulay, LAS, Department of English; ENGL/MOVI 121, Introduction to Moving Image Arts
• Gavin McNicol, LAS, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences; EaES 494, Statistical Methods in EaES
• Evangelos Kobotis, LAS, Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science; MATH 170, Calculus for Life Sciences
• Elizabeth Dolly Weber and Jessica Thornton-Hoselton, LAS, French and Francophone Studies, FRENCH 104, Intermediate French III
• Trischa Duke, Becky Bonarek, Jenna Buendia, and Steph Mielcarek, Office of Global Engagement, Tutorium in Intensive English; ELSI 043 English for Academic Purposes II
• Katherine Warpeha, LAS, Department of Biological Sciences; BIOS 222 Cell Biology
• Julius Ross, LAS, Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science; MATH 310, Applied Linear Algebra
• LeRoy Foster, CBA, Information and Decision Sciences; IDS 520, Enterprise Information Infrastructure Planning & Security

These resources will be incorporated into the curriculum by Fall 2021. For more information on the Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program, visit go.library.uic.edu/oer.

Sincerely,

Susan Poser
Provost & Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

Rhea Ballard-Thrower
University Librarian and Dean of the Libraries

For more information, please contact:
Janet Swatscheno
jswatsc2@uic.edu