TSP Alumni Facilitators

Amy Minervini is an English instructor at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. Previously, Amy was an Openness, Pedagogy, Advocacy, & Leadership (OPAL) Faculty Fellow for the State of Idaho, and as part of the English cohort, she co-edited Write What Matters, a modular open access composition textbook. She is the co-editor of two other open access first-year writing texts. She earned her Creative Commons Certificate and is a member of the Creative Commons Global Network. She most recently served on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee for the Open Education Conference in addition to reviewing proposals and moderating sessions. She was awarded the 2021 GEM Innovative Educator Award in Written Communication in Idaho. Her research interests include open pedagogy, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and fantasy football.

Liza Long is an Assistant Professor of English at the College of Western Idaho. She has completed both the Rebus Textbook Success Program and the Creative Commons licensing certificate for educators. With her colleagues Joel Gladd and Amy Minervini, Liza co-edited Write What Matters, an open education resource first-year composition modular textbook designed for Idaho’s state board of education outcomes. Liza earned her Ed.D. in organizational leadership and hold a B.A. and M.A.in Classics (Latin and Greek). She has taught English, humanities and student success courses at the college level for several years and is passionate about the power of open education to change lives.

Joel is the Department Chair for Integrated Studies and teaches at the College of Western Idaho, with a content expertise in American literature, but he is equally passionate about open access, open education, and inclusive teaching pedagogy.He is a TSP alumnus, who worked on a collaborative project to produce the open text Write What Matters. He has facilitated the May 21 TSP Cohort in 2021-22

For years, Jonathan Poritz was one of those tattered minstrel mathematicians one sees wandering dusty backroads with nothing but chalk on his coat and a theorem on his lips: in total, he studied and taught mathematics and computer science at around a dozen universities in five time zones on two continents, most recently in a fifteen-year stint at Colorado State University Pueblo. He has also worked in various IT firms, from start-ups to multi-nationals, doing things like AI, cryptography, and consulting on public policy towards technology. Building on a lifetime of using free/libre/open-source software, Jonathan has for the last decade been involved in the open education movement, writing three OER textbooks and serving on the Colorado OER Council. In his spare time, he teaches the Creative Commons Certificate course and writes snarky articles about the over-hyping of blockchains. Much more information about him, including (almost) everything he’s written, (almost) all of it released under an open license, can be found on his website.

Bryan McGeary is the Learning Design and Open Education Engagement Librarian at Pennsylvania State University, a SPARC Open Education Leadership Fellow, and a graduate of the Creative Commons Certificate. He is a TSP alumnus, who worked on a collaborative project to produce the open text Understanding the Holocaust: Remembrance, Respect, and Resilience. He is also the co-creator (with Christina-Riehman Murphy) of The Open Pedagogy Project Roadmap, an openly licensed, module-based, discipline-agnostic project management guide for instructors to think through the process of scoping, implementing, sustaining, and sharing their own open pedagogy projects.

Kaitlin is the Associate Program Manager at Rebus Community and one of the authors of The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (so far). Prior to completing their graduate certificate in public administration from Humber College, Kaitlin studied psychology at the University of Windsor. She has previous experience in community-based program delivery in areas such as student services, career development, and most recently open education. A graduate of the Textbook Success Program and collaborator on Pulling Together: Manitoba Foundations Guide (Brandon Edition) with the Manitoba Foundations Group, Kaitlin is committed to equitable storytelling.

Julie M. Meyer, M.S.I.T., is an instructional Designer with the Learning Design Group of Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) at Penn State University. She is based out of the Penn State Schuylkill Campus in Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of the Textbook Success Program, February 2020 Cohort, and leads the Faculty Engagements for the Affordable Cost Transformation program at Penn State. Julie is a Penn State Extension Master Gardener. She likes to garden, Line Dance, spending time with family, and visits to the Poconos.

Stacy Katz is an Associate Professor and Open Resources Librarian-STEM Liaison at Lehman College, CUNY. She initiated, developed, and oversees the Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative for the college. Stacy’s research to date has focused on OER, particularly how librarians develop and support OER initiatives, faculty professional development in OER, and student views on OER. Stacy is a 2018-2019 OER Research Fellow and 2019 Institute for Research Design in Librarianship Scholar. Her research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Open Praxis, Journal for Multicultural Education, and the New Review of Academic Librarianship. To promote the research on OER within the City University of New York, she developed and maintains the CUNY OER Bibliography.

Becca Sibrian is a lecturer of German at Boise State University and a graduate of the February 2020 Textbook Success Program. With her colleague Franziska Borders, Becca co-edited Grammar to Accompany Deutsch im Blick – a remix of an existing OER for teaching German, housed at COERLL (Center for Open Educational Resources in Language Learning). The TSP was exactly what she needed to jumpstart her obsession with open practices, but also to show her that she, too, could create materials that would be valued by her students and colleagues. Becca received her BA from Boise State and her MA from University of Washington, both in German, and is a passionate collaborator with other language teachers in her region.

Natasha Whitton is an interdisciplinary scholar who currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Humanities at Baton Rouge Community College. After majoring in biology as an undergraduate, she went on to earn an M.A. in American and British Literature and a Ph.D. in Modern History and Literature. Her first experience with writing textbooks was in the area of composition. She collaborated on several custom writing handbooks and combined reader and rhetorics with faculty. More recently, she worked on a team to create both an open textbook and course for Western Civilization, particularly for dual enrollment students. In addition to being committed to OER as a tool to increase the accessibility of education, she has served as a faculty fellow for the Great Questions Foundation on revamping general education courses, and as a ChangeMaker with the Baton Rouge Alliance for Students.

Dr. Esperanza Zenon is a Professor of Physical Science at River Parishes Community College (RPCC). She serves as the Primary Investigator on an NSF ATE Grant Project aimed at improving RPCC’s Instrumentation program. She also serves on the RPCC Faculty Senate as the Westside Representative. Dr. Zenon is the current Past President of the Louisiana Academy of Sciences. Dr. Zenon is very passionate about STEM equity and is a member of the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE). She also champions the use of open content in STEM and CTE, and served on the Advisory Leadership Team for the Regional Leaders for Open Education (RLOE). Dr. Zenon has a Master of Arts degree in Physics from Wayne State University, and a Ph.D. in Science/Mathematics Education from Southern University.

Dr. Elizabeth Robertson Hornsby is a dedicated educator and innovation strategist specializing in strategic communication and media studies, with a focus on emerging technology, data analytics, digital literacy, cultural dynamics, and strategic media management. She is currently an adjunct professor at Southern University at New Orleans. Elizabeth served on the advisory board for the monograph series Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice and was a 2022-2023 OER Research Fellow with the Open Education Group. Through a statewide grant, she has co-authored a Fundamentals of Communication dual-enrollment OER and is currently authoring OER content for undergraduate and graduate strategic communication programs. Elizabeth has been involved in multiple initiatives related to online teaching and OER across the University of Louisiana System, including serving as the 2023 University of Louisiana System’s Content Expert in Online Teaching and Learning.