With support from the UF Center for Teaching Excellence and the George A. Smathers Libraries, The Affordable UF Initiative is pleased to announce the awardees of the first-ever Affordable Access for Student Success Course Transformation Grants program.
The Course Transformation Grants program is a two-year pilot project that supports faculty, institutional, and legislative efforts to increase equity, access, affordability, and achievement for UF students. Successful applicants will be provided with funding to create, adapt and adopt open educational resources (OER) to lower the cost of college to contribute to student retention, progression, and graduation. Projects are all funded by the Office of Teaching and Technology and the Smathers Libraries.
In addition to fiscal awards, grantees will be provided with in-kind support from the UFIT Center for Instructional Technology and Training, The University Press of Florida, and the Center for Online Innovation and Production as well as support from CTE and the Libraries.
Through a competitive process, the following 8 applicants have been selected for awards:
Garrett Ross - Re-Examining “Ab/normal”: Grounding the Practice of Psychopathologization in Anti-Blackness
Department of Psychology, CLP3144: Abnormal Psychology
Grant Type: Adoption Mini-Grant
Garrett is a Black, queer, cisgender man of Korean and African American descent. He’s in his final year of his doctoral candidacy at the University of Florida and is being trained as a counseling psychologist. His work often engages in a critique of how psychology’s conventional critiques and reforms continue to (re)produce an intellectual protocol that evades an account of paradigms of violence that differentially situate those who are positioned as non-subjects (Slaves) and all others. Through his training, his research interests are guided by a line of inquiry that brings into view antiblackness as organic to the field of psychology as a sociopolitical polity and questions that emerge from that angle.
Han Xu - Advanced Chinese I
Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, CHI3410: Advanced Chinese
Grant type: Adoption Mini-Grant
Before joining University of Florida in 2008, Han taught varies levels of Chinese language classes at Ohio University, Beloit College and University of Notre Dame. Han joined the OER community in 2020 and has developed innovative course materials and flipped language classes at University of Florida. She is honored to participate in the Course Transformation project and look forward to learning from fellow instructors.
Anita Anantharam, Ph.D. - Authentic Leadership in the Workplace
Center for Gender, Sexualities and, Women's Studies Research, WST3371: Women, Leadership, and Diversity in the Global Environment
Grant type: Course-Wide OER Grant
Anita Anantharam is an Associate Professor in the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research and an Affiliate Faculty in Interdisciplinary Ecology (School of Natural Resources and Environment). She teaches classes on women and leadership, feminism and ecology, and the impact of colonialism and nationalism on women’s rights. Dr. Anantharam holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from the University of Florida. She is the author of two books on South Asian women’s literary and political activism and is currently working on her third book on gender, food, and sustainable agriculture. In addition to teaching and research, she also works with several organizations focused on personal and professional development —and lends her expertise to helping students connect the dots between experience-based knowledge and leadership development.
Dr. Anantharam is on sabbatical leave for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Amanpreet Kapoor, Ph.D. - Preparing Computing Students for Technical Interviews Through Open Educational Resources
Engineering Education, COP3530: Data Structures and Algorithms
Grant type: Course-Wide OER Grant
Amanpreet Kapoor is an Instructional Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Education, and he teaches computing undergraduate courses in the Computer & Information Science & Engineering Department. Aman’s research interests include Computing Education, Informal Learning Environments, and Identity Formation. His current work focuses on understanding computing students’ professional identity formation in formal, non-formal, and informal learning spaces. This research enables him to develop tools, curricula, and instructional strategies that foster students’ formation of computing identities, scaffold students’ learning of computing equitably, and reduces the gap between industry and academia.
Lupita Eyde-Tucker - The LIVE Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry
English, CRW1301: Beginning Poetry Writing
Grant type: Course-Wide OER Grant
Lupita Eyde-Tucker was born in New Jersey and raised in Guayaquil, Ecuador where she began writing and translating poetry in English and Spanish. The winner of the 2021 Unbound Emerging Poet Prize, her poems have appeared in Nashville Review, Columbia Journal, Raleigh Review, Women's Voices for Change, [PANK], American Life in Poetry, Best New Poets 2022, The Cortland Review, and Ninth Letter. In 2022, her poetry collection was named a finalist for the Andres Montoya Prize from Letras Latinas. Since 2018 she has been translating Venezuelan poet Oriette D’Angelo's work, and her translations have appeared in journals such as Nashville Review, Columbia Review, Asymptote, The Los Angeles Review, Circumference, and The Arkansas International, which nominated her translation Knee on Dirt for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. Her translation of D'Angelo's chapbook Inquietudes will be published by Scambler Books in 2023. Lupita is a graduate student pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Florida and has received fellowships and institutional support from Kentucky Women Writers Conference, Bread Loaf Writers Conferences, the NY State Summer Writers Institute, and Vermont Studio Center. She designed and teaches AML2410 African American Poetry & Transformation, as well as Creative Writing (CRW) workshops in poetry for the Dept. of English at the University of Florida.
Sarah Gamble - ARC1720 Redesign
Architecture, ARC1720: Survey of Architectural History
Grant type: Large-Scale OER Grant
Sarah Gamble is an Assistant Professor and registered architect with a passion for the public realm and community engagement projects. The focus of her research and practice is public interest design, a field incorporating elements of urban planning, architectural design, the arts, social work, community engagement, and education. To be published in November 2022, Gamble is the co-author of Environmental Activism by Design with University of Texas at Austin Professor of Practice Coleman Coker. At the UF School of Architecture, Gamble teaches architectural design, urban development, and history courses. Gamble is leading the redesign ARC1720: Survey of Architectural of History, an asynchronous online course that welcomes over 800 UF Online, dual enrollment programs, and main campus undergraduate students into the study of architecture each academic year.
Sean Trainor, Ph.D - The Gator Guide to Workplace Communication
Warrington Management Communication Center, GEB3213/3219: Professional Writing in Business/Writing and Speaking in Business
Grant type: Large-Scale OER Grant
Dr. Trainor teaches professional writing in the Management Communication Center. He has a decade of experience teaching in a variety of fields, including history, humanities, journalism, academic writing, and writing in business. In addition to his experience as an educator, he also works as a freelance writer. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, TIME, Salon, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and many other publications.
Amy Martinelli, Ph.D. - Introduction to Public Speaking: the “Front Porch” to College Life
Dial Center for Written and Oral Communication, SPC2608: Introduction to Public Speaking
Grant type: Large-Scale OER Grant
Dr. Amy Martinelli works in the Dial Center for Written and Oral Communication as a Lecturer and the Assistant Director of Forensics and is an Affiliate Faculty in the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida. She currently teaches Communication Studies courses in topics including Public Speaking, Political Communication, Civic Engagement, and Queer Studies in Communication. She also coaches a nationally recognized speech and debate team, and in 2008 was awarded Outstanding New Coach of the Year by the American Forensics Association. She received her Phd in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Florida, and her research focuses on racism and educational policy making—specifically, desegregation. She most recently worked at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she taught in the Communication Studies department and coached the UNL speech team.