The Pennsylvania State University, founded in 1855, is the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s sole land-grant institution and its largest public university, consistently ranking among the top one percent of the world’s universities. Penn State’s land-grant mission embraces teaching, research, and public service in order to support the citizens of the Commonwealth, collaborating with industrial, educational, and agricultural partners to create, disseminate, integrate, and apply knowledge that is valuable to society. Penn State serves nearly 100,000 students across all locations, including 82,000+ undergraduate students and 15,000+ graduate/professional students. The University has 24 campuses, encompassing more than 22,000 acres, across the Commonwealth—a campus within practical commuting distance of virtually every Pennsylvanian. Penn State has 275+ baccalaureate degree programs, 90+ associate degree programs offered at select campuses, and 190+ graduate degree programs, including doctorates and both academic and professional master’s degrees.
Initiative(s)
Affordable Course Transformation Program
Affordable Course Transformation, ACT, is a grant-based, affordable course transformation program for faculty teaching at all Penn State locations who want to transform a course to displace high cost published materials. Teaching and Learning with Technology Innovation and University Libraries will work with faculty to replace high-cost course materials with pedagogically sound open and affordable (under $50.00) content. Faculty receive a monetary grant (multiple faculty working together will receive equal division of the total amount of the award), library, multimedia, and instructional design support, and assistance in production of affordable/open content. Faculty-produced open content can be found at https://psu.pb.unizin.org/
Affordable Course Content Faculty Fellowship
The team from the Penn State Abington Library created the Affordable Course Content Faculty Fellowship (ACCFF) using $5000 from a 2018 Albert and Suzanne Lord Chancellor’s Grant. The goal of the fellowship was to fund faculty for transitioning their course materials by adopting free or affordable course content (defined as under $50) such as Open Educational Resources (OERs), Open Textbooks, or library-licensed materials to address the high cost of course materials and the resulting impact on student learning and success for students that cannot afford them.
Open at Penn State
Penn State’s open initiatives are crucial to the advancement of affordable, discoverable, and equitable access to information, scholarly research, educational resources, and research data within the University community. The University Libraries and its partners across Penn State collaborate to reduce barriers to the sharing, access, and use of knowledge and information to drive innovation, engage our students, enable affordable access to education, and generate equal opportunities for all.
