Call for OER Fellowship applications AY 25-26

The Library seeks applicants for the Open Educational Resources (OER) Fellowship. Begun in 2015, this funded program runs in conjunction with the CUNY-wide initiative funded by New York state to “engage faculty in the redesign of courses through the replacement of proprietary textbooks with open educational resources to reduce costs for students, accelerate their progress, and better connect curriculum and pedagogy to student learning outcomes.” Research conducted at City Tech and other institutions shows a correlation between assigning zero-cost OER and positive student outcomes: higher retention and comparable or better grades. 

We invite proposals from new and returning faculty to the OER Fellowship. Projects may be proposed at various stages of progress, such as substantive expansions and/or revisions of existing OER.

Goals for the OER initiative at City Tech:

• Provide students with long-term access to course learning materials (before, during, and after the course runs).
• Support active learning and effective online instruction.
• Help achieve curricular consistency across multiple course sections.
• Help achieve coherence between sequential courses in programs.
• Provide instructors with ready to use teaching resources that can assist with flexible teaching/learning modalities.

Considerations for applying to the OER Fellowship

Projects that incorporate active learning methods, take a student-centered approach, and address underrepresented and multidisciplinary subject areas are encouraged. 

Course selection:

We encourage prioritizing OER for courses that are gateway, high enrollment, part of a course sequence, required courses for a major or minor, pathways, etc., interdisciplinary in nature, course curriculum that is underrepresented, or inadequately represented by existing textbooks on the market.

Types of OER projects that may be funded:

• Zero-cost OER for a course that previously required a paid textbook (this may include first time experimental pilots to assign OER in place of paid course materials).
• Zero-cost OER for a course with a recommended text that does not require paid materials.
• Zero-cost OER for supplemental/ancillary teaching and learning materials (e.g., study guides, review modules, lessons, discussion questions, class activities, lecture outlines, writing assignments).
• Substantive updates to already assigned zero-cost OER (must be openly licensed materials authored by the applicant or another scholar).

Faculty Eligibility and OER Fellowship Requirements

Eligibility

1. Full-time faculty that coordinate or regularly teach at least one section of a course, and have consulted with course / discipline coordinator and department chair.
2. Part-time faculty on 1-3 year re-appointments, with the approval of course / discipline coordinator and department chair.

Fellowship Requirements

• Active participation in an intentional community of practice among college peers. Fellows will participate in seven mandatory synchronous zoom meetings held on Fridays throughout the year (3 in fall; 4 in spring).
• Learning materials created/compiled through this project must be Creative Commons licensed (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA), public domain, library digital resources, or freely available to link to without violating copyright.
• Finished projects must be shared publicly via an OpenLab site or other CUNY supported public platform (Pressbooks, Manifold).
• Project work must be completed during the 2025-2026 academic year. All participants must complete their projects by June 15, 2026. 

Funding Information

Faculty compensation will include project work and faculty development training. Faculty will be paid for participating in 14 hours of professional development meetings (at adjunct hourly NTA rate). In addition to this, faculty stipends for OER projects typically range from $1,300 – $5,000, depending on scope of work, and are also calculated at the average non-teaching adjunct hourly rate.

Apply online by Thursday, September 18th, 2025. 

Faculty interested in proposing projects that may be outside the scope of this opportunity are encouraged to get in contact with Cailean Cooney promptly to explore whether the OER initiative can support your work this academic year. 

Other questions or things you’d like to discuss? Please get in touch with OER Librarian, Cailean Cooney (ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu) or Chief Librarian, Junior Tidal (jtidal@citytech.cuny.edu). 

Visit our website at Open Educational Resources at City Tech.

Download a PDF version of this call.