Open Access Week 2019

Jeff Downing has been a Digital Projects Librarian with the UTA Libraries beginning September, 2003. He previously served the Libraries as a Collection Development Librarian. Jeff has worked for a variety of library-related organizations during his career, including Amigos Library Services and the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory Library. As part of Jeff’s current responsibilities, he has served as project manager for several digital initiatives, including the Maverick Veterans’ Voices, Digital Gallery, and the Texas Disabilities History Collection sites. Jeff received both his Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education and his Master of Science in Library and Information Science from Indiana University. Go Hoosiers!

Andrew Leverenz is Senior Web Developer in Marketing and Communications at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) Libraries, where he directs a wide variety of projects, from the Libraries' main website and digital collections to special event websites and exhibits. Before joining the UTA Libraries, he served 15 years in UTA's Office of University Communications, including as Director of Online Communications, during which time his team's websites won numerous CASE District IV awards.

Brenda McClurkin is the Head of Special Collections and Archives at the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. She has served in this position since July 2013, having worked as the Historical Manuscripts Archivist beginning October 2002. Brenda began her library career in the Western History Department of the Denver Public Library. She completed an Archival Administration Certificate at UT Arlington in 2001 and became a certified archivist in 2002. Brenda is a past president of the Society of Southwest Archivists and has contributed articles to journals and newsletters and has authored or co-authored a number of books on archival processing and also Texas history.

Brooke Troutman is the Scholarly Impact and Social Sciences Librarian for the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Brooke is a member of the Publishing and Scholarly Impact Department in the Division of Scholarly Communication. Brooke is liaison for the School of Social Work, as well as the Anthropology and Sociology Departments. Brooke is the lead outreach librarian for promoting ORCID across campus. This includes promoting and implementing the use of ORCID scholarly ID’s to faculty and graduate students. Brooke is also one of the lead librarians in implementing a metrics consultation service to faculty at all levels and across disciplines at UTA. This service is generally aimed at junior faculty striving to gain tenure, but also serves the faculty as a whole to boost their scholarly profile and grow their digital identity. This service has reached and provided data to almost 100 faculty members to date. Brooke has a background in scholarly communication, institutional repositories, scholarly identifiers, and archiving. Her “Boost Your Scholarly Profile”, campaign and workshop series has been a success since she came to UTA in June of 2017.

Yumi Ohira is currently serving as the Digital Publishing & Repository Librarian at the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Ohira joined the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries in April 2019. Matters related to scholarly communications and open access are part of her portfolio. Previously, Ohira worked at University of Nebraska at Omaha as the Digital Initiatives Librarian, followed by her first career as a librarian, the Digital Curation Librarian, at Fort Hays State University, Kansas. Ohira is originally from Japan where she received a B.S. in Applied Physics from Fukuoka University, Japan. After her professional experience working as an engineer in Japan, Ohira moved to the United States and attended University of Kansas and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale where she was awarded an M.F.A. in Studio Art. Ohira went on to study at Emporia State University, Kansas, and completed her M.L.S. and Archive Studies Certification.

Michelle oversees UTA’s open education program. She leads efforts to support the adoption, modification, and creation of OER and assists educators in developing learning opportunities that foster collaboration, increase engagement, and empower students as content creators. She manages the UTA CARES Grant Program, which has awarded 14 grants since 2017 to support educators in transitioning course materials to OER. Michelle is a presenter for the Open Textbook Network, Presenter Coordinator for the Association of College and Research Libraries’ OER and Affordability Roadshow, and a former fellow of the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program and the Open Education Group’s OER Research Fellowship Program.

Habib is the recipient of the 2018 UTA CARES Innovation Grant and the lead author of Applied Fluid Mechanics Laboratory Manual, published in Fall 2019 by Mavs Open Press. The book includes lab instructions, educational videos, and interactive workbooks for ten fluid mechanics experiments. To date, the OER has been viewed over 6,000 times. In addition to creating the lab manual, Habib analyzed the impact of OER use in his course; his analysis showed that course grades improved when the OER was used while also significantly reducing the amount of time students spent on the course. His research interests include innovation in teaching engineering classes, developing digital pedagogies and OER, and assessing the benefits of these resources in engineering education. He is a water resources engineer by training; he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses and conducts state-funded research in this area.

Bonnie received a 2019 UTA CARES Adoption Stipend for the modification and adoption of an OER, Introduction to Industrial Engineering, to be published in 2020 by Mavs Open Press. She served on an Advisory Committee for the development of Teamwork: An Open Access Practical Guide, an OER currently being used by thousands of UTA students. Bonnie has used licensed content available for free for students, including LinkedIn Learning videos, in all of her engineering classes since 2016 and was featured as a Textbook Hero in UTA Libraries’ 2017 video series. Bonnie received her BS and PhD degrees from the University of Arkansas and her MS from Texas A&M University. Her primary research interest is engineering education. She is an active member of several technical professional societies, including the American Society of Engineering Education and the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers.

Kim is a co-recipient of the 2019 UTA CARES Innovation Grant for the development of an open textbook on historical research methods for use in upper-division history courses. She also led the large-scale adoption of OER for UTA’s freshman US History survey courses, which is featured in the UTA Libraries’ 2017 Textbook Hero video series. Kim earned her BS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, MA in History from UTA, and PhD in History from Vanderbilt University. Her current research interests include team-based learning in blended/fully online asynchronous environments; interactive elements and game theory in online courses; learning pathways; and student success/retention strategies in critical thinking/analytical writing courses.

Matt is the lead author and project lead for Creating Online Learning Experiences: A Brief Guide to Online Courses, from Small and Private to Massive and Open, the first OER released through Mavs Open Press. To date, the OER has been downloaded over 1,100 times and has been adopted at at least four other universities. Matt has been creating open resources in WordPress, Twine, H5P, Canvas, edX, and other tools for several years. In addition to serving as Learning Innovation Researcher for UTA’s LINK Research Lab, he is a part-time faculty member teaching online Educational Technology graduate courses at the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley. Matt’s research interests include instructional design, learning pathways, sociocultural theory, heutagogy, virtual reality, and open networked learning. He has a background in instructional design and teaching at the secondary level in Texas public schools.

Michael Barera is the University and Labor Archivist at the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. He has been editing Wikipedia for over 13 years, and has given numerous presentations on the topic at the local, regional, and national level. He was previously an Archivist at Texas A&M University-Commerce. He is an alumnus of the University of Michigan (MSI '14, BA '12) and a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Brooke Troutman is the Scholarly Impact and Social Sciences Librarian for the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Brooke is a member of the Publishing and Scholarly Impact Department in the Division of Scholarly Communication. Brooke is liaison for the School of Social Work, as well as the Anthropology and Sociology Departments. Brooke is the lead outreach librarian for promoting ORCID across campus. This includes promoting and implementing the use of ORCID scholarly ID’s to faculty and graduate students. Brooke is also one of the lead librarians in implementing a metrics consultation service to faculty at all levels and across disciplines at UTA. This service is generally aimed at junior faculty striving to gain tenure, but also serves the faculty as a whole to boost their scholarly profile and grow their digital identity. This service has reached and provided data to almost 100 faculty members to date. Brooke has a background in scholarly communication, institutional repositories, scholarly identifiers, and archiving. Her “Boost Your Scholarly Profile”, campaign and workshop series has been a success since she came to UTA in June of 2017.

Mitch Stepanovich joined the UT Arlington Library in 1986, having previously worked for Lane Community College, Eugene, Oregon, and the Hammond Public Library, Hammond, Indiana. He has also taught formal courses in Information Research Methods, Thesis Research Methods, and Honors Colloquium for the Honors Program. He has been a member of the American Library Association since 1986 and served as various officers, and chair and member of numerous committees. Major awards include the ACRL Special Presidential Recognition Award, Founding Member of the Institute for Information Literacy Steering Committee, 2009; and the Hall of Honor Award, Advisor, Phi Theta Kappa, 1985.

Morgan Chivers graduated from San Jose State University (2011) after spending a full decade earning four simultaneously conferred degrees and five minors: BA History, BA Global Studies, BFA Photography, and BFA Spatial Arts, with minors in Anthropology, Music, Religious Studies, German, and Environmental Studies. UTA’s glass program lured this Californian to Texas; Morgan earned an MFA in Glass / Intermedia (2015) with conceptually-rooted, experimental artwork often involving digital fabrication. He joined the FabLab team shortly thereafter as a Technician, and now serves as FabLab Librarian & Artist in Residence, helping to train student employees, liaison to the A+AH Department, integrate making into curriculum across this beautifully diverse campus, and to present the UTA FabLab's innovative work at professional conferences and in peer-reviewed published writings.

Brooke Troutman is the Scholarly Impact and Social Sciences Librarian for the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Brooke is a member of the Publishing and Scholarly Impact Department in the Division of Scholarly Communication. Brooke is liaison for the School of Social Work, as well as the Anthropology and Sociology Departments. Brooke is the lead outreach librarian for promoting ORCID across campus. This includes promoting and implementing the use of ORCID scholarly ID’s to faculty and graduate students. Brooke is also one of the lead librarians in implementing a metrics consultation service to faculty at all levels and across disciplines at UTA. This service is generally aimed at junior faculty striving to gain tenure, but also serves the faculty as a whole to boost their scholarly profile and grow their digital identity. This service has reached and provided data to almost 100 faculty members to date. Brooke has a background in scholarly communication, institutional repositories, scholarly identifiers, and archiving. Her “Boost Your Scholarly Profile”, campaign and workshop series has been a success since she came to UTA in June of 2017.

Yumi Ohira is currently serving as the Digital Publishing & Repository Librarian at the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Ohira joined the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries in April 2019. Matters related to scholarly communications and open access are part of her portfolio. Previously, Ohira worked at University of Nebraska at Omaha as the Digital Initiatives Librarian, followed by her first career as a librarian, the Digital Curation Librarian, at Fort Hays State University, Kansas. Ohira is originally from Japan where she received a B.S. in Applied Physics from Fukuoka University, Japan. After her professional experience working as an engineer in Japan, Ohira moved to the United States and attended University of Kansas and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale where she was awarded an M.F.A. in Studio Art. Ohira went on to study at Emporia State University, Kansas, and completed her M.L.S. and Archive Studies Certification.

Brooke Troutman is the Scholarly Impact and Social Sciences Librarian for the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Brooke is a member of the Publishing and Scholarly Impact Department in the Division of Scholarly Communication. Brooke is liaison for the School of Social Work, as well as the Anthropology and Sociology Departments. Brooke is the lead outreach librarian for promoting ORCID across campus. This includes promoting and implementing the use of ORCID scholarly ID’s to faculty and graduate students. Brooke is also one of the lead librarians in implementing a metrics consultation service to faculty at all levels and across disciplines at UTA. This service is generally aimed at junior faculty striving to gain tenure, but also serves the faculty as a whole to boost their scholarly profile and grow their digital identity. This service has reached and provided data to almost 100 faculty members to date. Brooke has a background in scholarly communication, institutional repositories, scholarly identifiers, and archiving. Her “Boost Your Scholarly Profile”, campaign and workshop series has been a success since she came to UTA in June of 2017.

Mitch Stepanovich joined the UT Arlington Library in 1986, having previously worked for Lane Community College, Eugene, Oregon, and the Hammond Public Library, Hammond, Indiana. He has also taught formal courses in Information Research Methods, Thesis Research Methods, and Honors Colloquium for the Honors Program. He has been a member of the American Library Association since 1986 and served as various officers, and chair and member of numerous committees. Major awards include the ACRL Special Presidential Recognition Award, Founding Member of the Institute for Information Literacy Steering Committee, 2009; and the Hall of Honor Award, Advisor, Phi Theta Kappa, 1985.