Sul Ross State University will host the inaugural Borderlands Open Access Symposium on Friday, April 24, from 10 a.m. to noon.
The virtual event will bring together educators, researchers and practitioners to advance discussions on equitable access to knowledge, open educational resources and innovative teaching and research practices in the Borderlands region and beyond.
Organized in coordination with the Office of the Provost, the Bryan Wildenthal Memorial Library, the Archives of the Big Bend and the Open Access Vision Team, the symposium is supported through the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s OER Fellowship Program. The initiative is designed as a collaborative space for sharing ideas, experiences and strategies aimed at expanding access to scholarly work and improving student success.
The two-hour program will begin at 10 a.m. with welcome remarks and an overview of open access initiatives at Sul Ross, followed by presentations on open educational resources and student success strategies. Midway through the event, attendees will hear lightning-style talks focused on faculty research, digital scholarship and increasing access to academic work.
Additional sessions will explore institutional data, interdisciplinary applications of open access and community-engaged research in the Borderlands, highlighting how open practices are being implemented across disciplines at the university.
The closing keynote, “From Vision to Practice: The Path to Open,” will be delivered by Megan Zara, OER librarian at University of Texas at Arlington, from 11:30 a.m. to noon.
The symposium planning and presentation team includes faculty, staff and students from across multiple colleges and departments at Sul Ross, as well as representatives from institutional research, university communications, development and the Center for Big Bend Studies.
The Borderlands Open Access Symposium is free and open to the public. Registration is available online.
