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Pamela J. Haney is the president of Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, Illinois. She took office on July 1.
Moraine Valley Community College enrolls more than 10,500 students, according to the most recent data reported by the U.S. Department of Education. African Americans make up 10 percent of the student body.
“It is an honor and privilege to be named as Moraine Valley’s president,” Dr. Haney said. “I’m following in the footsteps of a highly respected and committed leader from whom I’ve learned so much. As I begin my presidency, I promise to build on the college’s excellent foundation while advancing student success, innovation, community engagement, and mission-driven priorities.”
Since 2012, Dr. Haney has been serving as vice president for academic affairs at the college. Prior to coming to Moraine Valley in 2009, Dr. Haney served as program administrator and assistant professor of communication arts at Defiance College in Ohio. She also taught as an assistant professor of speech communication at Norfolk State University in Virginia.
Dr. Haney holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communication and a master’s degree in speech communication, both from Norfolk State University. She earned a doctorate in interpersonal communication from Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
I feel a bit behind the curve in writing about Reclaim Open, but I suppose it’s better late than never. We’re still technically in June, meaning the in-person event was just earlier this month, and we still have the online recap coming throughout the month of July, so perhaps my tardiness may be forgiven!
Reclaim Open is Reclaim Hosting’s 4th biennial conference following Domains17, Domains19, and OERxDomains21. It can be easy to compare each conference to those preceding it, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned while hosting these through the years, it’s that each event captures a moment in time and creates a space for connection– however it may be needed or defined in that moment by each participant– and they’re all uniquely special. In some ways these conferences snowball and build over time; we take the lessons that we learn from one and embed them into the next one. In other ways, each conference is its own entity where a distinctive group of folks will converge, share ideas and inspire, and then part ways again. The conversations are always different, but the goal (at least for me when planning) is always the same: to create a space where folks feel comfortable to share, challenge, and build alongside each other.
OERxDomains21 came at a time during covid where connection and professional support felt more difficult to come by. That event was collaborative, powerful, and pushed boundaries – all while being completely online. Domains 17 & 19 were equally powerful, and reinforced art & creativity by taking place in various museum hotels (penguins & tv stack installations included).
While there were no penguins this go around, Reclaim Open was no different in how it carved out space for a community to join forces. In many ways, this conference felt like a reunion, celebration, and call to action all in one. The conference themes were perfect for this:
In April 1993, Tim Berners Lee open sourced the World Wide Web, and the ensuing decades of internet technologies bears the mark of that historic moment. Thirty years later, open source still remains central to building and providing an open web. For our 4th biennial conference, Reclaim Hosting plans to not only celebrate the history of the open web, but take stock of the present moment while exploring the future of Open. To this end we established 3 distinct, though always related, tracks wherein we asked folks to share their work around the past, present, and future of the open web. It was so fun to head back where it all began, and we had a blast welcoming web historians, creative tinkerers, digital humanists, instructional technologists, project admins, and open source advocates to Fredericksburg, Virginia on June 5-7, 2023.
Excerpt on reclaimopen.com
The past, the present, the future: going back to where it all began in Fredericksburg, VA and sharing stories with old and new friends; a celebration of how far we’ve come, marking Reclaim’s 10th year in business and the anniversary of the open web; dreaming up where we want to be and how the future of the web will shape that path.
Each time we dream up, plan for, and host an event like this, I always re-learn just how much work goes into hosting a conference and I have so much respect and admiration for folks that do this more regularly. Coordination for the logistics alone are no joke, and we added a bit of complexity this year by recording sessions, live-streaming and experimenting with Hybrid, and producing an on-the-fly documentary. These extra elements would not have been possible without the amazing Dream Team, and it was such an honor to work alongside them these past few weeks/months (years!) to make it happen.
In no particular order, here’s a list of some of my Reclaim Open highlights:
The Reclaim team dinner after the event where we talked about the future of green web hosting, inspired by Bryan Alexander‘s keynote, What might the web become in its next generation?
Unveiling the documentary, and hearing the impromptu, round-robin experiences from conference goers at the end of day 3.
Checking out Reclaim Arcade. Still so in awe with how that space has transformed, and that evening was a blast!
The way that Rajiv Jhangiani used storytelling and visual/audio aids in his keynote, Accept all cookies and continue: The many presents of the web.
I was really interested in juxtaposing elements of “old” with our techy, future-driven web conference as a way of thinking about how the past and future can intersect. It was fun to loosely play with this using color on the website, which was black & white until the week of the conference.
I also really enjoyed creating the conference programs, which ended up sitting somewhere between a newspaper and a zine.
The programs were created using Newspaper Club and their provided Canva template for the Digital Mini Magazine. I really love how these came together in the end, along with the other stickers and t-shirts we had on hand to showcase Bryan Mathers‘ fantastic artwork:
And because I’m always curious what folks use for other conferences… the name tags were created and printed using Conference Badge and the lanyards were purchased in bulk on Amazon. Stickers were printed through Sticker Mule, which we’ve used for years, and our collection of Reclaim Open t-shirts were designed and printed through Spreadshop on shop.reclaimhosting.com.
Back to the list of highlights– I loved the casual nature of the Unconference. The slower pace on day 1 felt like a great way to kick off the event.
Hanging in downtown Fredericksburg again and eating all the Benny’s pizza I could manage.
The power of A.I. Levine
And last, but certainly not least, I really loved witnessing other Reclaimers run the show. This was a true team effort and I’m so glad to have been a part of it.
In the last of this series of posts about this year's Annual Meeting, SSP's Marketing and Communications Committee asked members of our community what the conference meant to them.
The post Ask the Community: What Did SSP 2023 Mean to You? appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
The ORCID US consortium, managed by Lyrasis, is five years old in 2023 - hear about their progress so far and plans for the future in Alice Meadows' interview with their PID Program Leader, Sheila Raybun
The post The ORCID US Consortium at Five: What’s Worked, What Hasn’t, and Why? appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
As we seek new members to join our network, we want to share with you more of the inner workings of Humanities Commons and how we understand our work as part of a collective movement. Today, our community development manager, Zoe Wake Hyde, shares a vision of the future of the web that our team wants. If it resonates with you, we encourage you to consider becoming a Humanities Commons Member.
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We live, as they say, in interesting times. The dawn of the internet is within living memory for many, and its different phases of growth and adoption are familiar to most. Whether you’ve gone from Tumblr to TikTok, reminisce fondly about RSS or are all in on AR, the only constant in our experiences of the web has been change.
In the scholarly world, the emergence of online publishing has led to exponential growth in the amount of content available. Traditional publishing systems have reacted by restricting access and trying to maintain scarcity, while the open access movement has gained momentum as a way of leveraging the web’s affordances to break down barriers to access. In turn, the major publishers have pivoted to data as currency, and there is increasing consolidation across the scholarly infrastructure landscape, leading to a concentration of power.
So what drives this change? The reasons are as complex and diverse as human behaviour itself, but two of the major contributing factors are money and power.
Where money is invested and power is leveraged has an enormous impact on our everyday lives on the internet. Unfortunately, much of that impact has been used to position us as consumers and commodities, to be bought and sold to, with our attention becoming the price of participation. That perhaps paints a grim picture, but it’s one we must confront head on.
The good news is that money and power can be used to change things for the better. Investment in technologies that catalyze different kinds of interactions in digital spaces, and the right kind of influence on policy and structural mechanisms can make a difference.
So, why does this matter to Humanities Commons?
We see our role in the online ecosystem as creators of an alternative. We resist the idea that human interactions should be commoditized and used as a means to a profitable end. Instead, we seek to facilitate meaningful connections that lead to the creation of new knowledge to be shared openly. We approach designing our tools as an act of service, where our only interest is to benefit users. And we do this work in the domain of knowledge creation and dissemination because we believe in its value to the world.
We also see ourselves as just one piece of a very large puzzle of actors pursuing the same goal, and aim to ally ourselves with others dedicated to creating the same kind of future for online, digital scholarly work. Together, we seek a more just and equitable knowledge ecosystem, where many kinds of knowing are shared and valued.
That’s the web we want.
But to get there, we have to come back to the question of money and power. To change the dominant logic of the web, we have to invest in the people and products that make it happen.
While we may not have venture capital-level funds available, our combined might as institutions, societies, nonprofits and other invested actors shouldn’t be underestimated.
In our next post, we will explore the role academic institutions have to play in this change.
Become a sustaining member of the Humanities Commons network and support us to build the web we want. Find more information or book a call via calendly.com/zwhmsu.
Orans are sacred lands in the Thar Desert that are are being developed for wind energy projects. Nisha Paliwal argues that while wind energy is considered sustainable, it is experienced as violent extractivism by nearby village communities.
The post The Problem with Wind Farming on Rajasthan’s Sacred Lands appeared first on Edge Effects.
As we seek new members to join our network, we want to share with you more of the inner workings of Humanities Commons and how we understand our work as part of a collective movement. Today, our founder, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, tells of how we have come together as a team, united by a shared purpose and shared values. If these resonate with you, we encourage you to consider becoming a Humanities Commons Member.
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Since early 2020, Humanities Commons has been working toward a sustainable future. Key to that future is the generous support we’ve received from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and a range of other funders and donors, that has allowed us to build a flourishing team to support the network. But building that team has not been solely a matter of searches and onboarding; we’ve also put a lot of collective labor into ensuring that we’re working together in the most generative ways possible.
We began that work late last August by bringing our all-remote team (minus a few of our more recently hired colleagues) together in Lansing for a two-day retreat. Over the course of those two days, we began the process of getting to know one another, laying the groundwork for the ways we’d work together, and thinking as expansively as possible about our goals and expectations. We all left energized, if a bit daunted by how much work we had mapped out for ourselves and how vast the possibilities seemed. All of us took heart, though, in a sentence that Zoe Wake Hyde (our community development manager) shared with us: “We can’t do everything, but we can do anything!”
Figuring out which things would comprise our *anything* required a lot of collective thinking. During the retreat, we undertook a modified version of the HuMetricsHSS values framework exercise, starting to articulate what most matters to each of us in the work we do. We also began the process of developing a framework for the Commons’ purpose and goals, enabling us to shape our work around the vision of transformation in collective knowledge production that we hope to effect.
But the retreat was only the start. Over the next several months, the team met for regular working sessions — twice a week, at first — to continue thinking together about who and how we wanted to be. Each of our working sessions was facilitated by a different member of the team, often using a Miro board to ensure that everyone’s thoughts were captured. By late 2022, we had collectively developed a statement of purpose and a statement of values for the network, which we circulated to our governing council and to our user advisory group for feedback.
Today, as part of our sustaining membership campaign, we’re posting these statements publicly, and we invite your thoughts about them.
Our purpose is to cultivate open spaces for diverse communities to connect, create, share, and experiment. Together we work to transform global knowledge systems.
The values that guide our work are: Experimenting, Cultivating Community, Nurturing Trust, and Supporting Open Exchange of Knowledge
For a more in depth look, read our full statement of purpose and our full values statement, and we invite you to share feedback by commenting on this post or tagging @[email protected] on Mastodon.
These statements undergird our work as a team, but also our work with the Commons community. In the weeks ahead, as we bring more members into the community of organizations and institutions supporting our work, we’ll share more about how we plan to support that community, how we hope to facilitate self-governance within it, and more.
It’s been a long process leading to this point, but given that our goal is nothing short of transforming our global knowledge system, taking time for reflection, response, and revision is crucial. We very much look forward to hearing from you, and to thinking with you as we move into our next phase of development.
A silicon wafer, a thin material essential for manufacturing semiconductors, at a chip-packaging facility in Santa Clara, Calif.
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Improving accessibility in all areas of our work is fundamental to our ambition to create more just and equitable scholarly communications. In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we here at Humanities Commons wanted to let you know about some of the work we’re doing behind the scenes to both improve accessibility for site users and to learn and grow as a team. Here are four ways we are putting our commitment into action:
We’re excited to share with you more in each of these areas as we continue to meet and grow as a team. And, of course, we’d love to hear from you if you have ways that you’d like to see our site improve!
If you know Humanities Commons well, you know that we are committed to a more just and equitable future of knowledge creation. We take our place alongside other incredible people and organisations working towards the same goal, knowing the only way to make true, transformational change is to leverage our collective power.
Right now, we are seeking new members to join our network and help shape the future of the Commons. Our members are critical to our success and keep us connected with the needs and priorities of our community. By becoming a member, you are not only supporting our existing work, but creating new possibilities by contributing your unique perspective.
Yes! But also no! Individual users of the Commons are members of our community, but more often, we’ll refer to you as our users. In this context, we are talking about members of our network of participating organisations.
Humanities Commons’ purpose is to cultivate open spaces for diverse communities to connect, create, share, and experiment, in the service of transforming global knowledge systems together. If this ambition speaks to you, membership is a way to help us work towards that purpose. Member contributions enable us to build the necessary infrastructure for a vibrant knowledge commons, developing exciting new features for individual and organisational users. Member support also helps us to continue to offer our free Humanities Commons site, which benefits everyone invested in open humanities scholarship. In future, we also plan for membership to subsidise the participation of organisations who serve communities most marginalised in conventional knowledge systems.
Just as importantly, membership is, to us, a relationship we seek to foster with our allies and collaborators. These relationships are what will ultimately drive us forward. We seek to be in relation with those who are investing in academy-owned infrastructure designed for a more connected knowledge ecosystem. Who are working towards a future where there are viable alternatives to the closed, proprietary systems that dominate, where we are building the web we want, and where people are treated as more than consumers and commodities. Truly, these relationships are an opportunity for us to lean into our collective power and imagination to build the future we envision.
Membership in our network is not simply transactional. Members will be asked to, as much or as little as they can, participate in our evolving governance structures, offer feedback on strategy and direction, advocate for the Commons in the spaces they occupy, and participate in other efforts such as promotional activities and user research. Our goal is to create many avenues for members to contribute in the ways that make the most sense to them, and are always open to new ideas. As our network grows, we expect to develop additional opportunities, including research and funding collaborations.
In addition, all members receive:
Membership is open to any organisation, department, research center, institution, or consortium who wishes to engage with our work.
Until June 30, 2023, we are offering a one-time option for members to join at US$5000 per year, with the possibility of signing on at that rate for up to 5 years. However, if you are interested in becoming a member, but have a different budget in mind, please reach out, as we’d love to talk through different options.
The first step is to set up a call with our community development manager, Zoe Wake Hyde, at calendly.com/zwhmsu and she will guide you from there!
Find more information about membership and a short FAQ here.
I’m feeling extra grateful that I was able to attend and present at OER23 in person in Inverness, Scotland this year, and I can’t believe that the conference has already come and gone. This was my first in person event since OER19, and I had forgotten how inspiring it can be to meet with friendly faces on the ground for 2+ days and be challenged about the work that we encounter daily. I found that this trip for me was made up of so many special little moments, so rather than attempt to share one big Lesson, I’d rather just share the mini moments through photos and notes that I scribbled along the way.
Things I overheard during Bryan’s Workshop:
“When something is normalized it is no longer hybrid. Is it just that thing.”
OER Ecosystem – a collection from conversations & presentations at #OER23 (also referencing The Next Generation Digital Learning Environment: A Report on Research from my presentation with Jim further down):
What has still stuck with me during the GASTA presentations:
Really looking forward to Day 2 of @OERConf, doodles and all! Good morning, #oer23! pic.twitter.com/jvDru2kyOq
— Lauren Hanks (@brumface) April 6, 2023
Throwing paper airplanes during Dave Cormier‘s keynote, Learning in a time of abundance. (image credit: Tim Winterburn)
How do we find the right answers in a time of abundance?
Fascinating talk from @DrDeanW about the hydra system and immersive learning systems at #OER23. Paired really nicely with @jimgroom’s thinking around the complexities of Web3 pic.twitter.com/UvcE5i9mIc
— Lauren Hanks (@brumface) April 6, 2023
“Twitter is just brands talking to brands.”
After Jim’s presentation on Web 2.0 vs Web3, Anne-Marie Scott commented that Web3 exposes the responsibilities of community building online– it’s no longer just hanging out.
I’ll end this post to say that Jim and I were able to present on Reclaim’s version of the NGDLE, or cloud-based ecosystem of diverse, open source applications. This presentation was exciting for many reasons: it allowed us to think back to Reclaim’s first approach to offering a set of tools outside of the LMS (Domain of One’s Own), and now how we’re building on that with the possibilities of open source applications outside of the LAMP stack (Reclaim Cloud). We got to lean on some of Bryan Mathers’ original sketches to help explain the complexities of container-based web hosting through shipping containers, which still works as a perfect metaphor and visual. Finally, I really enjoyed the discussion on how Reclaim can be a home base for both individual/sandbox projects as well as enterprise level, mission critical multi-region setups.
While I have presented at other hybrid/virtual conferences and a handful of workshops and flex courses recently, it was nice to find a rhythm for talking to folks in person again– reading the room and feeding off the energy in the space. I’m even more stoked now for other events in the coming months like Reclaim Open and WPCampus 2023, as well as finding new and creative ways to talk about what’s cookin’ at Reclaim.
Historically Black Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh are expanding their educational partnership allowing associate degree graduates more opportunities to pursue bachelor’s degrees.
Wake Tech Community College enrolls more than 21,000 students. African Americans make up 22 percent of the student body.
Since 2012, the two institutions have offered transfer options for Wake graduates in business administration and criminal justice technology. According to the new agreement, graduates of any associate degree program at Wake Tech can now transfer up to 64 credits toward a four-year degree in an applicable degree program at the private historically Black university.
Under the new transfer agreement, students must complete an associate degree at Wake Tech with an overall grade point average of 2.0, and earn a grade of “C” or better in transfer courses. Students who meet the minimum transfer qualifications are eligible for a $2,000 per year scholarship. Students with a 2.8 or higher GPA with 40 hours of documented community service are also considered for the Community College Tuition Transfer Grant, a value of nearly $9,000 per year.
“This agreement reaffirms our commitment to our common goals, opening new pathways for students and creating new learning opportunities,” said Christine Johnson McPhail, president of Saint Augustine’s University. “We want to replicate the quality students receive at Wake Tech when they come to Saint Augustine’s University.”
At the crossroads of education, social justice, and personal development stands critical pedagogy, a concept associated with the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paolo Freire. His conviction was that education should be egalitarian, democratic, and transformative; his work has had an outsize impact on my educational philosophy. Critical pedagogy emphasises the significance of dialogue, critical thinking, and active participation. The further I delve into the world of of Open Recognition, the clearer the links with Freire, both in essence and practice.
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire states that:
Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.
Open Recognition, like critical pedagogy, is about empowering individuals to take ownership of their personal and professional development. The approach not only foregrounds knowledge, skills, and understanding, but also behaviours, relationships, and experiences.
Freire believed that through open and honest conversations, individuals could challenge existing power structures, question assumptions, and engage in transformative learning experiences. Similarly, Open Recognition offers a way for individuals to engage in meaningful conversations about their skills, experiences, and aspirations — using language and approaches that make sense to them.
In facilitating dialogue over power dynamics, Open Recognition nurtures a sense of community and belonging. It empowers individuals to share their stories and learn from one another, and this exchange of ideas and experiences not only contributes to personal growth but also fosters a sense of collective responsibility and solidarity
Critical pedagogy is grounded in the belief that education should be a vehicle for social change and empowerment. Open Recognition aligns with this vision by providing ways for individuals make meaningful contributions to their communities, challenge the status quo, and actively participate in shaping their own futures.
So it’s fair to say that Open Recognition and critical pedagogy share a common goal: the empowerment and transformation of individuals through dialogue, inclusion, and active participation. By explicitly embracing the principles of critical pedagogy, it’s my belief that Open Recognition can help create a more inclusive and equitable world.
If you’re interested in Open Recognition, critical pedagogy, and doing something different than the status quo, I’d highly suggest joining badges.community!
The post Open Recognition + Critical Pedagogy = empowerment, dialogue, and inclusion first appeared on Open Thinkering.Welcome to our inaugural group of USIH-IUPUI Community Scholars! In partnership with the Institute for American Thought at IUPUI, we are proud to host such a fantastic array of scholars Read more
The post USIH-IUPUI Community Scholars Spotlight: Rick Townsend first appeared on Society for US Intellectual History.
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