Will share $2 million grant from U.S. Department of Education Fund with seven other community colleges as it leads the state in an effort begun in 2019 to reduce the amount of money students pay for textbooks
One of the major goals set by President Dr. Lisa Rhine when she arrived at Yavapai Community College was to significantly reduce the cost of student textbooks. This would help make post-secondary education available to everyone in the County at the lowest possible cost.
Dr. Diane Ryan
Rhine put newly hired Dr. Diane Ryan in charge of developing what was called the “Open Educational Resources” (OER) project back in 2019. She was familiar with OER as she had been involved in an OER program at Tidewater Community College in Virginia before coming to Yavapai.
The OER program was launched at Yavapai Community College in the fall of 2019 with Dr. Ryan setting a goal of reducing individual student textbook costs by $2,000 or more. (See November 8, 2019, Blog Post.) In February and March 2020 Ryan reported to the College Governing Board on her initial efforts, which included training the College faculty on how to use Open Educational Resource Material. On September 14, 2021, Dr. Rhine reported that the project had already saved students more than $300,000 since it began. (Blog post dated September 29, 2021.)
This week the College announced that it was now sharing a $2 million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education with seven other community colleges to continue its OER program.
According to the August 19, 2022, College news release, in June 2021 the Open Textbooks for Rural Arizona project was awarded $801,218. Earlier this month (August 2022), the Department of Education announced that it was increasing the grant award by $1,198,782, to bring the total to $2 million. With these additional funds, Cochise College, the only rural Arizona Community College not originally included in the proposal, will be joining the consortium of eight community colleges involved in OER. Yavapai will share in this grant and is no doubt its recognized leader.
Congratulations are due to Dr. Diane Ryan for her outstanding efforts in developing this project. Kudos also must go to Dr. Rhine for here vision of finding a way to reduce student textbook costs and putting Dr. Ryan in charge of carrying out that vision.