Working in partnership with the provost’s office, the faculty senate is forming a joint committee charged with identifying innovative ways of reducing student course expenses while maintaining high quality.  Two ongoing programs include:

• Open Educational Resources
• First Day

These are only two such programs.  We believe that faculty and administration, working together, can identify and implement unique solutions to address rising textbook and course materials cost.  Our mission is to :

1. Partner with provost’s office to form a senate ad hoc committee whose charge is to continually examine ways to reduce course costs for students while ensuring efficacy and quality of these materials.  This committee will be comprised of faculty, students, Bookie staff, and administrators across a variety of disciplines, colleges, and campuses.  Administrative members will be charged with facilitating infrastructure changes that will help enable cost reduction strategies.
2. Continue to move the dialog beyond terms such as “free” or “cheap” to more inclusive and mission-oriented terms such as “affordable,” and that terms be descriptive not only in terms of expense but also in terms of student use and quality of course materials.
3. Develop methods for assuring proposed cost-saving strategies are faculty-driven and not promoted at the expense of quality.  Inexpensive but poorly crafted materials offer little value to our students.
4. Thoroughly explore the underlying the assumption surrounding student textbook use and impact on learning.  For example, if the text is less expensive or free, do students use it more than a traditional textbook and how does this use impact student learning?
5. Oversee all current projects including OERs and First Day.  As other course cost-saving projects are generated, this committee will assume oversight for them.
6. Continue to improve communications between administration, faculty, and students around the issue of course costs.
7. Recommend internal resource allocation to support projects as well as to foster project self-sustainability.  Self-sustainability includes identifying and applying for external funding opportunities.

An open call for appointments will be made during fall 2018.  For more information, contact committee co-chairs Matt Hudelson or Rebecca Van de Vord.