RLOE: Reimagining Leadership and Empowering Students through Open Education

The Regional Leaders of Open Education (RLOE) is a network of leaders from across North America working to create and implement strategic plans for Open Education that especially support underserved student populations. RLOE is about building diverse human networks that center the perspectives of and shift power to the marginalized in order to create conditions for their voices to shape a new vision for open. We believe that open education can be a key lever in bringing justice to higher education and a sharp focus on supporting underserved and underrepresented student populations. Framing our work with social justice and equity at the forefront, we seek to broaden our impacts and address the enormous systemic problems that inequity and racism bring to our students. Systemic problems need a huge variety of actors in every corner to combat them; therefore, our leaders come from a variety of institutions in a variety of institutional roles and with a variety of areas of influence. Integral to making systemic changes, we feel that it is important to continually question what leadership means. Our RLOE panel of leaders, participants, and student mentors will share how they are leveraging the power of open education to “lead from the middle,” empower themselves, improve learning, and break down hierarchical and systemic racist structures that have served as barriers to learning. Consider participating in our next Leadership Program Cohort in June 2022. Speakers: Karen Cangialosi, Program Director, Regional Leaders of Open Education Network (RLOE)| OEGlobal|CCCOER, Director, Open Education/Open Science, RIOS, Professor Em, Biology, Keene State College RLOE Students: Bridget Raymundo, Elizabeth Braatz RLOE Collaborators: Alegria Ribadeneira, Suzanne Wakim, RLOE Leaders: Esperanza Zenon, Rebecca Vasquez Ortiz RLOE Participants: Manisha Khetarpal, Cathy Germano