2025-26 Open Education Excellence Award Winner

The Affordable and Open Educational Resources (AOER) Committee has named Chelsie Romulo, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Geography, GIS and Sustainability, as the recipient of the 2025-26 Open Education Excellence Award. This award recognizes those who advance the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) – free, openly licensed teaching materials that come with legal permission for adaptation and reuse. 

This honor recognizes Romulo’s sustained commitment to OER and her leadership in advancing affordability and educational access at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC). The announcement comes during Open Education Week, a global celebration of open educational practices that remove barriers to knowledge and learning.

Romulo has been engaged in open education work at UNC since receiving one of the university’s earliest OER grants in 2019 to review open textbooks for her courses, and she was again a grant recipient in the 2025–26 cycle, authoring a new open educational resource for Environmental Studies 261: Water Quality Management. Her use of OER reflects a deep awareness of the financial barriers facing UNC students and a commitment to creating learning environments in which all students can fully participate and succeed.

In addition to her course-level work, Romulo is a campus leader for OER through her involvement with the Community Collaboration and Learning for Climate Resilience (COOLER) team. Supported by grant funding from the National Science Foundation and Colorado Department of Higher Education, the OER component of the COOLER project brings together faculty to develop cross-disciplinary, openly licensed teaching materials that integrate climate change content across curricula. These resources will be housed in a collection in the university’s open access repository, UNCOpen, and made available to students and educators across the world.  

Romulo has also served as interim director of the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, where she has supported faculty professional development focused on inclusive teaching practices, accessibility, assessment and supportive teaching communities. Across these efforts, she has been a strong advocate for the use of OER in faculty development and curricular innovation, aligning closely with UNC’s Students First mission.

Colleagues note Romulo’s energy, care for students and enthusiasm for open education. Her nominator, Annie Epperson from the University Libraries, points out that adopting OER is a natural extension of her teaching philosophy, describing her work as rooted in an understanding of student needs and a commitment to removing financial barriers to learning.

The AOER Committee applauds Romulo’s staunch dedication to open education and her lasting contributions to affordability, equity and teaching excellence at UNC and beyond.