Announcing Our 2026 Keynote Speaker for the Open for Student Success Symposium!
Georgia State University’s ten-year strategic plan, Blueprint to 2033, affirms that “Georgia State will create additional ways to increase financial support for students and limit costs in instructional materials and associated expenses of pursuing a degree (e.g., open access instructional materials, affordable housing options).”
In direct alignment with this vision, Georgia State University Library has been advancing student success by equipping educators to adopt, adapt, author, and assess open and affordable learning materials for use in coursework. Following participation in the 2023 OpenStax Institutional Partnership, Librarians Charlene Martoni and Mary Ann Cullen launched the library’s inaugural Open for Student Success Symposium. Now in its fourth year, the symposium is coordinated by a team of six GSU librarians and many collaborators. Students and educators who are interested in presenting at the symposium on March 4, 2026 are encouraged to submit proposals by November 1, 2025.
The symposium’s distinguished keynote speaker this year will be Josh Bolick, Head of the David Shulenburger Office Of Scholarly Communication & Copyright at the University of Kansas (KU). With Maria Bonn and Will Cross, he co-edited Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge (ACRL, 2023) and co-founded the Scholarly Communication Notebook (SCN). A former presenter for the Open Education Network and OER Research Fellow, he advocates for open access, authors’ rights, open education, and issues related and is interested in OER as a vehicle for expanding scholarly communication knowledge and expertise.
From 2016-2022, he led open education programs at KU and remains engaged in open education advocacy in a variety of ways. He is published in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, the Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship, PeerJ, and PLOS Biology, as well as other venues. Josh holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and a master’s in library and information studies from Florida State University. In his free time he enjoys cycling, horror, and culinary adventures, especially tacos and barbecue.
In his keynote speech, “Open but Not Finished: What We’ve Won and the Work Ahead,” Bolick will summarize the shift to open, examine emerging and lingering challenges, and consider how the Open Movement can continue progress toward more open research and teaching culture:
While advocating for openness can feel like a struggle (and it often is), we’ve also achieved a lot over the last 20+ years. Open access scholarship and open educational resources and practices are normalized to a large degree, and that’s worth celebrating. Still, there are significant challenges to further growth, including in hiring, annual review, promotion and tenure, and other evaluation practices and the reward structures that shape and inform them. In this talk, I will summarize the shift to open and what we’ve won, examine emergent and lingering challenges, and consider what we can do to continue pushing for more open research and teaching cultures, with a focus on collaboration and support.
The annual Open for Student Success Symposium is free, fully online, and open to all.
Its goals are to:
- Highlight and celebrate innovation in open and affordable education.
- Build a growing body of openly accessible recordings and resources that advance the landscape of open knowledge.
The next symposium will take place on March 4, 2026. Proposals are due November 1, 2025.
To date, the symposium has featured more than 65 presenters and generated 47 recorded sessions with accompanying materials. To further extend the reach and visibility of these contributions, the 2026 symposium will index presentation recordings in both OER Commons and GSU’s institutional repository, ScholarWorks.
The symposium has grown steadily since its launch:
- Year 1: Inaugural event hosted at GSU.
- Year 2: Expanded to include presenters from 11 universities nationwide, such as the University of Georgia, Kennesaw State University, and the University of Utah.
- Year 3: Reached an international audience, with presenters and attendees from the United States, Europe, and Africa.
Looking ahead, the 2026 symposium will spotlight student voices by inviting proposal submissions that showcase how open and affordable education directly impacts their learning experience. Additionally, the symposium is seeking presentation proposals from educators on emerging and timely topics in higher education, including:
- AI and Open Education
- Courseware and Open Education
- Libraries and Open Pedagogy
- Learning and Assessment in Open Education
- Sustainability in Open Education
The 2026 Open for Student Success Symposium will take place on March 4, 2026. Proposals are due November 1, 2025.
More information is available at research.library.gsu.edu/open, and inquiries may be directed to Librarian Charlene Martoni at cmartoni@gsu.edu.