The Door Keeps Revolving

Just heard from my friend Bobbi Kurshan, the Executive Director of Curriki, that she will be leaving that post on March 1st. I wish her well.

Curriki will be looking for a new ED shortly and will very much continue to stay active in the OER space (much like Hewlett has continued to do after Mike, Cathy, and Phoenix left).

So, unless I’m missing someone, the list of OER leaders who have moved on in the last few years now includes:

Mike, Cathy, and Phoenix, from the Hewlett Foundation
Ira and Chris, from the Mellon Foundation
Ahrash, from CC Learn
Bobbi, from Curriki
Anne, from MIT OCW

And I suppose I should add myself, from COSL. Perhaps it’s not a big deal to see folks moving on, but it seems somehow significant to me. Inasmuch as the field continues to live and thrive through these leadership changes, we demonstrate that open education is not a radical separatist group led by a few charismatic individuals. Instead we demonstrate that open education is stable, steady, on-going effort to increase access to appropriate, high-quality educational opportunity to everyone worldwide.