Our 2026 keynote speakers will explore the past, present, and future of Open Educational Resources.
Emily J. Ragan, Ph.D. is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at MSU Denver and a national leader in open education. She has been deeply engaged in OER work since serving on the Colorado OER Council in 2017, where she began advancing statewide efforts in OER adoption, adaptation, and creation. Emily’s teaching blends guided inquiry and course‑based undergraduate research experiences with open, student‑centered pedagogies. She shared her own learning journey into open education in a 2019 TEDx talk, Lasting Learning in an Age of Abundant Information, reflecting on how access, pedagogy, and learner agency intersect in today’s educational landscape. At MSU Denver, Emily has coordinated Colorado state OER grant writing efforts and led many faculty trainings, including over 20 semester‑long OER faculty learning communities, helping instructors redesign courses around equity, sustainability, and meaningful learning. Her work is driven by a commitment to high‑quality educational experiences without financial barriers—and by a desire to help students better understand and engage with the molecular world around them.
Chelsie L. Romulo, Ph.D, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, GIS, and Sustainability at University of Northern Colorado where she has been a strong advocate for OER within her own courses, across the institution, and beyond. She has received grants to re-tool her own courses, reviewed OER materials for teaching in her discipline (natural resource management), led an OER grant funded initiative to develop resources for teaching climate change across the curriculum, and is currently working to further develop the OER for K12 education materials in the UNCOpen open access repository. She is currently working on OER that specifically provide asynchronous alternative assignments for field based activities so that these activities are more accessible to anyone who isn’t able to join field trips outside of class or hard to access locations. Chelsie recently received the UNC Open Education Excellence Award that recognizes those who advance the use of OER.
Tony Tasayco is an Undergraduate Secondary Mathematics Educator, Student Teacher at Aurora Public Schools and student at University of Colorado Denver.
