Overall Rating Silver
Overall Score 49.64
Liaison Adam Maurer
Submission Date March 31, 2021

STARS v2.2

Seattle Central College
IN-41: Textbook Affordability

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.50 / 0.50 Adam Maurer
District Sustainability Coordinator
Office of Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution host a peer-to-peer textbook exchange program, textbook lending library, or alternate textbook project?:
Yes

A brief description of the textbook exchange program, textbook lending library, or alternate textbook project:

The Running Start program maintains a collection of textbooks that they lend to Running Start students for the entire academic quarter.

Seattle Central Library has a healthy collection of loanable textbooks for short-term lending (anywhere from 1 hour to 1 week). It’s worth noting that community college libraries in Washington State consider providing loanable copies of textbooks as a core library service. Short-term textbook loans account for approximately 60% of library check-outs across all Seattle Colleges campuses. For the most part, the libraries rely on instructors to donate personal copies of textbooks, although the libraries have occasionally been able to purchase copies of high-demand textbooks, either from funding provided by student government and/or academic departments, or by redirecting existing library funds. (Note: All short-term lending is currently suspended during the pandemic due to the risk of COVID-19 transmission, but the libraries have made some textbooks available for quarter-long loan on a first-come, first-served basis)


Does the institution provide incentives for academic staff that explicitly encourage the authorship, peer review, and/or adoption of open access textbooks?:
Yes

A brief description of the incentives to encourage the authorship, peer review, and/or adoption of open access textbooks:

Seattle Central College Library offers educational and grant opportunities for faculty who want to switch to using OER textbooks and materials in their classes. Educational opportunities include in-person and online synchronous workshops and online asynchronous modules that teach faculty the basics of OER, Open Pedagogy, and how they can impact student learning. We also offer grants to faculty who want to convert their text and pedagogy to Open or create their own Open course materials. Our grant projects are largely conversions. Participation in one of these educational opportunities is a prerequisite for applying for one of our grants. We have distributed $10K per year for three grant cycles. The grant funding is provided by Central's Vice President of Instruction.


Website URL where information about the textbook affordability incentives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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