I currently serve as the Director for the Every Learner Everywhere Network, which is under the auspices of WCET (the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies; WICHE is the Western Interstate Commission of Higher Education). The Every Learner Network serves higher education institutions across the United States and enables institutions to deliver more equitable learning outcomes for Black, Latino, Indigenous, poverty-affected and first-generation students. While there has been a focus on digital learning and technology to improve learning outcomes, I am excited and hopeful to bring some expansiveness to our reach, understanding and contextualization of digital learning in order to better serve students.

I am also a co-founder of the RIOS Institute (Institute for Racially Just, Inclusive and Open STEM) where I serve as Director of Open Education & Open Science.  RIOS is about networking, partnerships and projects that are focused at the intersections of Open Education, Open Science and Social Justice in STEM.

In the past, I served as the Program Director for RLOE, (Regional Leaders of Open Education Network, a project of Open Education Global and the CCCOER) where we worked to reimagine leadership, shift institutional power to marginalized communities, and promote systemic change for Open Education and Higher Education more broadly. I also served for a little while as OE Global’s membership director.  

As a dedicated Professor of Biology and student advocate for many years, I found my way to Open Education which I see as especially powerful for helping to bring about what I see as much needed larger-scale change in higher education. I have gained national recognition for leadership in Open Education, STEM education, faculty development, innovative and digital pedagogies, and authentic “student-centered” learning and I am thrilled to bring these experiences and perspectives to help shape networking for numerous communities.

At Keene State College, I served as the Open Education faculty fellow for many years, and co-leader & designer of the KSC Teaching Fellows program. I spearheaded a movement at KSC to replace traditional textbooks with OER and other freely available resources for nearly all Biology courses in the KSC Biology B.S. and B.A. degree programs, saving our students thousands of dollars.  I also directed the KSC STEM Open Education/Open Science initiative that I designed.  I  incorporate Open Pedagogy into all of my own courses, and for years I led the KSC open pedagogy faculty learning community. And, because I believe that scientific investigation, like education, should be transparent, widely collaborative and designed to serve the public, I work on and advocate for integrating the principles and practices of Open Science and Open Pedagogy into the undergraduate STEM curriculum broadly.

I am also a queer street activist, who for many years, has marched, chanted and organized around diversity, anti-racism, social justice, equity and inclusion, and have been a leader in organizations working especially for women’s and LGBTQ rights.

As the TCI team coordinator for Reefcheck International, I established and continue to collect data for a coral reef monitoring program in the Turks and Caicos Islands, contribute to an open international database, and run a Reef Education program (ecology, conservation, diversity and marine skills) for young student residents of Providenciales, TCI. My past research has involved the behavioral ecology of spiders, particularly the evolution of social behavior and the ways in which multiple factors influence foraging complexity in a web-invading, sometimes kleptoparasitic, spider.

Feel free to email me at kcangial@keene.edu or find me on twitter @karencang