New endowment supports the Libraries’ Open Knowledge Center

The NC State University Libraries is pleased to announce the establishment of the Betsy Etheridge Brown Open Education Resource and Pedagogy Endowment. The endowment will provide support for the work of the Open Knowledge Center (OKC) at the Libraries, particularly the center’s Open Pedagogy PIT STOP and its development of the UNC System’s Open Pedagogy and AI Faculty Learning Community. This is the Libraries’ first OER/AI support endowment.

“Learning outcomes from programs such as Faculty Learning Communities incorporate what faculty learn and how they transmit what they have learned to their colleagues, who will in turn convey what they have learned to their students,” Brown says. “Dedicated resources are central to maintaining these processes.”

With her gift, Brown enhances open education programs, which continue her career commitment to faculty development and collaborative research and teaching opportunities. Brown served as NC State’s vice provost for faculty affairs from 2008 to her retirement in 2014, after joining the university in 2006 as a special assistant to the provost. Brown led several key initiatives, including the creation of the Office of Faculty Development and the expansion of new faculty orientation. She worked with the Office of International Affairs on program development and coordinated an international faculty development initiative. She also oversaw the creation of the review process for the University Faculty Scholars Program and helped launch the chancellor’s annual Celebration of Faculty Excellence.

Before coming to NC State, Brown served as associate vice president for academic affairs at UNC General Administration and held faculty and administrative positions at Pennsylvania State University, Queens University Charlotte, and Winthrop University in South Carolina where she was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

David Tully, Principal Librarian for Student Affordability at the OKC, sees this endowment as an extension of Brown’s legacy, furthering the connection between faculty development and student success.

“When we originally spoke to Betsy, she was excited about the Open Pedagogy PIT STOP because it's a new program focused on educators at NC State who work with the Libraries directly over a period of time,” Tully says. “She's interested in emerging tech and interactive technologies, and the fact that we're doing something that brings together the values of openness—which is about access, innovation, and affordability—with technology, all to support instructors.”

The Open Pedagogy PIT STOP is a twelve-week intensive program designed by the Libraries and the Office for Faculty Excellence to empower and support faculty in integrating interactive technologies with the values of open pedagogy, including building collaborative learning environments, enhancing accessibility and promoting the sharing of educational resources. The program shows faculty how to go beyond the first step in open education—adopting course materials—to implement multiple open-enabled practices, including AI, educational games, Extended Reality and other cutting-edge technologies, and to incorporate them into teaching environments centered on transparency, collaboration and accessibility.

The Open Pedagogy and AI Faculty Learning Community is a cohort across the UNC System that explores generative AI tools through the lens of open pedagogy, critically examining how AI can be thoughtfully integrated to enhance user-centered education and facilitate knowledge exchange. The community will develop a written AI policy tailored for a specific course to be offered in the 2025/2026 academic year and/or an assignment that engages students with AI from an open perspective.