Natural Sciences Program Chair Dr. Heidi Von Itter recently announced that Anatomy and Physiology students will have no out of pocket costs for their A&P textbooks beginning fall semester of 2020. Both Anatomy and Physiology classes will be using the free online textbook by OpenStax, saving students about $250 compared to the cost of new traditional textbooks. These classes are the latest in the list of dozens of SRTC courses utilizing high quality, peer-reviewed digital textbooks that are available at no cost to students.
OpenStax is a nonprofit ed-tech initiative based at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Since 2012, OpenStax has created peer-reviewed, openly licensed textbooks, which are available in free digital formats and for a low cost in print. The project was initially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Michelson 20MM Foundation, and the Maxfield Foundation. All textbook content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Licenses; specifically, the books are available under the CC BY license (except for Calculus, which is CC BY-NC-SA), which means that instructors can use, adapt, and remix the content, as long as they attribute OpenStax.
Dean for Academic Affairs Kathryn Kent said “Before this online option, typical first semester General Education book costs could easily exceed the tuition and fees for a full-time student. We knew something had to be done. Within the School of Arts and Sciences, the faculty has worked to make sure that book costs are not a barrier to any student seeking General Education courses at the degree level, building all course content using Open Source texts at no cost to students.”
Fall semester begins August 18. Individuals interested in a high-quality education at little to no out of pocket expense can learn more about SRTC by visiting online here: https://southernregional.edu/future-students.