Call for Participation: OFAR year 6 — deadline to apply is September 2, 2025
Laura Dunn
Greetings Colleagues,
On behalf of the Open for Antiracism (OFAR) Program, co-led by CCCOER and College of the Canyons, please read the announcement below for the 2025-2026 Call for Participation.
Call for Participation: Open for Antiracism (OFAR) in California Community Colleges (2025-26)
Are you seeking to make your teaching practices and instructional materials more antiracist? Do you wish that your course materials incorporated and supported the voices and experiences of all your students? Are you concerned about the cost of commercial course materials that don’t support equitable student learning?
We’re seeking teams of faculty from California Community Colleges (CCC) wishing to make their teaching and instructional materials antiracist to join a statewide Open for Antiracism (OFAR) Faculty Cohort running from September 2025 through June 2026. In 2024, OFAR was recognized by Open Education Global as the best Diversity, Equity & Inclusion program in the world.
If selected, your team will complete a 6-week, facilitated online, asynchronous course from October through November 2025, introducing you to these major topics in the context of developing an antiracist action plan: What Is Antiracism? What Are Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Pedagogy? How Can They Support Antiracist Pedagogy?
Each team member will create an individual action plan for the spring term to integrate OER and open pedagogy to make teaching and learning antiracist. Deliverables might include a revised history class that now includes a module on Juneteenth, or a revised biology text in which students replace images of all-white bodies with images that better reflect their communities. Then team members will implement these action plans while teaching during spring 2026.
Who Should Participate?
OFAR is open to full-time and adjunct faculty in California Community Colleges.
Having completed 5 years of OFAR, we’ve seen that those most likely to benefit from participating are instructors in the early or middle stages of their journey toward antiracism. If you’re a scholar of race and ethnicity, or you’ve been leading DEI work on your campus, you’re less likely to benefit from the program.
Why Now?
In recent years, renewed protests for racial justice sparked organizations to release public statements decrying systemic racism and calling to change hiring practices, disaggregate student data, and add equity to strategic plans. However laudable these public statements might be, they often call for actions that are far removed from teaching practices and instructional materials.
This therefore remains the ideal time to educate and empower faculty to move beyond statements on institutional websites and enact concrete approaches in their classrooms, by harnessing key affordances of OER and open pedagogy to introduce antiracist content and practices into classrooms.
Our working definition of antiracism refers to actions that identify, interrogate, and alter the values, structures and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism. We approach this work with humility and a desire to learn together.
Team Applications
For this sixth year of OFAR, we are looking for applications from teams of 4-6 faculty from the same college, so that you will have a local support network while participating in the program. When selecting your team, we encourage you to include adjunct faculty. We cannot accept applications from individuals.
Applications should include a statement of support from your department chair or division dean (or other administrator). This letter should describe institutional support you expect such as instructional design support, alignment with equity initiatives, etc.
Participation in the OFAR program is limited to 42 faculty (full-time or adjunct). Participants who complete the program earn a stipend of $3,500.
Team Leader
The team leader plays a key role in the OFAR program, by assisting their OFAR team in the following:
Submit the OFAR application in collaboration with other team members. Include the administrator support letter and obtain an agreement from your Institutional Research department to supply student outcomes data.
Work with the OFAR coach assigned to your team to arrange monthly regular meetings with team members throughout the program.
Receive and distribute email messages from OFAR program leadership regarding research to team members.
Communicate with OFAR Program administrators and coaches should team members encounter any issues with completing the program.
Communicate periodic updates to the college administrator who agreed to support the OFAR faculty team, with a suggested frequency of two to three times per semester. (For a total of five updates during the program.)
Coordinate the end-of-year team showcase.
In addition to the compensation that each individual team member of the OFAR cohort receives, the team leader will receive an additional $750 stipend, divided equally between the December and June invoice payments. The total compensation for the team leader will be $4,250.
Important Dates
Timeline for applications and OFAR program:
Informational webinar: August 15, 2025
College applications due: Tuesday, September 2nd by 5 pm Pacific Time
Notifications to applicants: Friday, September 19
Required welcome webinar: Friday, October 3
Facilitated online course: Monday, Oct 6 - Sat, Nov 15
Webinars throughout the year (selected Friday afternoons)
Implementation of your action plan during the Spring term
Full details of the application are in the Call for Participation: OFAR 2025-26. We recommend you make a copy of the OFAR Application Template for details on filling out the application and in case you encounter any technical issues with the survey tool.
Questions?
Please see the OFAR 2025-26: Frequently Asked Questions.
More information:
Contact: Laura Dunn at laur...@oeglobal.org and James Glapa-Grossklag at james.glap...@canyons.edu
Thank you!
Program Director | Open for Antiracism | OEglobal.org
Phone | 808-292-8375
email | laur...@oeglobal.org
www.lauramdunn.com
"Unity is a precious possession.”
यस्तु सर्वाणि भूतान्यात्मन्येवानुपश्यति।
सर्वभूतेषु चात्मानं ततो न विजुगुप्सते॥
"Those who see all beings in the Self and the Self in all beings, they never turn away from the truth."
-Iṣa Upaṇiṣad 6
