Professors Jayalakshmi Casukhela and Margaret Young

Two Ohio State Lima professors have been awarded grants from the Affordable Learning Exchange for 2022. The cohort of 21 total instructors will use the grant funding to support affordability and racial justice projects for courses at campuses in Lima, Newark and Columbus.

The ALX projects for 2022 cover a wide range of disciplines—from math to music, art and design to architecture, sociology to psychology. A direct savings to students from these courses is anticipated to be more than $80,000.

Lima’s 2022 participants are Jayalakshmi Casukhela, lecturer in math, and Margaret Young, associate professor of music.

More about the Lima grants

Jaya Casukhela

Casukhela will use grant funds to create open access customized materials in Carmen for students in remedial algebra. This project will also utilize MyOpenMath and its series of openly-licensed, online-testing modules. Access to course materials from day one will also assist students in successful completion of the class.

Dr. Margaret Young

Young will transform two courses with a low support and racial justice grant. For the low support grant, openly-licensed materials will be curated to give students an overview of music for wellness and help them apply those principles to the context of drumming with patients. This will include content from the fields of music therapy, rhythmic entertainment, drumming skills and Parkinson’s disease and its treatments.

Racial justice grant funds will be utilized to curate an assignment for students in “The Informed Beginning Pianist.” This assignment will ask students to view a piano recital that highlights a composer from an underrepresented group. Course materials will also feature music from various traditions and feature diverse composers.

More about the Affordable Learning Exchange

Driven by a mission to increase access and reduce the cost of higher education for Ohio State students and families, the ALX uses a multi-pronged approach to support faculty who wish to explore affordable alternatives to expensive textbooks and course materials.

Since 2016, ALX has reduced the cost of learning materials for Ohio State students by more than $20 million by supporting faculty who create and adopt open educational resources and through deep discounts on publisher textbooks.

Read more about the ALX projects