2024-2025 Faculty Fellows

Mark Sciuchetti
Dr. Mark Sciuchetti
Associate Professor of Geography
President’s OER Faculty Fellow

Bio: Dr. Mark J. Sciuchetti Jr., Interim Senior Director of Honors and Special Programs, is an Associate Professor at Jacksonville State University, specializing in Geography with a focus on Music Geography, Cultural Geography, and GIS. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography and an M.M. in Musicology from Florida State University. Dr. Sciuchetti’s research interests span across the integration of geographic information systems (GIS) with musicology, the impact of soundscapes on cultural geography, and the implementation of Open Educational Resources (OER) to enhance educational accessibility and affordability. He has been instrumental in developing and leading various academic and community projects, including mapping historical soundscapes and advocating for the adoption of OER in higher education.

Fellow Statement: I am deeply honored to be chosen as the President's OER Faculty Fellow for 2024-2025. This program provides a unique opportunity to advance my commitment to educational equity by promoting the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER). I am grateful to be part of this initiative that allows me to collaborate with colleagues and JSU to transform our curriculum to make higher education more accessible and affordable for all our students.

The initiative I am leading aims to integrate Open Educational Resources (OER) into Jacksonville State University's curriculum to significantly reduce student cost and enhance educational accessibility. My initiative this year focuses on establishing OER training programs, developing an OER Certification for faculty (Open Education Resource Specialist (OERS) Certificate Program), organizing workshops for Departmental Champions to adopt OER, and creating a robust resource repository; the overall goal is to transition numerous courses at JSU to OER. This transformation will not only alleviate financial burdens on students but also foster a more innovative and adaptable teaching environment, aligning with JSU's strategic goals of academic excellence and student success.

Laura Pitts
Dr. Laura Pitts
Assistant Professor of Library Science
Provost’s Experiential Learning Faculty Fellow

 

Bio: Dr. Laura Pitts is an assistant professor of library services at the Houston Cole Library and serves as a liaison to the English Department within the College of Arts, Humanities and Science. She has a Doctorate in Communication from the University of Alabama. She also has an MLIS from The University of Alabama, a MA in English / Creative Writing from the University of Alabama Birmingham, and an BA in Journalism and English from the University of Alabama. She has held and continues to hold multiple leadership positions within the Alabama Library Association and is the editor of Alabama Libraries. She is an avid supporter of the freedom of information and the value of that freedom to society. She has worked as a public library director and a reporter/magazine editor.

Fellow Statement: Being chosen as the first Provost’s Experiential Learning Faculty Fellow at Jax State is extremely humbling, and I consider it a high honor. I am extremely excited to not only work with the Provost on this charge but also work with fellow faculty members and other colleagues as well. I am also thankful for the Houston Cole Library faculty and staff support in this endeavor. 

I decided to apply for the faculty fellowship because I am interested in the longevity of learning opportunities for all students. I am a firm believer in the value of developing soft skills and making one's self-marketable for a future career.

In my previous career, I served as a director of a small, rural public library in Alabama. During those nine years, I not only saw various needs that employers had regarding a qualified workforce, but I also saw gaps and missed learning opportunities that students, both at the library in through outreach to local schools, had. The idea of hands-on learning outside of the classroom as a way to help students become better candidates for a career and better their own personal lives soon became a passion project of mine. Personal growth and success in life is often discovered, developed and nurtured in an educational setting. What is learned in the classroom is one component of the experience, but what can be learned outside of the classroom completes that experience. Bringing all of this together here at Jax State, I believe that there are numerous experiential learning opportunities currently taking place both with faculty and students, in the classroom, outside of the classroom, studying abroad in another country, or learning in a simulation lab. There are also experiential learning opportunities just waiting to be discovered. The list goes on and on.

Part of my initiative is to work alongside other members of our campus to develop not only a strategic plan for what experiential learning could be for our university, but to celebrate and acknowledge what it already is. I look forward to assisting with the creation of Jax State's unique definition of experiential learning and developing an online web presence as the first part of this project. I look forward to working with the campus, the community, the faculty, the staff, and the students to begin the journey of telling Jax State's experiential learning story, while looking to the future of what this project will ultimately become.