Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Dr. Kristina Bross Receives the 2021 Leadership in Open Access Award

October 26th, 2021

Libraries is pleased to announce that Associate Dean for Research and Creative Endeavors in the Honors College and Professor of English Kristina Bross is the recipient of the 2021 Leadership in Open Access Award. Dr. Bross is a staunch supporter of scholarly dissemination and open access, as demonstrated by her many projects completed in collaboration with Libraries.

Dr. Bross has always been eager to innovate and think creatively in order to provide exemplary learning experiences for students. As a member of the faculty advisory board for the Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research (JPUR), Dr. Bross is strongly invested in the journal’s success as an open access platform for undergraduate research endeavors. In collaboration with Purdue University Press and Archives and Special Collections, Dr. Bross edited a special collection of essays by Purdue undergraduates. Each participating student began their journey by exploring Archives, where they discovered, researched, and then wrote an essay about a piece of Purdue history that illuminates the student experience a century ago. The resulting book, More Than a Memory: Exploring Purdue University’s History Through Objects, was published by Purdue University Press in 2017, and is openly available to all.

During the summer of 2020, in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Bross again turned to Libraries for collaboration in developing new engagement opportunities for students in remote learning environments. Together, Libraries and Dr. Bross sought to answer the question, “What do we do when face-to-face engagement is impossible?” The result of this latest open access collaboration is IDEAS Magazine: Exhibit Catalog for the Honors College Visiting Scholars Series. 

Dr. Bross sums up IDEAS Magazine this way: “The inaugural issue of Ideas Magazine was created as a way to open up the Visiting Scholars series to more people—to offer contextual material about our visitors and their work and provide links to the recorded interviews. The pieces included in the issues of the magazine were created by students—members of the Visiting Scholars seminar and a talented team of student editors. Volume 1 is an experiment. A draft. A collaborative pilot project. A pandemic-driven pivot from in-person forms of learning to online, asynchronous learning. We built the plane while we were flying it…No doubt we’ll have to open up the engine again to tinker with it to get it really soaring. But it’s off the ground!”

Libraries is honored to recognize Dr. Bross for her creativity, leadership, and ongoing commitment to open access projects like these, and is proud to be a collaborative partner in her remarkable story of student engagement, opportunity, and success.