Nasibeh Zohrabi, assistant professor of engineering at Penn State Brandywine, was honored with Penn State’s Open and Affordable Education Resources (OAER) Champions Award at the end of the spring semester.
The award recognizes excellence, innovation, and impact in open educational practices at Penn State campuses, writes Christina Billlie for Penn State Brandywine.
The award began as a pilot initiative in 2022 and is a collaboration between Penn State University Libraries and the University-wide OAER Working Group.
During Zohrabi’s first semester at Brandywine in the fall of 2021, she realized that the required textbooks in her second-year engineering courses were costly and placed a burden on students.
After seeing the hardship this caused and conducting a survey to ask how often the students used the textbooks, she decided to take matters into her own hands and make the courses more affordable.
“I care a lot about my students. The books were really expensive, and that ended up being a challenge for students, so I decided to change the format of my class,” she said. “I created slide presentations for each chapter, along with homework assignments, notes, labs, quizzes, and exams myself, and they’re customized for the fall and spring semesters.”
Once members of the Brandywine community learned about Zohrabi creating all her own course materials, she was nominated for the OAER Champion Award. She received the award at the 2025 Faculty and Staff Awards Luncheon in May.
Zohrabi noted how much her students enjoy learning the course material with her notes.
“I usually do pre- and post-class surveys so I can gauge how my students like the format of my courses. When I pivoted to using my own notes and course materials rather than using a textbook, my students were a lot happier,” she said.
“That survey also allows me to revise my material if needed,” she added. “I really value their feedback and want them to know that if they want something changed, I’ll take it into consideration.”
Penn State Brandywine, with more than 1,200 students, is a residential campus in Media offering 14 baccalaureate programs and the first two years of nearly all of Penn State’s 275+ majors.
