Hello and Happy New Year!   

As you may already know, the Chancellor's State of the University address is coming up on January 14^th and Open SUNY will be featured in her address. Much work has been done over the past year and a half (and more intensively since the summer) on several initiatives that comprise Open SUNY, and there have been a variety of communications and engagements that have been conducted to disseminate information about this over the last 6 months across the system. (For more information see   http://commons.suny.edu/opensuny/ and   http://commons.suny.edu/opensuny/faq/).

One of the major initiatives in support of Open SUNY is a new Center of Online Teaching Excellence http://commons.suny.edu/facultycenter. This new center will be officially introduced during the State of the University address and will provide various ways to recognize and support anyone interested in online teaching and learning in SUNY. 

To support and grow SUNY's existing online learning community of practice, the center is formalizing roles that online educators and online education professional staff have always played on their campuses and across the system. This will provide and facilitate any of us interested in effective online teaching and learning with the opportunity to contribute to the SUNY-wide online education community, enable campuses and the center to better identify and meet the specific needs of online faculty and staff, and to promote visibility and networking among peers with shared interests across the system. 

You have been selected for this invitation in recognition of your role, expertise, experience, or history in online learning. With this email we are thrilled to formally invite you to join the center and be recognized as an Open SUNY Fellow . By joining, you claim your role and charter membership in the center and in the community of practice, and reaffirm your commitments to the community, to excellence in online teaching and learning, and to online-enabled education. With this membership the center commits to support you as a Fellow on your online education journey, while giving you the opportunity contribute to the SUNY community in various ways depending on your interests and levels of expertise.

Please join! http://commons.suny.edu/facultycenter/join-community-of-practice/

Membership in the new Open SUNY center is intended to be inclusive and the invitation to be widely circulated to anyone interested in online teaching and learning in SUNY. Please help us extend this invitation to any SUNY colleague whom you feel would be interested in joining you as a member of the new center and as an Open SUNY Fellow.