Chancellor’s Professor Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, Teaching Professor Audrey Ricke, and Professor Laura Holzman have been awarded the 2025 IU Indianapolis Open Education Award for their collaborative development of Teaching Toxic Heritage, an Open Educational Resource (OER) designed alongside the edited volume of Toxic Heritage. This resource explores the intersection of environmental harm and collective memory. It supports student engagement with complex topics through interdisciplinary readings, activities, and discussion prompts focused on the politics of toxic heritage, community activism, and narrative practices.
Their OER has been piloted across multiple courses within the Anthropology and Museum Studies department and has extended into community settings. Teaching Toxic Heritage empowers students to analyze real-world issues and design their own public engagement programs. The team’s work has been shared at national conferences and is openly licensed via Pressbooks, extending its impact to educators, museum professionals, and cultural organizations globally.