From Bold Idea to Global Legacy: 25 Years of MIT OpenCourseWare
Celebrate 25 years of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW)—a bold experiment that became a global movement. This symposium brings together learners, educators, supporters, open knowledge leaders, and the MIT community to honor OCW’s extraordinary impact and to chart the future of open education.
Since its launch in 2001, OCW has empowered millions worldwide with free access to MIT course materials. This anniversary offers a moment to recognize the vibrant ecosystem that sustains open knowledge as a public good—and to reaffirm MIT’s mission-driven leadership in ensuring that high-quality learning remains accessible to all.
Join us for an engaging, dynamic, and celebratory program featuring MIT leadership, pioneering faculty, global learners, open education innovators, and philanthropic partners. Together, we will explore OCW’s legacy, its role in the evolving open ecosystem, and the opportunities and challenges ahead.
Who Should Attend
This gathering welcomes:
--Learners and educators worldwide who use OCW to teach, learn, and create new opportunities
--Philanthropic supporters and donors who power open education
--MIT faculty, students, and staff invested in sharing knowledge freely and openly
--Collaborators across the global open education and open knowledge ecosystems
Wednesday, April 8, 2026 online and on campus (MIT Welcome Center)
9:15AM-10:00 AM ET Light breakfast and refreshments available.
Symposium Program
10:00AM–10:10AM
From Bold Idea to Global Legacy: 25 Years of MIT OpenCourseWare
Welcome remarks from Dimitris Bertsimas and Curt Newton.
10:10AM–10:30AM
Opening Remarks from MIT President Sally Kornbluth
President Kornbluth will reflect on OCW’s impact and the Institute’s leadership in open knowledge.
10:30AM–11:00AM
OCW @ 25: A Story in Motion
Premiere of a new short documentary celebrating OCW’s origins, influence, and global reach, followed by a panel with key MIT contributors who have helped shape OCW’s worldwide influence.
11:15AM–12:15PM
Learning Without Limits: How OCW Opens Opportunity for Curious Minds Worldwide
A conversation with learners and educators whose stories reveal the transformative power of open knowledge—showing how OCW has sparked curiosity, expanded opportunity, and inspired people worldwide to imagine new possibilities for themselves and their communities.
12:15PM–1:00PM Lunch Reception
1:00PM–1:45PM
Knowledge Without Walls: MIT’s Ethos of Open
A cross-campus look at MIT’s leadership in all forms of open knowledge—expanding the open education legacy of OCW and championing knowledge as a public good. This session highlights how practices in open source technologies, open access, open science and data, and open publishing have evolved across MIT and influenced global movements for accessible and equitable learning.
2:00PM–3:00PM
Catalysts of Open: Philanthropy’s Role in the Open Education Movement
A conversation with supporters and partners from the open education funding community about the essential role that philanthropy has played—and continues to play—in driving forward a global movement centered on access, equity, and the belief that knowledge should be a public good.
3:15PM–4:15PM
The Future of MIT Open Education
A forward-looking dialogue on the commitments and evolution of OCW and MIT’s open learning initiatives, including mobile learning, language translation, AI-enabled personalization and learning supports, and sustaining open education’s place in future knowledge landscapes.
To attend the symposium in-person, please register here.
To attend the symposium online, please register at the following links:
10:00AM-11:00AM From Bold Idea to Global Legacy: 25 Years of MIT OpenCourseWare
11:15AM-12:15PM Learning Without Limits: How OCW Opens Opportunity for Curious Minds Worldwide
1:00PM-1:45PM Knowledge Without Walls: MIT’s Ethos of Open
2:00PM-3:00PM Catalysts of Open: Philanthropy’s Role in the Open Education Movement
3:15PM-4:15PM The Future of MIT Open Education
All sessions will be streamed live on the MIT OpenCourseWare YouTube Channel. They will be recorded and made available online after the event.
Speaker biographies
Peter Baldwin is a Research Professor of history at UCLA, Global Distinguished Professor at NYU, and the chair of Arcadia, the London-based philanthropy founded together with his wife, Lisbet Rausing. Arcadia funds open access as one of its priorities, including the Open Access Book Prizes given annually by the ACLS. He chairs the Digital Committee of the New York Public Library’s Board of Trustees and serves on the Wikimedia Endowment Board. He is the author of Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for All (MIT Press, 2023).
Ana Bell is a Senior Lecturer in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at MIT, where she focuses on introductory computer science education. She teaches and develops MIT’s foundational programming courses, working to make rigorous computer science accessible to beginners.
She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of British Columbia and her PhD from Princeton University. During graduate school, she discovered a passion for teaching while serving as a teaching assistant, which ultimately led her to pursue a lecturer position. At MIT, she contributes to the introductory computer science curriculum from multiple angles: expanding access for non-majors, developing active learning strategies for large lecture environments, and supporting digital learning and online course delivery.
Whether teaching in person or online, she emphasizes that learning to program is like learning a new language that requires consistent practice, patience, and time. Her teaching style focuses on building student confidence while maintaining high academic standards, drawing on research from the learning sciences to inform course design. She emphasizes computational thinking as a foundational problem-solving skill and is passionate about helping students experience their "aha" moments.
Dimitris Bertsimas is the Vice Provost for Open Learning, the Associate Dean of Online Education & Artificial Intelligence, the Boeing Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management, and a Professor of Operations Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Bertsimas is a distinguished member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, an INFORMS Fellow, and a recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, John von Neumann Theory Prize, the Frederick W. Lanchester Prize, and the INFORMS President’s Award, among many others recognizing his contributions to research and teaching. He has supervised 106 completed and 19 ongoing doctoral theses and co-founded twelve AI companies, four of which have been successfully acquired. A prolific scholar, he has authored over 350 scientific papers and eight books. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, as well as a Master of Science in Operations Research and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Operations Research from MIT.
TJ Bliss, Ph.D., is a former program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation where he led the foundation's strategy for Open Educational Resources (OER). He co-developed the Costs, Outcomes, Uses, and Perceptions (COUP) research framework, which is foundational to open education research throughout the world and was instrumental in developing the UNESCO Recommendation on OER. Bliss is the Associate Commissioner of Academic Affairs for the Utah System of Higher Education and a clinical assistant professor in Education Leadership at the University of Idaho. He was formerly the Chief Academic Officer for the Idaho State Board of Education, Chief Advancement Officer for the Wiki Education Foundation, and Director of Assessment for the Idaho Department of Education. Through these senior leadership roles, he has worked to increase access, affordability, and success for students at the international, national, state, and institutional levels, across higher education and K-12. Bliss currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Western Academic Leadership Forum and is a member of the national Alumni Board of Brigham Young University, where he earned a B.S. in Microbiology and Ph.D. in Education Research. He also earned an M.S. in Biology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Amy Brand is director and publisher of the MIT Press, one of the largest university presses in the world, and a leading figure in open publishing innovation. The MIT Press is well known for its publications in emerging fields of scholarship, its design excellence, and its pioneering use of technology. Brand’s career spans a wide array of experiences in academia, science communication, and information standards. She received her doctorate in cognitive science from MIT and held positions at the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, Crossref, Digital Science, and Harvard before returning to MIT in 2015 to serve as Press director. She co-founded the Knowledge Futures Group, which builds open knowledge infrastructure, and was executive producer of the Emmy-nominated documentary Picture a Scientist, a 2020 selection of the Tribeca Film Festival that highlights gender inequality in science. Some of Dr. Brand’s awards include the Laya Wiesner Community Award, the American Association for the Advancement of Science Kavli Science Journalism Gold Award, and the Award for Meritorious Achievement from the Council of Science Editors.
Chris Bourg is the Director of Libraries at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she is also the founding director of the Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship (CREOS). Prior to assuming her role at MIT, Chris worked for 12 years in the Stanford University Libraries. Before Stanford, she spent 10 years as an active-duty U.S. Army officer, including three years on the faculty at the United States Military Academy at West Point. She received her BA from Duke University, her MA from the University of Maryland, and her MA and Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford.
Chris has extensive experience promoting equitable and open scholarship and is an advocate for the role of libraries in promoting social justice and democracy. Chris co-chaired the MIT Ad Hoc Task Force on the Future of Libraries, the MIT Ad Hoc Task Force on Open Access to MIT’s Research, and the MIT Working Group on Scholarly Content and Generative AI. She is a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Science, as well as the Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship.
Chris is a member of several advisory boards and steering committees, including Annual Reviews, Center for Open Science, and the Stanford Data Science Institute’s Center for Open and Reproducible Science (DSI-CORES).
Christopher Capozzola is the Elting E. Morison Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2022 to 2025, Christopher Capozzola served as Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning. In that role, he oversaw open education offerings including OpenCourseWare and MITx, as well as the Digital Credentials Consortium, Digital Learning in Residential Education, and MIT Video Productions. He continues to facilitate conversations about generative AI in teaching and learning at MIT, and advocate for open, affordable, and equitable post-secondary learning in U.S. higher education.
For more than 20 years, Capozzola has taught U.S. history at MIT, and is the author of two books on U.S. political history. He graduated from Harvard College and completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 2002.
Catherine M. Casserly, Ph.D. (Cathy) is an Advisor, Strategic Consultant and Executive Coach. She is an experienced leader and focused strategist who challenges entrenched thinking and positions individuals and organizations for accelerated performance. Her work spans the U.S. and international arenas and includes: consulting & advising; executive leadership coaching with startups, philanthropy, and nonprofits: and, board of directors roles.
Previously, Catherine was CEO and President of Creative Commons, an Aspen Institute Fellow, Vice President at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and Vice President at EdCast. She is a founding pioneer of the now global Open Educational Resources field, developing, managing, and launching The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's inaugural 100 million USD investments.
Her work portfolio includes board and advisory roles including: Open Education Global, OpenStax at Rice University, ScholarRX, and English Helper.
Dr. Jonathan Gruber is the Ford Professor of Economics and the Chairman of the Economics Department at MIT. He is also the former Director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the former President of the American Society of Health Economists and the Eastern Economics Association. He has published more than 200 research articles, has edited seven research volumes, and has written three books including Public Finance and Public Policy, a leading undergraduate text in its 7th edition. In 2006 he received the American Society of Health Economists Inaugural Medal for the best health economist in the nation aged 40 and under.
During the 1997-1998 academic year, Dr. Gruber was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department. He was a key architect of Massachusetts’ ambitious health reform effort, and served on the Health Connector Board, the main implementing body for that effort. During 2009-2010 he served as a technical consultant to the Obama Administration and worked with both the Administration and Congress to help craft the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In 2011 he was named “One of the Top 25 Most Innovative and Practical Thinkers of Our Time” by Slate Magazine.
Sarah Hansen holds a PhD in Education, Curriculum & Instruction from the University of Minnesota. She is the Assistant Director of Open Education Innovation at MIT Open Learning, where she leads initiatives to harness the power of open praxis to democratize knowledge.
Andrea Henshall is a retired Air Force Special Operations Instructor Pilot and Research and Development Officer. She has a BS in Astronautical Engineering from the US Air Force Academy, an SM from MIT in Aeronautics and Astronautics, an MS in Computer Science from Auburn University, and is currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. Andrea extensively used MIT’s OpenCourseWare to support her graduate degrees and her transition from the military back into academia. She attributes much of her success to the program.
Andrea also advocates for the use of MIT’s OpenCourseWare to those she mentors through her volunteer work. She serves as a member of the STEM Academic Advisory Committee for the Warrior Scholar Project and lectures at their virtual and in-person STEM bootcamps. She is an ambassador for Service to School, a Graduate Application Assistance Program (GAAP) mentor at MIT, and a frequent speaker at national student veteran conferences, guiding veterans and other underrepresented applicants through the process of applying to selective academic programs.
Peter B. Kaufman is Associate Director of Development at MIT Open Learning. Educated at Cornell and Columbia, he is the author of The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge (Seven Stories Press, 2021) and The Moving Image: A User’s Manual (The MIT Press, 2025). An educator, publisher, and documentary film producer, he has served as Associate Director of Columbia University’s Center for Teaching and Learning; co-chair of the JISC Film & Sound Think Tank; co-chair of the Copyright Committee of the Association of Moving Image Archivists; a member of the Scholar Advisory Committee of WGBH’s American Archive of Public Broadcasting; a member of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure in the Humanities and Social Sciences; and a long-time consultant to the Library of Congress’s Packard Campus for Audiovisual Conservation. He has been working with major philanthropic foundations around the world for more than 30 years.
Since becoming MIT’s 18th president in 2023, Sally Kornbluth has rallied the community to help solve the great challenges of our time. She and her leadership team have launched a series of initiatives to enable faculty to “go big” with their most daring ideas and to inspire new collaborations across disciplines and institutions. Priority areas include health and life sciences, manufacturing, climate, the humanities, generative AI, and quantum.
After graduating from Williams College in 1982 with a BA in political science, Kornbluth made a sharp pivot toward biology. In 1984, she earned a BA in genetics at Cambridge University, and in 1989, received her PhD in molecular oncology from Rockefeller University. She joined Duke University in 1994 as an assistant professor and rose to full professor in 2005. The next year, she was selected to serve as vice dean for basic science at the Duke School of Medicine, a post she held until she became provost in 2014. Among other honors, she is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Curt Newton leads MIT OpenCourseWare in supporting millions of global learners and educators every year with freely shared materials from over 2,600 MIT courses. Newton joined OpenCourseWare in 2004, shortly after its launch, captivated by the promise of open education, and worked as a Publication Manager and Site Curator prior to becoming Director in 2018. Newton is also a recognized leader in building more effective and equitable climate action through open knowledge practices and resources, at MIT and around the world, through a wide range of professional and civic engagements.
Dr. Victor Odumuyiwa holds a Doctorate (Ph.D.) from Lorraine University, France, and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Lagos. He was an Empowering The Teacher (ETT) Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2013. His academic interests include responsible AI, Natural Language Processing, and human-centred computing, with research spanning ethical AI, sentiment analysis, recommender systems, education analytics, and public health informatics. He led the Machine Intelligence Research Group (MIRG) from 2022 to 2025, advancing context-aware AI research focused on addressing development challenges within African contexts. He also successfully organized and chaired the 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (ICAIR), one of Nigeria’s leading AI research conferences.
Beyond these, Dr. Odumuyiwa’s work attracts multidisciplinary and international collaboration, bringing together universities, policy organisations, and industry partners to address priority areas in AI, data governance, and innovation ecosystems. His leadership reflects a deep commitment to building Africa’s research capacity and enabling evidence-based technology deployment with societal impact.
He currently serves as Director of the NITDA IT Hub (NITHUB) at the University of Lagos, where he builds bridges between research, industry, and policy to accelerate technology adoption and innovation in Africa.
Rebecca Saxe is the John W. Jarve (1978) Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Associate Dean of Science at MIT. She studies the origin and structure of thought in the minds and brains of adults, children, and infants, using behavioral testing, brain imaging, and computational modeling. Her on-going research topics include what people learn from punishment, the role of generosity in social relationships, and the development of the social brain of infants and toddlers. Her OCW course, “Tools for Robust Science”, was also featured on the OCW podcast. Saxe obtained her PhD from MIT and was a Harvard Junior Fellow before joining the MIT faculty in 2006. She has received the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences, a Guggenheim fellowship, the MIT Committed to Caring Award for graduate mentorship and is a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Elizabeth Siler is a professor at Worcester State University in the Business Administration and Economics Department. She teaches management classes to undergraduate students and almost exclusively uses open education resources.
She recently co-authored a chapter about practices that can help faculty humanize our online teaching environments, in "Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online,” by Athabasca University Press, which is an open-source academic publisher.
Dr. Siler’s research is on pregnancy loss, and she is currently conducting a project talking with people about their experiences of returning to work after a pregnancy ending.
Her degrees are from Boston University, Simmons University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Hinata Yamahara is a high school senior from Duluth, Georgia. He was born in Los Angeles, but most of his childhood memories stem from yearly visits to Osaka, Japan. Growing up, he often wondered why Japanese cities looked so different compared to those in the US, frequently comparing their modern trains to the endless highways of Los Angeles and Atlanta. Discovering OpenCourseWare allowed him to explore the world of urban planning and design, opening his eyes to one of his greatest passions.
In addition to urban planning, Hinata is actively pursuing his pilot’s license. He is heavily involved in extracurriculars at his high school: he serves as the drum captain and center snare drummer for the marching band and leads the Environmental, Aviation, 21st Century Leaders, and Food2Kids clubs, as well as the Model UN team. Outside of school, Hinata enjoys hiking, exploring new cities and architecture, and solo traveling.