MHEC Receives $500,000 Hewlett Foundation Grant to Advance Open Education Across the Midwest
The Midwestern Higher Education Compact has received a renewed $500,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to continue and expand its work supporting open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) across the Midwest.
The grant will help MHEC sustain the strong network of open education leaders that has developed across the Midwest and explore new ways open education can advance affordability, access, workforce readiness, and learner success.
The new grant builds upon several years of Hewlett-supported work to strengthen state-level OER capacity and deepen collaboration across the region. With this grant, MHEC will continue to help state OER action teams build sustainable infrastructure, strengthen partnerships, and advance locally identified priorities.
The grant will broaden MHEC’s work in two important ways. First, MHEC will continue collaborating nationally with the three other regional higher education compacts as well as open education partners to share knowledge and explore opportunities for collective impact. Current areas of cross-regional work include the role of OER in prison education and student success, and opportunities to support dual and concurrent enrollment.
Second, the grant will create stronger connections between open education and MHEC’s growing work around workforce and career pathways. MHEC will identify and share examples of how OER and OEP can support workforce education, career pathways, credential attainment, and economic mobility, including collaborations among higher education institutions, workforce agencies, employers, and community partners.
In addition, MHEC will again provide $10,000 grants to each member state to accelerate capacity-building within OER networks and support activities identified by states as important to their work.
The grant will culminate in a regional open education summit in 2028, bringing states together to strengthen partnerships, assess their capacity for statewide collaboration, and develop plans for sustaining and advancing their work.
For more information about how this work is evolving in your state, contact Carrie Wandler, senior director of policy initiatives.