Zanele Myles, a master’s student in the Faculty of Education at Memorial, is the first recipient of a new Memorial Libraries OpenCon scholarship created to engage students with open access publishing early in their careers. The announcement comes during the 8th annual Open Access Week, which is celebrated around the world, and designed to bring attention to open access initiatives.

The award provides Ms. Myles with $1,500 to put towards travel, accommodation and registration to the OpenCon conference for students and early researchers held in Washington, D.C., in November.

“Educators have a very long reach, as they will have the opportunity to pass these ideas on to many students over the course of their careers," said Ms. Goddard, scholarly communications librarian for the Queen Elizabeth II Library who is leading Open Access (OA) initiatives within the library system. “Open textbooks and open learning resources are also closely related to the Open Access movement. Zanele proved a great fit because she is a graduate student who is already involved with scholarly publishing."

The OpenCon conference is intended to inspire the next generation of scholars to change how research is shared through open access, open data and open educational resources.   

Ms. Myles is already inspired by open access and its potential to empower educators and parents alike by providing free and easy access to the latest available education research.

“I am a strong advocate for parents getting access to education and what’s going on in the academic field regarding education because that’s where our curriculum development happens and that’s where we can change things regarding exceptional learners.”

Identified with a learning disability at a very young age, Ms. Myles knows better than anyone the challenges some students face in the school system. In fact, she was told by one psychologist that university wouldn’t be an option for her.  “It was really difficult,” she said. “My goal is to be a teacher, and to be in university and I didn’t take no for an answer…I got the support I needed.”

She is channeling this hard-won wisdom and determination into her master’s thesis and academic area of expertise - developing self advocacy in elementary students through self-regulation, self motivation and goal setting so that students can carry on with confidence through all levels of education.

“My passion is with students in special education, in learning disabilities, that’s my joy.”

Ms. Myles said doing her master's at Memorial has been pretty amazing, but Ms. Myles is herself amazing and is certainly making Memorial proud with her hard work and vision of a better and more inclusive education system.

“I am really excited about this opportunity and to learn,” she said. “I am writing a literacy review right now and then hopefully in the future I will be writing more articles and that I will make a difference regarding parents and teachers and their access to articles.”

To learn more about open initiatives at Memorial, visit www.open.mun.ca, or http://guides.library.mun.ca/openaccess.