(This conference presentation is a requirement for fulfillment of the terms and conditions of the Atla grant I received in September 2020.) In Fall 2020, I was fortunate to be chosen as a recipient of an Atla grant to produce an Open Access resource to be used in a class at the Interdenominational Theological Center in June of 2021. At the same time I received the grant, I was chosen for a SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Leadership Program Fellowship, which was to run, coincidentally, concurrent to the timespan of the Atla grant. I will examine my starting knowledge about open access resources and how, through the Fellowship, my growth in knowledge about and advocacy for open access resources informed my work on the Atla grant. I was able to make the grant project, an open-access textbook for a Traditional African Religions course, the capstone project for my SPARC Fellowship. I will walk through the different stages of the project, from the application for the grant to working with faculty to find and create the necessary public domain material to the technological processes involved in making the resource accessible to the implementation of the resource.
