As Achieving the Dream’s Director of Open and Digital Learning, Dr. Sebastian helps ATD’s Network colleges advance open and digital teaching and learning practices to support equitable outcomes for students and facilitate whole college transformation. Dr. Sebastian is a national expert on the effective adoption and use of open educational resources and has experience leading a number of innovative, large-scale OER projects, including ATD’s OER Degree Initiative. He currently leads ATD’s Teaching with OER grant, provides OER coaching and Teaching and Learning supports to ATD colleges, and supports other innovative initiatives focused on open and digital learning. Richard represents ATD in the field and at local, national, and international convenings.

Before joining ATD, Richard was the Director of Teaching and Learning Technologies for the Virginia Community College System, providing vision, leadership, and support for effective use of teaching and learning technologies for the 23 colleges in the state. He served as the Principal Investigator of the Zx23 Project, an effort to scale OER degrees across the VCCS, and was a founding member of the Open Virginia Advisory Committee (OVAC), a statewide committee investigating ways to reduce textbook costs for Virginia’s students. He received his doctorate in education from the University of Virginia.