Jay Margalus receives VIVA Open Adopt Grant The professor of entrepreneurship and leadership will use the funds to create an open-source materials course.

By Lily Caldwell
February 13, 2025

Jay Margalus, Johnson Professor of Entrepreneurship and Leadership and director of the Connolly Center for Entrepreneurship at Washington and Lee University, recently received a VIVA Open Adopt Grant from the Virtual Library of Virginia to convert his business class, Makers’ Workshop, into an open-source materials course.

VIVA Open Adopt Grants fund instructors while they integrate existing open education resources (OER) into their syllabus. The grant’s focus is on reducing the financial and technical limitations of higher education for Virginia students by ensuring that its results are available to educators. The recourses, including presentations and course syllabi, are accessible at the VIVA hub.

Makers’ Workshop is intended to teach students low- and high-fidelity prototyping, design thinking and agile methodology across digital and physical mediums. The adoption of VIVA and other open-source materials will provide students with free and direct access to tutorials, tools and design software which will enable them to engage in hands-on learning in a semi-structured learning pathway. The course will be offered Fall Term 2025 and then will be available on the VIVA repository with free access to course materials, slides and handouts.

“Receiving this grant is meaningful because it aligns with my commitment to fostering accessible, hands-on education in entrepreneurship and design,” said Margalus. “I’ve been working in the open-source community for almost two decades now. Additionally, it sets an example for how OER can be implemented across the university, potentially encouraging other departments to consider similar transitions.”

Margalus is in his second year as a faculty member at W&L. He previously served as the founding director of maker innovation at DePaul University’s Idea Realization Lab and a demo engineer at MapR Technologies. Margalus earned a Bachelor of Science in political science and government from North Central College and a Master of Science in human computer interaction from DePaul University.

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