Education program manager
Who should run this program¶
The single biggest predictor of whether a college's open source initiative survives its first year is whether the right person is running it. Here is what that person looks like.
The faculty champion¶
The faculty champion does not need to be a FOSS expert. They need to be genuinely curious about open source, willing to learn in public, and respected enough by their peers to influence decisions. The best faculty champions are usually people who already use open source tools in their own research or teaching, even if informally.
What to look for: A track record of trying new things in the classroom. Comfort with ambiguity and incremental progress. Willingness to attend community events outside the institution. An existing relationship with at least one person in the tech industry or open source community. An ability to translate between the language of academia and the language of software development.
What to avoid: Someone who will wait for a full policy framework before starting. Someone who sees this as an administrative task rather than a community-building one.
The honorary expert or industry advisor¶
An honorary expert is typically someone who has worked in open source professionally and is willing to advise the institution without being on the payroll. They might be a maintainer of a known FOSS project, an engineer at a company with a strong open source practice, or someone who has run open source program in another institution.
What to look for: A person who is still actively involved in the FOSS community, not someone who was involved ten years ago. Someone who can speak directly to students and is willing to come to campus once or twice a semester. Someone who has skin in the game: they should care about whether the initiative works.
The program manager¶
For larger institutions, a dedicated program manager is the most sustainable model. This is not a senior academic role; it is an operational one. The program manager coordinates between departments, tracks what is working, runs events, manages the FOSS Cell, and keeps the initiative moving between the moments when faculty champions are distracted by teaching and research.
What to look for: A background in community management, developer relations, or tech education rather than pure engineering. Experience running events or program, not just attending them. A personal history of open source contribution, even if informal. The ability to say no to things that do not move the core goals forward. Comfort communicating with both students and senior faculty.
Background check: Ask candidates to show you something they have contributed to publicly. A public code hosting profile (Codeberg, GitLab, GitHub or similar), a Wikipedia edit history, a forum post where they helped someone debug something. If they cannot show you anything, they have not actually lived in the community they will be asked to build.
A note on who will not work: Academic administrators who have no experience in the FOSS community will slow things down more than they speed them up.