Apereo Foundation Fast Interviews Stephanie Lieggi

Apereo Board Member and Executive Director of the Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS) at UC Santa Cruz Stephanie Lieggi joins Apereo Foundation Fast to talk at the 22nd Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE 22x) and her presentation titled Building a Network of Open Source Program Offices at the University of California.
 

Apereo Foundation Fast (AFF): Welcome, Stephanie! We're excited to talk to you about your upcoming presentation at the 2025 SCaLE 22x conference. Please tell us a bit about your co-presenter.

Stephanie Lieggi (SL): Absolutely! My co-presenter is Tim Dennis, Director of the Data Science Center at UCLA. He is one of our key partners in the UC OSPO Network project and leads our Education Working Group.
 

AFF: Your session at SCaLE 22x is titled Building a Network of Open Source Program Offices at the University of California. Why did you choose SCaLE as the venue for this talk? 

SL: SCaLE is a unique conference that brings together industry professionals, open source communities, and academic researchers. We wanted to present here to reach these diverse audiences and explore collaborations that could further the work of our OSPO network. Since it’s a California-focused event, it also gives us a chance to introduce the OSPO approach to state government and educational institutions in the region. 
 

AFF: What about Apereo members—why should they consider attending SCaLE 22x or future SCaLE events?

SL: SCaLE is a vibrant conference with a mix of technical and policy-related discussions. It’s a fantastic venue for finding new collaborations and sharing experiences on important open source topics like community building, licensing, and sustainability. I would encourage Apereo members, especially those from West Coast institutions, to attend. If Apereo has a presence at SCaLE in the future, it would be an excellent opportunity to connect with this engaged audience.
 

AFF: How can universities interested in the OSPO model you’ve developed get more information?

SL: They can attend our session at SCaLE, of course, but we also have a website—ucospo.net—that provides background information on our network and ongoing efforts.
 

AFF: What were some of the key “ah-ha” moments during the process of forming this OSPO network across six UC campuses?

SL: Although the Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS) has been around since 2015, supporting academic researchers in open source alongside industry partners, we realized that many of our efforts to promote open source within the university went beyond the typical scope of a research center. In 2020, as we collaborated with other universities building OSPOs, it became clear that much of what we wanted to achieve at CROSS aligned with the responsibilities of an academic OSPO.

We secured our first Sloan Foundation grant for a campus OSPO in 2022, with a long-term goal of expanding the model across the University of California (UC) system. In 2024, Sloan announced a new funding opportunity for university OSPOs, and we discovered multiple UC campuses eager to participate. That’s when we developed a proposal that went beyond individual campus initiatives and instead aimed to build a system-wide network. Sloan approved our proposal in Spring 2024, and we officially launched the UC OSPO Network in May 2024.
 

AFF: What lessons have you learned from coordinating this initiative across six UC campuses?

SL: One key lesson is that the network must remain flexible and responsive to the existing culture of both the UC system as a whole and individual campuses. Each UC campus operates with a high degree of autonomy, so a top-down approach from the UC Office of the President (UCOP) wouldn’t have been as effective. Instead, we allowed each campus to shape its OSPO to fit local needs while still leveraging shared resources and expertise across the network.

Another major lesson is the importance of collaboration. No single campus needs to do everything on its own, but by working together, we create collective achievements that benefit everyone. This collaborative approach also helps us connect researchers and identify synergies across institutions.

Finally, we’ve been continuously surprised by who our biggest champions are. While OSPOs are typically housed within libraries, engineering, or computer science departments, we’ve also gained strong support from research IT, technology transfer offices, and IT procurement teams. We’re also uncovering the significant contributions that UC staff and researchers are making to open source projects, and we see a major opportunity for academic OSPOs to foster stronger communities around these valuable external projects.

AFF: That’s fascinating! Thank you, Stephanie, for sharing these insights. We look forward to your presentation at SCaLE in Pasadena and hope to see more Apereo members engaging with the OSPO model in the future!

SL: Thank you! I appreciate the opportunity to share our work and encourage more universities to explore the OSPO model.