“Practicing What We Preach”: Empire State University professor launches free social justice textbook
(SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY — August 18, 2025) Empire State University staff, faculty, and students don’t just talk about access—they strive to make it happen, often identifying a need and fulfilling it. For Cailyn Green, assistant professor of Addiction Studies, that need was access to a free, up-to-date social justice textbook with interactive learning components that faculty can assign without incurring high costs for students.
The idea for the textbook was born out of brainstorming materials for a new Human Services class, where Green noticed “the textbooks that exist out there were good, but they were also very expensive … we were sitting there, going to ourselves, ‘we’re going to make a student pay $400 for a textbook?” The concept seemed antithetical to the essence of a class rooted in inclusivity and access, leading Green to begin compiling library articles and resources into a free pamphlet to supplement learning. “It ended up turning into a gigantic, full-blown textbook, mostly because we had such amazing support from SUNY, from our dean, from our departmental chair, and other colleagues. The SUNY Empire library helped us get a grant to move this forward. People saw the benefit in what we were doing,” explains Green.
As a New York state-credentialed alcoholism and substance abuse counselor specializing in the aid of recently incarcerated individuals, Green developed a passion for social justice. Her work with individuals affected by the carceral system evidenced a pressing need to break down barriers to resources. This translated to her work at Empire State University, where she has taught for the past three years.
“We have a very specific population of students here that use SUNY Empire for a reason. They chose us because we’re flexible, because we try to work with students and their financial abilities and access to resources,” says Green. It was for this reason that she committed to facilitating low-cost or free resources, leading to the creation of the textbook “Social Justice & Advocacy in Human Services,” which is an open educational resource (OER).
Such resources are free to access for all—in the case of Green and her coauthors’ text, it was also written and published for free. Moreover, the group of authors opted to forgo copyrighting the textbook, meaning that it can be “remixed, remade, changed, adjusted any way that someone wants to adjust it. We chose to do it this way because we have a textbook with 15 chapters, but every chapter is very siloed,” she says. In doing so, instructors who use it may select a range of chapters that align with their course instead of having to assign the entire book. “It’s not about our names. It’s about getting a high-quality, double peer-reviewed, full textbook in the hands of instructors and students,” emphasizes Green.
The textbook incorporates many features that counteract the typical drawbacks of OERs, which include a lack of test banks and discussion questions as well as most texts not being peer-reviewed. Green and her coauthors ensured the book was double peer-reviewed and contained discussion questions, interactive activities, linkable online modules made possible by SUNY Empire employees Shannon Pritting, Jennifer Collins and Heather Bennett, and links to external resources such as informative YouTube videos to encourage instructors to use it. This way, it can not only provide updated, comprehensive material about the social justice field, but also be a logistically convenient option that saves instructors the time it takes to write quizzes and activities themselves.
The OER was co-authored by Green and Bernadete DeJonge, with contributions from experts Nikki Golden, Kimberly Brayton, Carrie Steinman, and Shannon Raybold. “[DeJonge] was my main coauthor; she and I started this project. Then, we said, ‘let’s find other experts on these topics to help us write them,’ because we’re all about sharing publications, sharing research … but also, I’m not an expert in all these topics, and neither was Dr. DeJonge. So, we found some wonderful experts to work with us on creating strong content, and this took us three years to do. This wasn’t rushed through by any means,” Green comments.
The resource can be accessed via the SUNY Milne Library Creative Commons, as Digital Publishing Services Manager Allison Brown and Milne Library staff “offered their services to do the publishing and editing for free … this would not look the way it is without them,” Green says appreciatively. With many carefully considered layers that align the project with Empire State University’s commitment to broaden access to higher education, Green sees a great potential for it to be used by students and instructors alike—“People could use this beyond only for this class, and they’ll really benefit from the same message of practicing what we preach regarding a social justice textbook.”