Our Team

Susie Henderson, Orange Grove Project Director
Robin Donaldson, Orange Grove Project Manager
Cathy Alfano, Open Access Textbook Project, Project Manager
Orange Grove Committee Members

Ms. Susie Henderson is The Orange Grove Project Director and Associate Executive Director of the Florida Distance Learning Consortium (FDLC). As FDLC Associate Executive Director, Ms. Henderson works with the 39 post secondary institutions in Florida to leverage resources, facilitate statewide communication and cooperation, and develop beneficial statewide initiatives. Ms. Henderson also serves as the Director of The Orange Grove, a standards based K20 learning object repository for the state of Florida. In this role, she works to define and operationalize the project through the development of policies and the effective use of state and local resources. Ms. Henderson also conducts workshops on a range of topics.

She serves on and chairs regional and national committees in the U.S., such as the Advisory Board of the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Co-Lab in Madison, Wisconsin; the OCLC e-learning committee; the Southern Regional Education Board´s (SREB) Distance Learning Policy Laboratory and SCORE Project (Shareable Content Object Registry for Education); and also MiCTA´s 2005 National e-Learning RFP committee. Ms. Henderson received a three year FIPSE grant for 2006-09 for the development of a Blueprint to establish statewide or institutional repositories. In cooperation with the SREB, Ms. Henderson has written numerous papers related to learning objects, technical standards and metadata. She has also served as a technology and e-learning consultant with other states and the government of Malaysia. Within Florida, she directed the statewide 2000 Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) Distance Learning Substantive Change visit and worked as a consultant to develop the Florida Department of Education´s Alternative Certification Program. Ms. Henderson holds a Master of Science from Florida State University in Instructional Systems and a B.A. in Psychology and Asian Studies from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota.

Robin Donaldson

As the Instructional Design Specialist for the Florida Distance Learning Consortium, Robin’s main duty is that of Project Manager for The Orange Grove, Florida’s Digital Repository. Robin provides project and instructional design leadership in the maintenance and continued development and deployment of The Orange Grove. Robin came to us from Tallahassee Community College in January 2010 where she worked with faculty in the design, development, implementation, and review of distance learning courses. She has also assisted in the research and development of Navy guidelines for online instructor competencies, ratios, interactions, and evaluation. Robin holds a M.S. in Information Studies and a B.A. in Art Education from Florida State University and is currently working on her dissertation in Communications and Information at FSU. Her area of research is technology acceptance and use of Mobile Learning.

Ms. Cathy Alfano is the project manager. Cathy played a major role in the implementation of The Orange Grove repository through managing and supporting repository users, and by assisting in policy and process creation. Her experience includes project management for U.S. Navy grant projects related to electronic performance support tools and implementing distance initiatives, and in online degree program implementation and evaluation. Cathy holds a M.S. in Instructional Systems from Florida State University and a B. A. in English from the University of Florida.