The OSPO supports the creation of course work at UCSC that aims to increase the pool of students skilled in working in the context of large open source software communities. Students of these cources find excellent mentors in academia and industry and often become successful open source contributors. The OSPO also hosts guest lecturers on topics specific to open source, including a yearly workshop series on open source.

CSE 117 was first taught in Winter 2016 as CMPS 107 by Carlos Maltzahn, with Andrew Shewmaker as teaching assistant and author of the syllabus, for which Andrew received a 2015 Chancellor’s Graduate Student Teaching Fellowship. The class earned the instructor and the teaching assistant Excellence in Teaching Awards that year. This course teaches students how to get successfully involved in the Linux kernel community and includes guest speakers from industry and the open-source software community.