CAT’s faculty reading groups are cross-disciplinary gatherings, offering faculty, adjuncts, and faculty development partners an opportunity to meet and discuss books, on a variety of topics related to teaching and learning, in a relaxed and safe environment.
Reading groups typically last three weeks (one 2-hour meeting per week) and are limited to 10 participants. Faculty may participate in only one reading group per semester. Registration is on a first-come-first-served basis. Faculty who agree to participate in a reading group receive a complimentary copy of the book. Reading groups are facilitated by a member of the CAT staff, a faculty fellow or special guest.
We hope that you’ll consider joining a faculty reading group. It’s a great way to meet colleagues from across the university, and be inspired by their ideas and teaching experiences. You’ll find this semester’s list of reading group books below each with a link to register and instructions on how to get your complimentary copy of the book.
Please note: To ensure productive discussion, participants should be able to commit to all scheduled meetings; we ask that you review your calendar to confirm you can attend before signing up.
Using Zines to Support Learner-Centered Pedagogy
In this faculty group, we will learn about how we can use zines to actively engage our students and promote student learning. As a group, we will read and discuss several articles that describe the ways in which faculty across disciplines use zines in their courses. Topics we will discuss include how zines can support student identities, promote personal awareness and critical analysis, and help students learn course concepts. Participants will also experience the zine-making process firsthand as we create one-page mini zines!
Theme: Learning-Centered Teaching
Facilitated by: Christine Martorana
Assistant Teaching Professor, English
Wednesday, June 16th
Wednesday, June 23rd
Wednesday, June 30th
2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Equity Talk to Equity Walk: A Guide for Campus-Based Leadership and Practice
From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: A Guide for Campus-Based Leadership and Practice “…meets educators where they are and offers an effective design framework for what it means to move beyond equity being a buzzword in higher education….This indispensable guide presents academic administrators and staff with advice on building an equity-minded campus culture, aligning strategic priorities and institutional missions to advance equity, understanding equity-minded data analysis, developing campus strategies for making excellence inclusive, and moving from a first-generation equity educator to an equity-minded practitioner.” If you’re ready to walk the walk, please join us in the quest to cultivate an equity-minded campus culture by learning how to overcome obstacles that we may not even realize exist. To put it bluntly, we must acknowledge the “whiteness” that pervades our policies, practices, pedagogy, and yes, even our personal comfort levels which ultimately not only harms our students but also has the potential to bar them from success.
Theme(s): Inclusive Teaching
Facilitated by: Kacee Belcher
Assistant Teaching Professor, English
Thursday, June 24th
Thursday, July 1st
Thursday, July 8th
3:00 p.m to 4:30 p.m.
Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
Free Play weaves improvisation into consilience with the arts, sciences, and spiritual traditions of humanity to make heavy work light. The pandemic and lockdown abruptly and involuntarily immersed us into a world that demanded we pivot at a moment’s notice - an unexpectedly draining form of labor. In this reading group, we will explore how to continue tapping into that space as a state of ‘play’ - joyful improvisation. In addition to the book, the content will emerge from sharing our experiences and praxis.
Theme(s): Learning-Centered Teaching
Facilitated by: Pioneer Winter
Assistant Teaching Professor, Honors College
Tuesday, July 13th
Tuesday, July 20th
Tuesday, July 27th
10:30 a.m. to Noon
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
In her bestselling book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Wilkerson posits that America has a hidden caste system, which uses race as the trait upon which to base the hierarchical structure. This unseen infrastructure impacts how people behave and live in this country today and historically. In this discussion, she compares and contrasts caste systems in Nazi Germany, India, and the United States and identifies the underlying pillars of these structures. During this book group, we will discuss our thoughts regarding viewing the United States in terms of a caste system and how that might apply to our own community and lives. We will reflect on how we might use this framework in our teaching to develop classrooms that do not reflect this hierarchical structure and, instead, work towards dismantling it.
Theme(s): Inclusive Teaching
Facilitated by: Jennifer Abeloff
Clinical Assistant Professor, Social Work
Thursday, July 15th
Thursday, July 22nd
Thursday, July 29th
11:00 a.m to 12:30 p.m.
Below you will find a list of our previous books by year.
Suggestions
Have you recently read something inspiring or thought-provoking?
Would you like CAT to bring back a title we haven't offered in a while?
We’d like to know… send us your suggestions.