Faculty Reading Groups & Learning Communities
Faculty reading groups and learning communities provide an opportunity for Southwestern colleagues from across campus to discuss common intellectual interests. Over the course of a single semester, each group will meet multiple times to discuss the topic and readings, with group members taking turns leading discussions. And yep: we’ll always have snacks and coffee.
Spring 2021
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Podcasts on Inclusive & Anti-Racist
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Discussion: Fri, February 19, 12:30-1:30
Podcast episodes: Podcasts includes audio documentaries and essays from Code Switch, Educate, Revisionist History, Relatively Prime, and two central Texas universities grappling with their own racial histories.
Sign up: Access the episodes and join the meetings here.
Convene Your Own Book Group
If you and one or more colleagues would like to read a book, set of articles, or even a single article together, the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship will support you. We’ll buy the books and treat you to lunches at the Commons for your meeting (or coffees at the Cove!). You are welcome to meet whenever and wherever is most convenient to you, and we’ll also help with scheduling. To convene a group, contact the CTLS director.
Book options:
- - You may propose any book that you think you and one or two other colleagues would like to read - including books relevant to your disciplinary interests.
- - For more ideas, check out our “Reading Group Ideas” page.
Previous Reading Groups
Spring 2020
- Podcast episodes on inclusive & evidence-based teaching approaches that enable the widest number of students to succeed.
Fall 2019
- Newport, Cal. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (Grand Central, 2016)
- Jensen, Joli. Write No Matter What: Advice for Academics (U of Chicago, 2017)
- Verschelden, Cia. Bandwidth Recovery: Helping Students Reclaim Cognitive Resources Lost to Poverty, Racism, and Social Marginalization (Stylus, 2017)
Spring 2019
- Cultivating Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Our Classrooms - reading and discussion series
Fall 2018
- Howard, Jay R. Discussion in the College Classroom: Getting Your Students Engaged and Participating in Person and Online (Jossey-Bass, 2015).
- “R” Faculty Interest Group
Spring 2018
- Bishop-Clark, Cathy & Dietz-Uhler, Beth. Engaging in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (Stylus, 2012)
- Lang, James M. Small Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 2016)
Fall 2017
- Steele, Claude M. Whistling Vivaldi (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010)
- Silvia, Paul J. Write It Up (APA LifeTools, 2015)
- Wilson, Edward O. Half Earth (W.W. Norton & Company, 2017)
Spring 2017
- Bain, Ken, What The Best College Teachers Do (Harvard UP, 2004).
- Kingsolver, Barbara. Flight Behavior (HarperCollins, 2012)
- Social Justice Reading Group | a collection of articles about teaching social justice
Fall 2016
- Ambrose, Susan A., Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett, Marie K. Norman, How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 2010).
- Germano, William. Getting It Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
- Alexander, M. Jacqui, Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred (Duke University Press, 2005).