Book Circles - Summer 2021
The CTLT hosts book circles every academic quarter and during summers. They are open to all Cal Poly educators. Selected books draw from a broad array of thoughtful and inspiring educational literature. These are opportunities to enrich your knowledge about timely and significant topics related to higher education while engaging with colleagues from across campus. Themes for book circle selections include: inclusive educators, mastery teaching, mindful educators, navigating academia, educating for sustainability, and writing instruction. Participants receive a complimentary copy of the selected book with the expectation that they will engage in three or more discussion sessions.
Our cumulative Book Circles list of titles is available here
Register for Summer 2021 Book Circles
Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization
by Scott barry kaufman
The students that we will greet in the fall will be a cohort of young adults with deep and broad challenges to their well-being. For years, national reports of college students have tracked increasing anxiety, exhaustion, sadness, loneliness, and depression. It is no surprise that during the pandemic studies (examples here and here) confirm that college students' well-being has worsened.
Our students need campus educators to be better prepared to incorporate these insights. This book is not a handbook to infuse our teaching with well-being support (we're still looking for that one!), but it is a resource for information and inspiration to contemplate our priorities as educators.
Dr. Kaufman builds on a well-known framework (Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs) to correct common misunderstandings about that framework and to offer an updated version newly informed by Maslow's personal journals and unpublished work. The result is a new lens for understanding the dimensions of fundamental human needs and their interrelationships. The book also offers guidance for putting these insights into practice, which we can explore for ways to apply to our work as educators. We will be better prepared and more effective to teach students who have been through a year of chronic micro- and macro-traumas, which can hinder their ability to learn. We just might also learn some ideas that we can use to nurture our own well-being.
- Tuesdays (12:10-1 pm) Aug 3, 10, 17, 24
OR - Wednesdays (12:10-1 pm); Aug 4, 11, 18, 25
Meeting Location: Online in Zoom (link will be sent to registrants)
Facilitator: Dr. Patrick O'Sullivan, CTLT Director
A "Mindful Educator" selection
Cheating Lessons: Learning From Academic Dishonesty
by James M. Lang
Few topics generate as much passionate debate among university educators as student cheating, especially as higher ed instruction has moved online in academic year 2020-2021. Faculty often want to learn effective methods for "catching cheaters" and a sizable software industry has emerged offering high-tech "solutions" in response.
Author James M. Lang takes a different approach: He views instances of cheating as opportunities for student learning as well as instructor reflection about their pedagogical practices. His take-home point is that the most effective strategies that we can use to reduce cheating also happen to be methods that improve both students' learning and instructors' teaching.
Meeting Dates & Times:
- Tuesdays, 10:10-11:00am, June 29, July 6, 13
Meeting Location: Online in Zoom (link will be sent to registrants)
Facilitator: Dr. Dianna Winslow, CTLT Assistant Director
A "Mastery Teaching" selection
