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Book Clubs

See what the Center for Faculty Excellence is reading during Summer 2025!

Registration is closed. Please check back next semester for more Book Clubs!

After registration closes, you will receive meeting information (including a Zoom /Teams link, if applicable) in an Outlook calendar invitation, and shortly thereafter, the book will be sent to your home.

Bring Your Own Teaching-Related Book

Book Club Facilitator: Meghan Cook, Asst. Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence

Abstract representation of a shoreline with a beach and waves on the beach. Tree leaves hang over the top corners. "Insert Your Book Title Here" In the top middle.

Looking for time and space to finally read that teaching-related book on your shelf? The CFE’s Bring Your Own Teaching-Related Book Club invites you to explore new ideas and reflect on your practice alongside colleagues in a relaxed, discussion-based setting.

Bring any teaching-related book you’d like to read—your own pick, one from past CFE Book Clubs (see past selections below), or borrow from The Spark Shelf, our curated lending library of teaching and learning resources. You can also participate in The Spark Exchange, a dedicated space for swapping teaching-related books—simply bring a book you’ve finished and trade it for one a colleague has contributed. Both The Spark Shelf and The Spark Exchange are located in Gyte 140 on the Hammond campus.

This is a great opportunity to build connections with fellow educators, gain fresh perspectives on teaching and learning, and reinvigorate your instructional approach—all in a relaxed and supportive environment. Whether you are looking to deepen your understanding of a specific teaching strategy or simply enjoy meaningful conversations about education, we invite you to join us!

Book Club Meeting Dates

Virtual Book Club

  • Tuesday, June 10, 10 to 11:30 a.m., virtual only
  • Tuesday, July 8, 10 to 11:30 a.m., virtual only
  • Tuesday, August 5, 10 to 11:30 a.m., virtual only

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change

Book Club Facilitator: MITA CHOUDHURY, Professor of English

A Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change book cover. A green ocean with a book floating in the ocean surrounded by dead things and trash. A bird sits atop the floating book with a cityscape in the background.

Book Author: Elizabeth Kolbert

Book Description (Excerpted from Amazon):

Elizabeth Kolbert’s environmental classic Field Notes from a Catastrophe first developed out of a groundbreaking, National Magazine Award-winning three-part series in The New Yorker. She expanded it into a still-concise yet richly researched and damning book about climate change: a primer on the greatest challenge facing the world today.

But in the years since, the story has continued to develop; the situation has become more dire, even as our understanding grows. Now, Kolbert returns to the defining book of her career. She has added a chapter bringing things up-to-date on the existing text, plus three new chapters–on ocean acidification, the tar sands, and a Danish town that’s gone carbon neutral–making it, again, a must-read for our moment.

Book Club Meeting Dates

Hybrid Book Club

  • Wednesday, June 11, 12:30 to 2 p.m., Hammond campus and with Teams available
  • Wednesday, July 9, 12:30 to 2 p.m., Hammond campus and with Teams available
  • Wednesday, August 6, 12:30 to 2 p.m., Hammond campus and with Teams available

 

Why Fish Don’t Exist (One Book One University book)

Book Club Facilitators: Justin Ness, Continuing Lecturer, Department of English and World Languages and Sarah White, Director of First-Year Writing/Assistant Professor of Practice, Department of English and World Languages

Book cover of "Why Fish Don't Exist". Dark blue background with gold lettering and the tail end of a fish swimming of the cover to the left.

Book Author: Lulu Miller

Book Description (Excerpted from Amazon):

David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But the more of the hidden blueprint of life he uncovered, the harder the universe seemed to try to thwart him. His specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake—which sent more than a thousand discoveries, housed in fragile glass jars, plummeting to the floor. In an instant, his life’s work was shattered.

Many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish that he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world. When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool—a cautionary tale in hubris, or denial. But as her own life slowly unraveled, she began to wonder about him. Perhaps instead he was a model for how to go on when all seemed lost. What she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality, and the world beneath her feet.

Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a wondrous fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.

Book Club Meeting Dates

Virtual Book Club

  • Thursday, May 29, 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., virtual only
  • Thursday, June 12, 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., virtual only
  • Thursday, June 26, 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., virtual only
  • Thursday, July 10, 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., virtual only

Books Read in Previous Book Clubs

Revisit the books that the Center for Faculty Excellence has used in previous book clubs.