Dr. Shawna McMahon (of the CU Denver Department of Bioengineering) and the Office of Inclusion and Outreach met together to discuss ways in which we could engage our faculty, staff and students from both campus for the purpose of creating community. So, our thoughts turned to creating a "CU Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus Reads Project," similar to the program that UCSB has been conducting since 2007. Based on discussions we had at the Latino Research and Policy Center's Summit, Undergraduate Experience Symposium, and the Experiential Learning Center (ELC) Expanding Undergraduate Mentoring Opportunities Workshop last fall (2011), there is a large interest in enhancing the campus community by having networking opportunities among faculty, staff and students. Our goal for this program is to provide a common reading experience with a target dates in conjunction with the celebration of Black History Month. This program will hopefully engage the campus and beyond to a series of conversations, readings, and other activities that explore interdisciplinary issues sparked by the selected reading.
We aim to:
- Encourage the exchange of ideas among members of the campus and communities.
- Highlight academic strengths across the disciplines that can provide us with a broader understanding of our impact on our world and of the choices we make.
- Create a sense of commitment, common interest, and camaraderie on campus while addressing important issues.
The overall format of the project will be as followed: Participants will be divided into small discussion/reading groups (5-10 people per group), which will be led by either a faculty member or post-doc. These groups will help connect faculty, staff and students with on both the Denver Campus and the Anschutz Medical Campus. We will arrange a series of panel discussions regarding key themes and hopefully will be able to bring in the author as a guest lecture.