Community Read
Community Read is a program of the Faculty Senate's First Year Experience Committee (co-chairs Kristin Poling and Michael McDonald), similar to the NEA Big Read. Students, especially first-year students, tackle topics across disciplines.
Our campus Community Read selection for the 2024-2025 academic year is Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions About What to Believe Online, by Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg, University of Chicago Press, 2023.
Verified offers an evidence-based approach to web literacy to help readers develop concrete strategies and habits for navigating text, images, and videos online--skills even more crucial in an election year, and with increasing student reliance on unverified AI images and text. The approach starts with foundational methods like lateral reading and the SIFT method and adds specific techniques for Google searches, deceptive videos, TikTok conspiracies, and stealth advertising. Each chapter includes real-world examples, demonstrating how misinformation spreads, and how the methods offered can interrupt those processes.
The research behind Verified’s methods suggests that digital literacy needs to be taught and reinforced across the curriculum. We have an opportunity to make a real difference in how our students navigate information online by engaging in campus-wide programming with this book.
If you are considering adopting Verified in any of your courses, please request an instructor ebook from University of Chicago Press.
You may also prepare for next year now:
- Read the first chapter of Verified online
- Listen to this interview with co-author Mike Caulfield on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast with Bonnie Stochoviak
- Explore this teaching module on lateral reading from co-author Sam Wineburg’s Civic Online Reasoning program (access free with registration)
A pilot of the book and common assignments will occur throughout the summer 2024 term. In the fall term, First Year Seminars will use the book, with sample assignments created by Mardigian Library and Hub staff. Because these skills are crucial in all disciplines, we encourage all instructors to consider using book selections or related assignments in your classes, adapted to the needs of your discipline. Please reach out to the Faculty Senate First Year Experience Committee with any questions or ideas.
Our reading last year was Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging, by Ghassan Zeineddine, Nabeel Abraham, and Sally Howell. In 2022-2023,we read All We Can Save, 60 essays and poems related to the climate crisis, edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson and part of the All We Can Save Project. In 2021-2022 we read William D. Lopez's Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid, which traces economic, social, psychological, health, and educational fallout from a 2013 ICE raid in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Dr. Lopez is assistant professor at the UM School of Public Health. The 2020-2021 book was How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi. Faculty members created videos on book chapters for class use, now on the UM YouTube playlist, and the Mardigian Library listed antiracism resources. Our first selection, for 2019-2020, was Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, on the woman whose famed HeLa cells underlie countless medical breakthroughs.
- Co-chair: Michael McDonald, Academic Affairs: CASL Composition & Rhetoric (Term expires 08/31/2025)
- Co-chair: Kristin Poling, Academic Affairs: CASL History (Term expires 08/31/2025)
- Anne Dempsey, Academic Affairs: Student Engagement Librarian, Mardigian Library (Term expires 08/31/2025)
- Tian An Wong: Academic Affairs: CASL Mathematics (Term expires 08/31/2026)
- Natalie Sampson, Academic Affairs: CEHHS Environmental Health (Term expires 08/31/2026)
- Jennifer Coon, Academic Affairs: COB (Term expires 08/31/2026)
- Nicholas Iannarino, Academic Affairs: CASL Communication (Term expires 08/31/2026)
- Lynda Dioszegi, Student Affairs, Senior Advisor, START, ex officio
- Amy Finley, Student Affairs: Dean of Students, ex officio
- Jennifer Kowalczyk, Student Affairs: Coordinator, Campus & Family Programs, ex officio
- Kevin Lewtschanyn, Enrollment Management: Director of EM Communication and Events, ex officio
Teaching Workshop for Faculty, Thursday, May 25, 2023, 2:00 pm, Virtual: Zoom
Faculty Small Grants Program, through April 2024.
Authors' Discussion, Thursday, November 9, 2023, 4:00 to 5:30 pm, Mardigian
Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, Arab American Authors, April 11, 5:50-7:30, Mardigian
October 14 and 15th: Students planted trees with the Wildlife Habitat Council, Friends of the Rouge and National Fish and Wildlife Service.
October 28, 9:00 am to 1:00 pm: Dearborn-SHINES schoolyard garden project. Student volunteer activities included weeding, painting, spreading mulch, and topping soil at selected Dearborn Public Schools.
November 10, 7:00-8:30 pm: Film and Panel Discussion: In the Land of Palm Oil. This virtual webinar was organized by Palm to Palm: a student-led, tri-campus initiative dedicated to ending exploitation of humans and wildlife in tropical regions. Panelists included: Emmanuela Shinta (Indonesian social activist), Denise Dragiewicz (film director), Jocelyn Zuckerman (author, Planet Palm: How Palm Oil Ended Up in Everything―and Endangered the World), Dr. Anne Russon (York U psychologist and primatologist), and Dr. Andrew J Marshall (UM anthropologist and primatologist). About the film. About Palm to Palm. About Ranu Welum Foundation, an Indonesian NGO purchasing land to protect endangered species from palm oil development:
November 17, 7:00-8:30pm: Virtual webinar panel discussion on the revival of the River Rouge, sponsored by the Environmental Interpretive Center and the Friends of the Rouge. Panelists included: Orin Gelderloos - Professor Emeritus of Biology and Environmental Studies, UM-Dearborn, John Hartig - Visiting Scholar, University of Windsor's Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, Sally Petrella - Monitoring Manager, Friends of the Rouge, and Cyndi Ross - Restoration Manager, Friends of the Rouge.