March 15, 2010
Greetings GLACUHO Members:
The Professional Foundations Committee sees dialogue and collaboration as a key component to being an effective, educated, and enthusiastic housing professional. To that end, we have developed a Book Club for the region. Through this club, we will read a common book (or sections of books) and discuss them as a larger group via a gotmeeting. As an incentive, those who participate in the book club will also have the chance to talk to experienced professionals and educators at a culminating event at the duration of the timeline established for each book.
The Professional Foundations Committee is looking at three different books over the next year; the first starting now and completing with a final event in June, the next starts after traditional opening in the Residence Halls until the conference (likely the conference book) and then one post-conference topical book.
This is a chance for people from across the region, in a variety of roles, to discuss current topics and ideas set forth by student affairs researchers and practitioners. Therefore, if you are in graduate school, recently entered the field, or have been a professional for 20 years, the GLACUHO Book Club can be valuable. You will connect with folks from around the region on interesting topics and provide your perspective on ideas within the field. The discussions can go in any direction the participants want to take them.
The first book is outlined below with specifics on the timeframe and details about participating in the book club. Please email Tim O'Malley (tomalley@aii.edu) if you are interested in participating, no matter how much time you can contribute. You are not fully committed to reading the whole book, but you will be added to a distribution list of people explaining how to discuss the book online and reminders/encouragement.
Please contact Lisa Ortiz (lisaortiz@ferris.edu) or Tim O'Malley (tomalley@aii.edu) for questions and more information!
Sincerely,
Professional Foundations Committee
GLACUHO
"No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are." - Paulo Freire
Book #2 - Curious Incident of Dog in the Night-Time
Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red-but not yellow or brown-foods and screams when he is touched. Strange as he may seem, other people are far more of a conundrum to him, for he lacks the intuitive "theory of mind" by which most of us sense what's going on in other people's heads. When his neighbor's poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the killer. As the mystery leads him to the secrets of his parents' broken marriage and then into an odyssey to find his place in the world, he must fall back on deductive logic to navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that remains a closed book to him. In the hands of first-time novelist Haddon, Christopher is a fascinating case study and, above all, a sympathetic boy: not closed off, as the stereotype would have it, but too open-overwhelmed by sensations, bereft of the filters through which normal people screen their surroundings. Christopher can only make sense of the chaos of stimuli by imposing arbitrary patterns ("4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day when I don't speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don't eat my lunch and Take No Risks"). His literal-minded observations make for a kind of poetic sensibility and a poignant evocation of character. Though Christopher insists, "This will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them," the novel brims with touching, ironic humor. The result is an eye-opening work in a unique and compelling literary voice.