Office of IDEAS
Fresno State Book Circle
The Office of Innovation and Digital Excellence for Academic Success (IDEAS), in collaboration with the Office of Organizational Excellence, are pleased to host the Fresno State Book Circle. Our Book Circle is open to all Fresno State employees and fosters opportunities for engagement and thoughtful discussions on campus around common themes of interest.
The Book Circle involves meeting and discussing each book over a series of sessions. Participants will receive a complimentary copy of the book during the first book circle session with the expectation that they engage and participate in at least one more session for the book.
Please join our mailing list to be notified of future opportunities to participate.
- This is an invitation, not an obligation.
Everyone has many things going on at work and home, and joining a book circle should not be another thing you HAVE to do. We will share a reading schedule for each time we meet, and we hope that most of the time, you will be able to finish the assigned reading. There will be no shaming if you still have a couple of pages left to read, and we still want you to show up for the reading circle.
- Building community through respect and kindness
We want to provide a safe space for people to build community and get inspired by other people’s ideas. Discussions can get heated, but respect and kindness are always at the heart of what we do.
- Speak Up and Share Your Thoughts
Don’t be shy in speaking up and sharing your thoughts. We’re looking forward to engaging in meaningful conversations.
- Bring Questions
As you read the book, highlight important points and write down your questions. The book circle facilitator will always prepare some guiding questions, but we encourage participants to bring their questions to the discussion.
- Have fun!
And most importantly, let’s have some fun too! Through our book circles, we want to offer you a space for personal enrichment and professional development, but also a place where you come to disconnect from the day-to-day activities and find some inspiration.
Fall 2023 Book Circle
Selected Reading: Living with Intent by Mallika Chopra
Facilitator: Dr. Veena Howard, Professor of Asian Religious Traditions and Director of the M.K. Gandhi Center: Inner Peace & Sarvodaya
As a mom, wife, and social media entrepreneur, Mallika Chopra frequently wondered how she could possibly do one more thing. Like so many, she was taking lousy care of herself and having a difficult time finding richer meaning and purpose in each day, even though that was her business’s mission. Living with Intent is a practical yet deeply personal look at her year-long journey to discover some workable answers. Along the way, she sat down with Andrew Weil, Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson, Daniel Siegel, and others, who shared their valuable input and insight.
Meeting Dates & Times
- Monday, September 11 at noon
- Monday, October 2 at noon
- Wednesday, Ocotber 18 at 5pm (Public Talk w/ the author)
- Monday, November 6 at noon
Facilitator: Veena Howard, Ph.D. Professor of Asian Religious Traditions
Book Circle Insights
“After reading the book...it was a natural next step to share the wealth of this book with the campus and our community. ‘Grit’ is the foundational lecture because I see it as an inherent characteristic of our students – very well reflected in the spirit and ethos of our Valley communities.” ”
-Saúl Jimenez Sandoval, President
Our initial Book Circle read the book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Dr. Angela Duckworth, selected after Duckworth joined the Fresno State community as a featued speaker in the President's Lecture Series. We had engaging conversations about the Grit scale, fluctutations in personal grit over time, whether the professional success of the book's "Paragons of Grit" came at a personal cost, the difference between natural "talent" and skill developed over time through effort, and whether it would be worth studying the grit scores of incoming students to determine if it was a meaningful predictor of persistence and success at Fresno State among other interesting insights.
The Office of IDEAS hosted book circle sessions during the Fall 2022 semester for employees to come together and have conversations about the books Design for Belonging by Susie Wise & The Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. We had representation from a broad range of campus participants, including staff from eleven departments, faculty from 7 departments, and MPPs from 3 departments.
Dr. Jennifer Adame-Walker, Associate Professor of Physical Therapy
"I will absolutely apply many of the concepts from the books. I organize orientation for our incoming students and will incorporate a number of these concepts. I also chair some committees and organize small groups that would be perfect for implementing one or two concepts. My #1 strength (on the Gallup StrengthsFinder) is Harmony. I really enjoy making other people happy and joyful and the ideas from the books make so much sense.I think people should read both books to help create a happier place on campus. If we take just small pieces of each book and implement, I think we could increase the amount of joy and would also help people to focus on the good rather than continuing to commiserate and focus on the bad."
“I highly recommend this book to my colleagues because as a campus we talk about belonging a lot but we do not focus enough on how othering is a factor that blocks belonging.”
-William Hardaway, Book Circle Facilitator
Participants mapped their journeys of belonging on campus and shared their own experiences of feeling belonging and othering. Some participants shared that they feel a stronger connection to the campus community when participating in campus rituals that allows them to be seen and supported for who they are. Other participants have expressed feelings of othering when their concerns were not addressed or they did not receive the support they needed.
As participants shared their journeys of being new to campus it was clear that the first few months of their experience had a large impact on their sense of belonging. Navigating campus procedures and offices for the first time was expressed as a challenge. Moments where colleagues took the time to explain, suggest, or guide elicited feelings of self-confidence.
Othering & Belonging Experiences
How have you been othered by others on campus
- When people set me up as the opposition
- When people do not listed to my concerns
- Being in a meeting with upper administration
- When the first thing I hear is a No
- When a senior faculty member yelled at me in from of everyone for being late
- When no one came to assist me
How have you felt like you belonged on campus?
- Being a part of a a committee/group
- During graduation
- Being invited to and included in a meeting for women of color
- When I am invited to participate
- When my opinion is solicited
About Design for Belonging
The good news is that you can use design to create feelings of inclusion in your organization: rituals that bring people together, spaces that promote calm, roles that create a sense of responsibility, systems that make people feel respected, and more. You can’t force feelings, but in Design for Belonging, author and educator Susie Wise explains how to use simple levers of design to set the stage for belonging to emerge.
Inspiration and stories from leaders and scholars are paired with frameworks, tools, and tips, providing an opportunity to try on different approaches. By the end of the book, you’ll be able to spot where a greater sense of belonging is needed and actively shape your world to cultivate it—whether it’s a party, a high-stakes meeting, or a new national organization.
I recommend this book because it pushes us to think about how we can push past safe, same, and “reasonable” and move toward creating memorable “peaks” for our students and colleagues, even with limited resources.
- Jason McGensy, Book Circle Facilitator
The Power of Moments circle began by sharing both our own personal "defining moments" and the moments the campus affords students and employees and considering what made those moments memorable. Many people referenced recognition ceremonies like graduation and STAR Day’s award ceremony as moments of pride and elevation.
Participants felt that there were opportunities to create more "peak experiences" on our campus through the framework offered by the authors of Power of Moments, focusing on four key elements of events: pride, elevation, connection, and insight. Participants shared specific existing moments they felt could really be leveraged to create a lasting impact:
- Dog Days
- Student acceptance communications
- New hire on-boarding
- First day of class
- All-staff assembly
- Faculty/candidate on-campus interviews
About The Power of Moments
While human lives are endlessly variable, our most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember twenty years later? What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers? What if you had a better sense of how to create memories that matter for your children?
Many of the defining moments in our lives are the result of accident or luck—but why would we leave our most meaningful, memorable moments to chance when we can create them? The Power of Moments shows us how to be the author of richer experiences.
Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown is a book I normally would not have picked up, but thanks to The Book Circle, I am so glad I did. Brown’s book is a guide to understanding our feelings, and being able to share our feelings is paramount to communication. In the Book Circle, Dr. Cronin provided a safe place for colleagues from a wide range of departments to explore our experiences and emotions. Time well spent. Thank you!
- Ingrid Fellows, Ph.D., Lecturer in Chemistry & Biochemistry
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience was selected for the Book Circle and facilitated by Dr. Travis Cronin, Assistant Professor of Social Work. Travis led the group on wide-ranging and deep conversations about emotional granularity, developing more precise language for the very human journeys through envy, joy, anguish, self-esteem, humiliation, empathy, compassion, and more and the ways that layers of emotions develop from our various contexts and reveal themselves across our lives and work.
Travis also innovated the format of the book circle this term, opting to have the participants read the introduction and conclusion first, to set a context for the rest of the book material, inviting participants to "choose their own adventure" through the book.
Some related resources shared during the circle discussions are below:
- TEDx Talk: Kristen Neff - The Space Between Self-Esteem & Self-Compassion
- Take the Self-Compassion Test
About Atlas of the Heart
If we want to find the way back to ourselves and one another, we need language and the grounded confidence to both tell our stories and to be stewards of the stories that we hear. In Atlas of the Heart, we explore eighty-seven of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human and walk through a new framework for cultivating meaningful connection. This is for the mapmakers and travelers in all of us.
I so enjoyed this book circle on so many levels. First of all the book, but more importantly, the sharing of our personal stories that went on in our groups, creating a safe space to honor our losses…I am glad for the time we all spent together this summer. Thank you for creating this space to build our circle on campus.
- Lisa Bell, University Public Information Officer
Crying in H-Mart was selected for the Book Circle and facilitated by Georgianna Negron-Long, Health Educator in the Student Health and Counseling Center. Georgianna led the group in highly reflective conversations about identity, grief, family, traditions and food and the ways that these aspects of life connect us to each other and ourselves.
As the book focused much on the associations we make between people, memories, and food, we concluded the summer book circle with a day of sharing in which each participant brought a food item to share that resonated with their own personal experience to share with the group.
