Archive 2021-2022 Intellectual Theme: #Resilience
The Cultural and Intellectual Community Council (CICC) selects the annual intellectual theme and funds related programming during the academic year. The theme for CICC sponsored programs in 2021-22 is #Resilience.
We chose the intellectual theme Resilience to provide an opportunity for our community to reflect on our own stories and to rebuild our trust in life and to heal.
CICC selected The Deepest Well, a book by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, as our summer reading for the class of 2025. Dr. Burke garnered national recognition for her work linking adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress with harmful effects to physical and psychological health later in life. She was elected in 2019 to be the first Surgeon General of California.
We all have experienced trauma and loss in our lives. We hope that reading this book will deepen our understanding of individual differences in handling challenges. We expect that these conversations will enhance our compassion for each other and will empower us to reframe what happened to us. Our community day features speakers who will share personal stories, scientific evidence, and strategies that help people thrive in the face of adversity.
Archive 2020-2021 Intellectual Theme: Visibility
Sponsored by the Cultural and Intellectual Community Council (CICC)
Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Award Winning Play “Sweat”
Live Performance: September 2, 2020 at 2pm
Recorded Performances: September 2nd at 8pm, September 3rd at 7pm & September 4th at 11am and 7pm
The summer reading text for the class of 2024 is Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Award Winning Play Sweat. This play was chosen as part of next year’s Cultural and Intellectual Community Council’s [CICC] intellectual theme, “Visibility”.
Our annual Community Learning Day and Teach-In will be held on September 2nd. On that day we will offer workshops on topics related to the theme as well as the opportunity to see a production of the play.
In Sweat, Nottage explores issues that are front and center in American discourse through the examination of a community struggling with economic decline. While these communities are in many ways the backbone of America, their voices are not always heard.
With this year’s theme of Visibility, TCNJ is asking whose voices are heard, whose are silenced, which voices are privileged and which are undervalued? As we approach another election, we recognize that many of our students will have their first opportunity to vote for our highest office. We hope that this play opens up discussions that will help engage our students’ curiosity about who we are as a country and encourage them to be open to all voices. We want our students to really see one another and invite new possibilities as they welcome visibility from one another and claim it for themselves.
Archive 2019-2021 Intellectual Theme: #ClimateMatters: Listening, Reflecting, and Acting
Community Learning Day Keynote Lecture by Darnell Moore
12:00-1:30 PM
Kendall Hall, Main Auditorium, September 4, 2019
The College of New Jersey
Darnell Moore’s No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America. The book was chosen as part of next year’s Cultural and Intellectual Community Council [CICC] intellectual theme, “#ClimateMatters: Listening, Reflecting, and Acting”. A key part of the mission at TCNJ is inclusiveness and “#ClimateMatters: Listening, Reflecting, and Acting” is intended to promote campus-wide discussions that focus on the lived environment on campus. It is about our local community, composed of highly talented students, faculty, staff and alumni. We all come from different backgrounds and bring our own unique stories. In this climate we are free to grow, challenge ideas and develop professional identities. It is in this climate where we can listen to different perspectives and engage in conversations that urge us to expand our perspectives on the world. It is in this climate where we can reflect on our past experiences and question our own biases. And, it is in this climate where we can take action when we are confronted with injustice.
Archive 2018-2019 Intellectual Theme: Inclusiveness
Community Learning Day Keynote Lecture by Jennine Capó Crucet
12:00-1:30 PM
Kendall Hall, Main Auditorium, September 26, 2018
The College of New Jersey
Jennine Capó Crucet is the author of Make Your Home Among Strangers, winner of the International Latino Book Award for Best Latino-Themed Fiction, and How to Leave Hialeah, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was named a Best Book of the Year by te Miami Herald and the Latinidad List. A PEN/O. Henry Prize winner and Bread Loaf Fellow, Crucet was raised in Miami and is currently an assistant professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Archive 2017-2018 Intellectual Theme: Who We Are
Community Learning Day Keynote Lecture by Dr. Rachel Pearson
12:00-1:30 PM
Kendall Hall, Main Auditorium, September 27, 2017
The College of New Jersey
Dr. Pearson, a graduate of the MD/PhD program in medical humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, reflects on her experience in medical school and her training as a physician in community health clinics. Her memoir considers the intersections of class, gender, sexual identity, race and ethnicity as they relate to the delivery of medical care in the United States. Prior to attending medical school, Dr. Pearson studied in the MFA program in creative writing at Columbia University.
Archive 2016-2017 Intellectual Theme: Toward Just and Sustainable Communities
Community Learning Day Keynote Lecture by Will Allen
12:00-1:20 PM
Kendall Hall, Main Auditorium, September 7, 2016
The College of New Jersey
Will Allen is the autho
r of The Good Food Revolution and the CEO of Growing Power, Inc., of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Established in 1993, Growing Power serves as a model for urban agriculturalists. Allen’s operation supports closed-loop aquaculture and vermiculture composting and provides training and support for a network of farmers across the country. Allen’s work in creating sustainable agriculture that supports local urban communities has been recognized by the Ford, Kellogg, and MacArthur Foundations, and has been featured in the film Fresh (2009). Allen’s commitment to healthy soils, healthy communities, and healthy local economies aligns perfectly with TCNJ’s 2016-2017 Intellectual Theme: Toward Just and Sustainable Communities.
Archive 2015-2016 Intellectual Theme: College and Change
Community Learning Day Keynote Lecture by David Orr
12:00-1:20 PM
Kendall Hall, Main Auditorium, October 7, 2015
The College of New Jersey
David W. Orr is P
aul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and senior adviser to the president of Oberlin College. He is a founding editor of the journal Solutions, and serves as the executive director of the Oberlin Project, a collaborative effort of the city of Oberlin, Oberlin College, and private and institutional partners to improve the resilience, prosperity, and sustainability of Oberlin.
Orr is the author of seven books, including Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009) and coeditor of three others. He has authored nearly 200 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications.
He has been awarded seven honorary degrees and a dozen other awards including a Lyndhurst Prize, a National Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, and a Visionary Leadership Award from Second Nature. Orr is a frequent lecturer at colleges and universities throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.
At Oberlin, he spearheaded the effort to design, fund, and build the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building of the past 30 years,” and as “one of 30 milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Archive: 2014-2015 Intellectual Theme: Justice
Community Learning Day Keynote Lecture by Wes Moore
Kendall Hall, Main Auditorium, October 8, 2014
12:00-1:20 PM
The College of New Jersey
Wes Moore is a Rhodes Scholar and an Army combat veteran. As a White House Fellow, he worked as a special assistant to Secretary Condoleezza Rice at the State Department. He was a featured speaker at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, was named one of Ebony magazine’s Top 30 Leaders Under 30 (2007), and, most recently, was dubbed one of the top young business leaders in New York by Crain’s New York Business. He works in New York City, and is the author of this year’s Summer Reading selection at TCNJ: The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates.
Sponsored by the Cultural and Intellectual Community Program Council (CICPC), the New Jersey Council for the Humanities (NJCH), School of Business, School of Engineering, & School of Humanities & Social Sciences
Archive: 2013-2014 Intellectual Theme: Constructing the Past
Community Learning Day Keynote Lecture by Jonathan M. Katz
Kendall Hall, Main Auditorium, October 2, 2013
12:00-1:20 PM
The College of New Jersey
Jonathan M. Katz is the 2010 recipient of the medill Medal for Courage in Journalism and the 2012 winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for The Big Truck That Went By. He wrote and edited for the Associated Press for seven years, three and a half of which he spent as a correspondent in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Katz has also reported from the Dominican Republic, China, Israel, the West Bank, Washington, New York, Mexico, and around the Caribbean. He is a graduate of Northwestern University.
Sponsored by the Cultural and Intellectual Community Program Council, Liberal Learning, the School of Business, the School of Engineering, the School of Nursing, Health & Exercise Science, the School of Science, and the TCNJ Library.