New and exciting ideas are brewing in a number professors’ heads this semester because of a new selection of Sacramento State’s One Book program, which connects students and their professors to common social issues in everyday life.

This year’s selection for the One Book program, “The Grace of Silence,” written by Michele Norris, is being integrated into a wide variety of courses at Sacramento State this semester.

One Book Coordinator and English professor Hellen Lee-Keller set up a workshop on Sept. 13 with fellow professors interested in using the selected book in their classrooms. The goal was to brainstorm ideas to include the book into as many subjects as possible.

“The One Book Program is a campus-wide initiative encompassing all disciplines, all class levels, and all members of the campus community,” Lee-Keller said.

The professors who attended the workshop displayed this variety of disciplines, as eight departments were represented: philosophy, teacher education, English, family and consumer sciences, foreign languages, music and biology.

The One Book program began in January 2008. Each year, the program has grown more popular within professors’ syllabi with each new book they select. This year, the program has welcomed in two new members on the Selection Committee from the College of Natural Sciences and Math.

“We have representatives from almost every college on campus,” Lee-Keller said.

The One Book program has become so popular, last semester a first-year music class took last year’s selection, “The Devil’s Highway” by Luis Alberto Urrea, and turned it into a student-composed opera.

Professors at the One Book workshop who watched clips from the opera were so impressed it inspired them to get creative with their own courses.

Projects as creative as an opera are being developed for this year’s selection, “The Grace of Silence,” a memoir about a woman’s quest to unearth painful family secrets about race in America.

Norris said she intended the book to be about the changing conversation about race in the President Barack Obama era, but she quickly discovered there was more within her personal history to write about. It became a memoir once she investigated her own family’s past of racial issues.

Standard assignments for the book like writing an essay were bounced around, but the professors wanted more. They want their students not to just read the book, but to feel it.

Professors Pete Nowlen and Deborah Pittman, who taught the music class that performed their own opera last year, plan on doing a similar project with this year’s book.

“We reinvent this course every year, so we will be using several resources that people brought to the table today,” Pittman said. “I cannot tell you where we will go from there because I really got inspired by some of the things I heard here.”

Lee-Keller described the “Brown Bag” workshop as a way to share ideas among instructors, help each other develop ideas and highlight best practices.

“I think that the seminar-style workshop did just that with faculty from a wide range of departments and colleges,” Lee-Keller said.

Many ideas were thrown around during this meeting; it left some professors rethinking their entire curriculum.

“Not quite sure what direction we are going to go because there are things I heard today that may alter what we assign,” Pittman said.

Some of the themes from the book – discrimination and family – will be the main focus in some syllabi.

“Family and secrets are probably the two big ones that are going to be implemented,” Nowlen said.

“If the students come up with (a theme) that is a better hook, we may just let them go with it,” Pittman added.

Lee-Keller said she believes the book helps students understand more than just the story.

“I think that the book will encourage students to understand their own family histories, learn about U.S. history, and think about how race relations affect themselves and others,” Lee-Keller said.

The professors wanted to make sure the students were not just reading another woman’s story, but evaluating their own past while reading.

Some projects or assignments that were mentioned at the workshop included students doing what the author herself had done – interview family members to discover their own family secrets. Another idea that the author created is the students could turn in a six-word essay describing the book.

The essays would be written on a single card and sent to Norris by mail.

For some, namely biology classes, the goal of integrating a book about social issues such as race and family into a syllabus is more difficult.

Some solutions were assigning small projects for extra credit, as they may motivate students to put in a little extra time to help their grade. They mentioned that even a few points can save someone a whole letter grade in a class.

Michelle Barry, junior pre-nursing major, would consider completing an extra credit assignment that would include this year’s One Book.

“I would read it if I was told it was a good book, and I would definitely read it if a professor offered extra credit for reading it,” Barry said.

Norris will visit Sacramento State on Author Day, Oct. 20, to answer questions and sign books. A possible extra credit assignment from some professors will be for students to attend and reflect upon it.

Norris will also be utilizing “RACE cards” when she visits the campus. These cards are the six-word essays from students who read the book. Just one sentence on what people absorbed from reading Norris’ book written on a single card.

She will collect any card people write and she will put them on her “race card wall” on her website for everyone to see.

“If the intention is to use these cards to get a peek at America’s honest views about race, then I must try to honor those people who offer up candor, even if what they share is unsavory or unacceptable in some people’s eyes,” Norris said.

Russell Preston can be reached at [email protected]