A Case for "Organic" Faculty Reading Groups

I’ve been part of many faculty reading groups over the years, both as the facilitator and as a participant. Some of those groups required my participation, though most were optional. Many were initiated by an administrative office or academic department at the institution. As a former dean at one university and chief academic officer at another institution, I’ve also initiated my fair share of “officially sanctioned” (or, if you prefer, “administratively sponsored”) faculty reading groups over the years.

Some of the reading groups I’ve participated in were for new faculty, others were for faculty who teach in a particular discipline, and still others were for the entire faculty. Most were “à la carte,” meaning there were multiple book options and faculty signed up for the group that best suited their interests and/or schedule. Since I left academic administration two years ago to return to the instructional faculty, I’ve continued to be part of à la carte reading groups every semester, including this fall.

I’m all for officially sanctioned faculty reading groups. At North Greenville University, our Center for Faculty Excellence offers numerous such groups each year, in all three of the categories I mentioned above. If you are interested in making faculty reading groups a more strategic part of your academic culture, I encourage you to reach out to Donny Mathis, our dean of faculty development. He would love to help you think more about this topic. (IACE also sponsors inter-institutional online reading groups for faculty, academic officers, and “mid-level” academic leaders. If you’re interested in one or more of those groups, you can reach out to me for more information.)

While I’m a big fan of officially sanctioned faculty reading groups, what I want to focus on in the remainder of this post is what I call “organic” reading groups. What I mean is the sort of reading groups that are informally initiated by a faculty member and are unconnected to the institution’s administrative structure. I mean professors reading and discussing books together, not because they must, or even because they’ve been encouraged to do so, but simply because they want to do it.

Some of my favorite experiences as a faculty member outside the classroom have been in organic faculty reading groups. Many of those reading groups were related to a topic that faculty members wanted to discuss. At a previous institution, some of us read John Webster’s The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason together. Webster is an important theologian, all of us appreciate his work, and we wanted to learn from him. We met weekly over coffee to discuss a chapter at a time.

Other organic reading groups have been related to a key book that I wanted to read in community with colleagues. Over the past couple of years, another professor and I have read through six large, highly academic books together. We want the accountability to stay the course and finish each book (remember, these books are big). We also want to discuss the books together and learn from each other, not just the author. This year, we are reading slowly through Charles Taylor’s magnum opus A Secular Age. My colleague and I have both read parts of the book at various times, and both of us are familiar with Taylor’s key arguments. But neither of us have read the book in its entirety. So, we’ve decided to do it together over the coming months.

A third type of organic reading group is related to a hot topic or big idea. A colleague at a previous institution would periodically just buy a half-dozen or so copies of a book and invite professors in different disciplines to read through it together. His goals including fostering relationships across departments, facilitating interdisciplinary conversations, and, of course, reading key works on timely topics. We read books about the nature of Christian universities, works about technological innovations, and even some fiction. These groups normally met just once for a longer, more free-ranging conversation. Often, a meal was involved. Inspired by his example, I’ve convened similar groups at North Greenville to read books about Christian worldview formation, the Great Tradition, the role of racism in Christian history, and how to think biblically about justice.

The last category involves two or more faculty members inviting students into the conversation. For about four years at an earlier stage in my career, a colleague and I convened a weekly Theology Reading Group. We would read through several books a year, normally meeting weekly over lunch. Once or twice, another faculty colleague joined us for a particular book. But we always invited several bright students to participate as well. Today, the “alums” of the Theology Reading Group include a half-dozen or so full-time faculty members, a couple of missionaries, numerous pastors and church planters, two denominational leaders, the publisher at a major evangelical academic press, and several administrators at various seminaries and universities, including the chief academic officer at an IACE affiliated university.

I can’t overstate the value of organic faculty reading groups. What a privilege it is to meet together with colleagues (and sometimes students, too), discuss books we don’t have to read, but simply want to read, and learn from one another. I want to encourage you to grab another professor or two, pick a good book, and read through it together.

Nathan A. Finn is Director of Faculty and Student Programs for IACE. He serves as the Kalos Chair for Intellectual Discipleship at North Greenville University, where he also directs the Institute for Faith and Culture.