The votes are in and next year’s One Campus, One Book selection is Feed, by M.T. Anderson.
Feed has been utilized in curriculums by some professors at Moorpark College before and they say that students are always eager to discuss it. The title encompasses themes such as how technology has taken control of all aspects of human life.
Since 2006, Moorpark College has had themed academic years selected by a committee of faculty members. They recently decided that the theme for the 2013-14 year will be the Year of Technology and Humanity.
The One Campus, One Book! (OCOB) committee, which is mostly comprised of faculty members and the president of Associated Students, makes its annual book selection based on the theme for the upcoming year.
The current year’s selection is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot and last year’s was The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.
The selected titles must meet certain criteria such as whether they are affordable to students across all published platforms, can they be used in other disciplines other than English classes, and do they invoke interest among students.
Diane Scrofano, an English professor at Moorpark College, asks the OCOB committee for book suggestions relating to the theme.
“I got about ten suggestions,” Scrofano said in an email interview. “I read samples online and weighed the pros and cons of each title against our selection criteria then, we choose from the best three.”
The other two choices were I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy, by Lori Andrews, and The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr.
Scrofano said that this year she has not received as much feedback on the books as she has gotten in previous years, and would like to get the word out to as much students as possible.
“This year, so far, I’ve only gotten a couple of replies,” she said. “Traditionally, teachers on the OCOB committee will also poll their students as to which of the top three they’d prefer with a quick show of hands during class.”
Associate Librarian at Moorpark, Danielle Kaprelian, said that Feed is a good read for students.
“Feed is a visionary book that predicts some of the technological attitudes and advances of today,” she said. “It is a timely selection for our campus because the text asks larger questions about how technology affects our lives.”
For more information on the OCOB program, contact Diane Scrofano at [email protected].
