Common Reader Program reveals new book for 2019-2020
The Common Reader program hosted a Big Reveal event April 18. The University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL) Common Reader program is an extension of the first-year seminar course and was established in 2014 with the goal of encouraging critical thinking and discussion in regard to significant social concepts such as race, gender, class and citizenship.
Each year a text is selected by a committee of students, staff and faculty to be studied throughout the academic year. During this event, the 2019-2020 book read for the Common Reader was revealed to be “Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle of the American Dream” by Joshua Davis.
The book features four Latinx teenagers who face various struggles as they attempt to build a robot for a Marine Advanced Technology Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara, competing against some of the top collegiate engineers in the country.
The event started with a panel of UHCL students discussing the previous common reader, “Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work” by Dave Isay. The discussion also included the panelists talking their college experiences which consist of struggles throughout their college career, deciding factors that motivated students to attend graduate school, and transitioning from being mentored to becoming the mentor.
The second half of the event featured the Big Reveal of the common reader, followed by two guest speakers, who are also UHCL alumnae: Estella Hernandez Gillette, adjunct professor at the University of Houston and former NASA employee of 42 years, and Carol Waters, science educator for Pasadena Independent School District.
Gillette received a bachelor’s in business administration from UHCL in 1963, a master’s in human resources management from UHCL in 1986, and a doctorate of human resource management from George Washington University’s executive leadership program. In 1964, Gillette took a position as a clerk-stenographer for NASA and worked her way up to becoming an executive secretary with various positions in the Engineering and Development Directorate, the Earth Resource Office, Reliability and Quality Assurance Directorate and the Space and Life Sciences Directorate. In 1994, Gillette was selected for a progressively accountable position as the director of the JSC office of Equal Opportunity Programs Office.
Gillette stated she related to the book chosen as the 2019-2020 common reader having immigrated to America at two years old and faced a handful of struggles, including being separated from her sister for a total of six months.
“In the book, they could try, but they didn’t have the resources, this is a really good story about the hardships newcomer’s encounter when coming to this country,” Gillette said.
The second guest, Waters received a bachelor of science from UHCL in 1998, a master’s of science in teaching physics and astronomy, from Rice University in 2011, and a Doctorate of Education (Ed.D), curriculum and instruction with a science, technology, engineering and mathematics focus from UHCL in 2018. Water’s has worked in the Pasadena Independent School District for the past 18 years and developed a STEM enrichment program for girls at Thompson intermediate.
“It doesn’t matter who you are, you need a safe environment to learn,” Waters said. “Kids need to know in elementary school it is okay to fail. Your struggles are very important in connection to your successes in the future. Being a global economy, STEM is the background of our country and we need to build that background for our country to move forward.”
