The 2011-12 campus theme, “Uncommon Choices,” invites the entire community to consider the importance of life choices. We’ll talk about the power we have as individuals to make positive, empowered choices as well as the challenges that can arise from unpopular or difficult choices.

Class work, campus activities and even service-learning opportunities will relate to this theme as together we deepen our understanding of what it means to have an idea, follow through on our convictions and experience the satisfaction of making a difference in the world.

The Summer Reading Program kicks off our campus theme each year. This year’s selection is “Enrique’s Journey,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Sonia Nazario. The book offers numerous opportunities to reflect on the theme as we consider the choices made by the characters in the book as well as the book’s author, who made the courageous decision to research and write it.

The first talk in the Presidential Lecture Series was presented by Sonia Nazario, the author of the Summer Reading book. In a career spanning 20 years, she has reported on social issues for such publications as the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal.  Her stories have tackled some of this country’s most intractable problems:  hunger, drug addiction, immigration.

The second talk in the series will be presented by Randi Zuckerberg, internet entrepreneur and former director of marketing for Facebook. Zuckerberg ran marketing at Facebook for six years, where her team led the company's U.S. election and international politics strategy, launched the live streaming industry with her media partnerships around the U.S. Presidential Inauguration, and was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2011 for her innovative TV/online coverage of the 2010 mid-term elections. In August 2011, Zuckerberg left Facebook to start R to Z Media, a new type of media platform that will be launching in 2012.

Lecture presented by Wells Fargo.