The CTLA sponsors Community Friday luncheon learning opportunities during the fall and spring semesters. These events are designed to give faculty and staff the chance to enjoy lunch with colleagues, learn from presenters, and engage in conversation and reflection. Topics for discussion will focus on pedagogy, teaching and learning, faculty development, and student success. Announcements are sent out on a weekly basis with a request for RSVPs and lunch options. Unless otherwise noted, Community Fridays take place from noon to 1 p.m. in Humanities and Social Studies Center, Room A1231, with lunch service beginning at 11:45 a.m.
Spring 2026 Community Friday Schedule
Please join us on Jan. 23 as we welcome co-presenters Jerry Seaman, Joyce Stern, Ben Newhouse, JC Lopez, Mark Peltz, and Gemma Sala for the first Community Friday of the spring semester.
Grinnell students arrive with the assumption that this will be their educational home for four years. Yet some leave. Why is that? What difference can you make in your role as a faculty member or a staff member who interacts with students to help students find their place? Learn about Grinnell’s situation through data and real case studies. There will be an opportunity to discuss the impact you make, and leave with useful resources for student success.
The lunch buffet will open at 11:45 a.m. in the HSSC multipurpose room. Thank you for bringing your reusable flatware to cut down on plastic waste.
Please join us on January 30th as we welcome Jerry Seaman, Special Advisor to the President for Strategy, to facilitate “The Liberal Arts: A Conversation."
To get us started, a panel comprised of Todd Armstrong, Paul Hutchison, Carolyn Jacobson, and Elaine Marzluff, from the faculty Executive Council, will share very brief remarks on the following questions:
Why is it important to talk about the liberal arts at Grinnell? Why should we have this conversation right now?
What do we mean when we say that Grinnell is a liberal arts college?
From there, we intend to spend most of our time in table conversation. Specifically, we will explore the following questions together:
How do you personally live out Grinnell’s liberal arts mission through your work?
What would help you do this work better?
This Community Friday is an opportunity for faculty and staff to discuss these questions together; other spring 2026 discussions and gatherings in academic affairs have been separately announced to the faculty by Dean Feingold. Please join us, enjoy the company of colleagues, share, and discover new perspectives and ideas.
Please note that our venue will be JRC 101 so that we may welcome as many participants as possible. The lunch buffet will open at 11:45 a.m. Thank you for bringing your reusable flatware to cut down on plastic waste.
Please join us on February 6 as we welcome Marlon M. Bailey, Interim Chair and Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Professor of African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
Our thanks to Thabiti Willis and African Diaspora Studies for hosting this event.
Here is Professor Bailey’s description of the event:
Thatcher, a twenty-four-year-old Black gay man from Detroit, was kicked out of the house at the age of eighteen years old because he was, as his mother said, hanging out with “fags.” After this conversation with his mother, he went back to the house; packed his bags, took all of his belongings over to his best friend’s house and left his mother’s key on the TV. Interestingly, at the time, Thatcher neither identified as nor felt like he was gay, when his mother put him out of the house. After that day, he never returned home to live. This experience impacted Thatcher’s sexual self throughout his life.
This presentation examines the sexual development of Black gay men and the barriers and facilitators of a healthy sexual selfhood using a Black queer theoretical framework. I propose an analytic distinction between sexuality, sexual identity, and sexual selfhood. Instead, I suggest that claiming or corroborating an identity imposed on them is only one aspect of their overall sexuality or sexual selfhood. The Black gay men in this study describe how family dynamics played a critical role in the development of their sexuality and a sense of self, before they knew or claimed a sexual identity or had one imposed on them. As I highlight Black gay men’s experiences growing up gay or attracted to guys and sometimes acting on it, I also explore what role exploration played in their lives. For these men, while growing up, sexuality was not proposed to them as a wide-open field but rather as a two or three-lane, narrow road, only one of which they were coerced or forced to take.
Some of the Black gay men in the study suffered material consequences from satisfying their erotic and sexual curiosities, as opposed to being part of their sexual development. I examine some of these long-term material consequences and emotional traumas caused by homophobia that Black gay men experience from their families and communities of origin. When Black gay men are marginalized within or excluded from their families of origin, this indelibly impacts their lives in the long term. Specifically, these Black gay men explain how their relationship with their parents, their confrontations with one or both about their same-sex desire and curiosity, and their emergent gay identity, impacted their overall sexual development.
Please join us on February 13th as we welcome Jose Cerecedo Lopez, Elon University, to facilitate “The Art of Building Consensus.”
In every leadership role, we eventually need to help navigate the group through competing ideas. Ultimately, we must move forward together! In this workshop, we will use a short-term task to practice how to build consensus. Participants will learn a structured, multi-round, guided dialogue based on established best practices as they work together to build a consensus definition.
Jose Cerecedo Lopez is an Assistant Professor at Elon University, where he teaches undergraduate and MBA courses in strategy and entrepreneurship. He holds a Ph.D. in Management and Organizational Studies from The University of Texas at San Antonio. His research explores the intersections of entrepreneurship, strategy, and organizational theory, including decision-making. He is also passionate about experiential learning and the case method as tools for student engagement.
The CTLA thanks the Wilson Center for their generous support of this event.
Faculty and staff are cordially invited to join us for the next Community Friday on February 20th. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is the leading national association representing the interests of fall those engaged in teaching and research in higher education. The AAUP's goals are working toward the protection of academic freedom and shared governance, defining professional standards and policies, advocating for their fair remuneration, and organizing our community to achieve these goals. Our newly formed Grinnell chapter seeks to contribute to these national efforts while advocating for our members here at Grinnell.
This event will be facilitated by Adey Almohsen, John Petrus, Sharon Quinsaat, and potentially other AAUP members on campus. Come meet us, learn about our organization, and let's think together how we can best advocate for our community at Grinnell College.
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