Common Reading
Common Reading at Elon
The Elon Core Curriculum and the Elon Common Reading Committee are excited to announce that the 2025-2026 Common Reading is First Gen: A Memoir by Alejandra Campoverdi.
The Common Reading Committee found Alejandra’s experience compelling for both our own First Gen students, faculty, and staff—and for their peers to develop empathy for that experience—but for all of us who might be the “first and only” in any spaces. As global citizens and students who will experience a transformative learning experience at Elon, we expect that many of our students have been or will soon be trailblazers who could use a travel guide like this book.
Accessing the Common Reading
Every first-year student will be provided with a free electronic copy of the Common Reading! This version and information about the book and how to prepare to use it in class will be available on Moodle starting July 22. Look for an email in early summer about how to access your copy. If you prefer to purchase a print or audio copy, please do! You’ll be able to opt out of the digital version.
About the author
Alejandra Campoverdi is a nationally recognized advocate for educational opportunity and women’s health, a bestselling author, founder, and former White House aide to President Obama. Alejandra’s national bestselling book, First Gen, is the winner of the Dolores Huerta Award, the Martin Cruz Smith Award, and was chosen by the Council for Opportunity in Education as their 2024 Opportunity Matters Book Club selection, a nationwide book club for first-generation and low-income students at colleges and universities across the country.
In 2024, Alejandra founded the First Gen Fund, a 501c3 that provides unrestricted hardship grants to first gen students. Previously, Alejandra served in the Obama White House as White House Deputy Director of Hispanic Media. She produced the groundbreaking PBS health documentary Inheritance and founded the LATINOS & BRCA awareness initiative in partnership with Penn Medicine’s Basser Center for BRCA. Alejandra holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California. She currently serves on the board of the California Community Foundation and is a Senior Fellow at the USC Center on Communication Leadership and Policy.
Campoverdi will deliver an in-person keynote on the evening of Thursday, September 18. Other opportunities for students, faculty, staff, and the community to discuss the book and learn from Thomas will also be available throughout the year.
About the Elon Common Reading Program
The Common Reading marks the beginning of the Elon Core Curriculum, the shared courses and experiences that put knowledge into practice and enable the integration of learning across the disciplines.
Consistent with the Elon University mission of nurturing a rich intellectual community, the Elon Common Reading Program (ECRP) challenges students, faculty, and staff to examine themselves and the local and global worlds they inhabit through reading. The readings and related discussions aim not only to encourage critical reflection about important issues but also to invite consideration of how our individual actions affect these issues.
The ECRP will:
- Offer diverse perspectives and commentary on key issues affecting our lives;
- Provide forums to question and discuss these perspectives in depth;
- Encourage integration of these ideas and perspectives in other aspects of the Elon experience;
- Foster critical thinking by offering multiple opportunities to examine and reflect upon the reading throughout the year.