Susan Jennings Lantz, Ph.D.

In both her roles as Director of the WVU Campus Read, and Teaching Associate Professor of Business Communication, Susan Jennings Lantz works to advance critical thinking skills and interdisciplinary humanist inquiry at West Virginia University. 

Simply put, she wants students to think deeply about important things and communicate their ideas clearly.

Lantz’s involvement with the Campus Read started with its inception in 2016, and since that time she has organized and encouraged campus-wide discussions with and about thought leaders like Max Brooks, Tara Westover, Bryan Stevenson, Katherine Johnson, and Emily St. John Mandel. Every year Susan leads a committee that ultimately choose a really good book, and every year thousands of WVU students, faculty, staff, and community members read it and talk about it.  The program sponsors and organizes lectures, seminars, art exhibitions, and other types engagement activities. Students not only study the book in their classes, talk about it during adventure West Virginia programs, but also engage with it during the summer before their freshman year. Retired members of the WVU Community and members of the WVU Parents Club even meet for a virtual book clubs and classes to discuss the themes in the novel.

In addition to her work with the Campus Read, Lantz teaches Business Communication for the WVU John Chambers College. She has led WVU Study Abroad student groups to Brazil, Bahrain and Guatemala to study global business, and has spent two summers as a visiting professor at the Tianjin University of Business and Economics in China. She also serves as the first WVU Provost’s Living-Learning Fellow for international students on the Global LLC. 

Her work has appeared in The Bitter Southerner, Human Resources Magazine, and Student Affairs Today.

When she isn’t teaching, traveling to far-flung places, or trying to get the Campus to read and talk about a good book, Lantz can be found at home with her husband and two sons arguing about books, movies, and popular culture.