Common Book Project
What is the Common Book Project?
The Common Book Project at Virginia Tech was established in 1998 as a means of enriching the first-year experience and creating a sense of community for undergraduate students. Each academic year since the first full-scale distribution in 2000, all incoming students have been given a book to engage them through the lens of shared reading and to provoke conversation among students and their professors. Details on the history of the Common Book may be found on the Provost's Common Book Project page.
CIDER and the Common Book Project
CIDER provides support for the Common Book Project, which is designed, developed, implemented, and managed through the Office of First Year Experiences. This support comes in many forms, including:
2011-2012 Common Book
The 2011-2012 Common Book is Jay Allison and Dan Gediman's This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women.
From Booklist: In the second collection derived from the extraordinarily popular and influential National Public Radio program This I Believe, pithy, personal, and stealthily affecting essays grapple with life’s big questions from myriad perspectives and with refreshingly positive energy. Professional skateboarder Tony Hawk tells us to do what we love. James Loney, a peace activist held hostage in Iraq, believes that “there are many ways we can hold one another captive.” Nature writer David Gessner believes in wildness. Readers will also discover what invaluable life lesson neurobiologist Jimmy Liao learned from studying fish in turbulent waters, why Susan Cooke Kittredge believes in mending, and what “strange blessings” a woman whose family lost their home to Katrina gleaned. Other voices include war veterans, a Muslim immigrant, and a poet who became addicted to crack. Beauty, duty, forgiveness, and remembrance—all are considered in 75 earnest and revealing credos, which, as astute series editor Allison observes, are not sermons but, rather, the results of soul-searching in the wake of anguished experiences. Infused with gratitude and hope, these declarations are at once grounding and uplifting. --Donna Seaman
Common Book
Support
