1st Year Experience Programs Take-Off Nationwide

Colleges across the US have adapted a new technique to introduce incoming Freshman to the rigors of college level of work. They require students to all read the same books and then they challenge each other in critical thinking and debate while discussing the books at the start of the school year. Some titles currently in use are:

Food Inc. by Karl Weber

Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill

Slackanomics by Lisa Chamberlain

Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn

Group reading programs are becoming a very common practice as part of college and university level first-year experience initiatives. These programs are designed to provide students with an introduction to the intellectual expectations of college in an often-informal gathering of college faculty and peers. Yet, truly dynamic and successful programs move beyond book discussion groups to include students, faculty, staff, and the larger community in a wide range of social and intellectual activities. The experience is all part of teaching students that now that they are in college they are also a contributing member of society and their opinions will one day shape the political and social changes of the future. Issues such as classism, freedom, corporate greed, the politics of factory farming and healthcare are all debated inside the context of these and hundreds of other award winning novels.

Washington University in St. Louis is reading When the Emperor Was Divine, about Japanese internment camps and racial profiling. While California State University Northridge is reading The Soloist, by Steve Lopez as part of their Freshman Common Reading program.

If your college or high school is doing a common reading program the best way to buy those books is in bulk. It saves the students money & the school.