The atomic bomb. Dire poverty. Immigration. The death penalty. Environmental degradation. Mountain lions.
The topics covered in the Common Reading Experience at Fort Lewis College have included these and more as the program looks back on its first decade.
“We had a committee called Freshman Foundations that Carol Smith, dean of General and Exploratory Studies, led, and I was a member of,” said Bridget Irish, who coordinated the program for nine of its first 10 years. “Our job was to come up with juicy things for freshmen that would get them involved right away, get them excited about being at an academic institution and help them make friends right away. This was one of the ideas, and I grabbed it.”
While the main target is freshmen, Irish has been gratified by the level of community involvement, she said, including the hundreds who generally attend the authors’ lectures.
“By accident, by a stroke of luck, the Common Reading Experience has drawn the community and the college together,” Irish said. “People in book clubs and stores will stop me and ask, ‘What’s the book?’”
Picking the book
The first book selection, Folding Paper Cranes by FLC Professor Emeritus Leonard Bird, was easy, she said. The book talks about Bird’s experiences with early atomic-bomb exercises and his visits to the International Park for World Peace in Hiroshima, Japan.
“Everybody on campus loved him, and he was around to do a lot of things,” Irish said. “He spoke at Convocation and a lot of classes. So many good things came out of that because it led to the creation of the Hesperus Peace Park.”
The next year’s selection, Mountain to Mountain by Tracy Kidder, taught them a lesson about making the book selection, she said.
“We learned not to do it without the author coming,” she said. “We did a Skype presentation with him, but we couldn’t get a lot of people there. He did a radio interview, too, and he was affable and erudite, but he wasn’t here. When the authors come, the students say, ‘I’m so honored that the author came here.’”
By now, in addition to the requirement to include an author visit, the Reading Committee has established several criteria:
Not only does the author need to be able to come, he or she must be affordable. Some charge as much as $30,000 for an appearance.
The book must be available in paperback and preferably 300 pages or fewer, because all 1,000 or so freshmen get a free copy at registration.
It doesn’t have to be beautifully written, but it must be full of engaging ideas.
“A lot of faculty members think of them as ‘Oprah books’ and kind of dismiss them,” Irish said. “But a lot of people forget who our audience is. We are picking books for 18-year-olds who are not necessarily readers and are not sophisticated thinkers. If we show them books are pleasurable to read and make them think, then we’ve done a good job.”
Books are selected by the Reading Committee with input from the Writing Program, said director of the program Erik Juergensmeyer, who also sits on the committee. Writing teachers are among the most active on campus at incorporating the annual book in their curriculum, but whether other departments include it or not depends on the topic.
“I know that the year we read Full Body Burden, (biology professor) Heidi Steltzer used the book extensively in her Environmental Health class,” said Cynthia Dott, who now chairs the Reading Committee, adding that this year’s book, Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin, is going to be popular with sociology professors. “It really varies a lot depending on the book, and which disciplines it resonates with.”
Recommendations come from faculty, staff and community members, Juergensmeyer said.
“We’re meeting next week, and Cynthia said to bring our summer reading list,” he said.
The Reading Committee has had a combination of prescience and luck in its selections, often picking books on topics that are just heating up in the national debate.
“If you read papers and magazines, listen to the news and then read book reviews, you can tell what’s brewing,” Irish said. “Two weeks before school started the year we read David Baron’s The Beast in the Garden, a mountain lion came to Park Elementary School and looked in the window, and it had to be killed. A little while later, a mountain lion had to be killed on (West) Second Avenue. That really brought people in.”
Baron’s book was probably the most popular with faculty because of their outdoors lifestyles, she said, as well as bringing in people from both sides of the issue, ranchers and environmentalists.
For the students, the most popular was probably Eric Greitens’ The Heart and the Fist, which recounts the Rhodes Scholar’s experiences in the military in Iraq and his work helping returning veterans when he came back home.
“That was one where we took a big risk, because we weren’t happy it had a gun on the cover,” Irish said. “But we felt his academic career and his philanthropic career outweighed that. And he was really engaging when he came.”
She was most impressed by Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, and Sonia Nazario, author of Enrique’s Journey, who were the two hardest working authors while they were in town.
“Greg drew the biggest crowd,” she said, mentioning the financial scandal regarding his foundation, Central Asia Institute, which led to Mortenson being required to repay $1.2 million in restitution for misused funds in 2012. “Yes, he’s a stupid businessman, but when he was here, I don’t know when he slept. He was always signing books, giving away books, and after he left, the passion about women’s education on campus grew enormously.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
If you go
The Common Reading Experience at Fort Lewis College always includes a variety of panels, speakers and other activities about the selected book’s topic. All are free and open to the public. The 2015-2016 book, Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin, is about autism, and these are the scheduled events:
7 p.m. Thursday in Noble Hall Room 130: Professional Associates of FLC’s Lifelong Learning Series presents Answering Your Questions About Autism with Marcy Lawrence, director of Exceptional Student Services for Durango School District 9-R and Adrea Bogle, coordinator of Exceptional Student Services for the San Juan Board of Cooperative Educational Services.
7 p.m. Wednesday at the Durango Public Library, 1900 East Third Ave.: A first-hand look at Autism with a panel of people affected by the spectrum.
6 p.m. Sept. 22 at the Pine River Library, 395 Bayfield Center Drive: Screening of film “Temple Grandin” starring Claire Danes.
7 p.m. Sept. 29 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Durango, 495 San Juan Drive: Screening of film “Temple Grandin.”
7 p.m. Sept. 30 at Whalen Gym at FLC: Grandin speaks on “Helping Different Kinds of Minds Solve Problems.”
7-9 p.m. Oct. 7, Student Union Ballroom at FLC: Panel and discussion on Animal Sentience and Human Interactions.
4 and 7 p.m. Oct. 14 in the Vallecito Room in the FLC Student Union: Screening of Film “Temple Grandin.”
The books
In 10 years of reading, Fort Lewis College freshmen have learned about immigration, veterans, poverty, education of women, the environmental degradation at Rocky Flats and the atomic bomb, among other subjects. These are the books read by both students and community members in the first decade of the program:
2006-07: Folding Paper Cranes by Leonard Bird
2007-08: Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
2008-09: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
2009-10: The Beast in the Garden by David Baron
2010-11: Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario
2011-12: Outcasts Unlimited by Warren St. John
2012-13: The Heart and the Fist by Eric Greitens
2013-14: Full Body Burden by Kristen Iversen
2014-15: Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean
2015-16: Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin
