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Reading Builds Community: The Honors College Common Reading Program
By: Dr. Patricia MacCorquodale, Dean of the Honors College
 Remember the engaging argument you had with a colleague or neighbor over a controversial book you read? Did you recommend a great read to your best friend before summer vacation? The Honors College created the Common Reading program to build on these experiences. The Common Reading program creates community among Honors students, helps new students make connections, and engages students in the intellectual life of the College. This program has four benefits. First, it is a significant community-building experience, providing new students opportunities to meet and bond with each other and with faculty. Second, this community-building experience is inherently intellectual; we engage students through ideas and thoughtful exchange. This is the enrichment that makes The Honors College a special destination on campus. And, third, the Common Reading program strengthens the link between Honors and other UA units, including faculty, research centers, residence halls, alumni and now the UA Parent and Family Association. Fourth, the Family Weekend Convocation provides a point of engagement for students and their families creating opportunities to explore of global issues.
How is the book chosen? Honors students in a one-unit spring course narrowed a list of over 200 books to select Ishmael: An Adventure of Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn. Students resonate with the quest for knowledge and the extraordinary relationship between the teacher and student. The hero of this novel answers an ad from a teacher seeking serious students and arrives at an office building to find a gorilla chewing on delicate branches. “You are the teacher?” he asks and Ishmael replies telepathically, “I am the teacher.” The philosophical lessons modeled on Plato’s Republic cover in the lifespan of the Earth and raise important questions about the relationship between the human and natural worlds at the heart of many global problems we face today.
Each new freshman received a copy of the book this summer during New Student Orientation with a bookplate “Presented to you by the University Arizona Parents & Family Association and The Honors College.” We hope that this will increase awareness and involvement in UA Parents and Family Association. Students who chose the book designed a series of fall activities starting with a summer blog about the book. The semester begins with a week-long, free film series in Gallagher theater. The Honors Forum lunch series will focus on the issue of sustainability all semester featuring Professor Guy McPherson: Sustainability and Ishmael, Professor Paul Wilson: Safe, Low-Cost Food for All Forever: Fact or Fantasy?, Professor Sharon Megdal: Water in the Southwest, and Professsor Annie Nequette: Sustainability in Architecture. In addition to a response contest, poetry readings, book discussion groups, and community service projects, the Common Reading program will culminate in a presentation at the Honors College Convocation during Family Weekend by Professor Jonathon Overpeck, Director of the UA Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, Sustainability and Global Change: Can humans make a difference? This convocation will provide an opportunity for all UA families and students to learn about ecological and social issues facing our planet and to be inspired to make changes in our own human behavior that will impact the environment.
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