Rice selects Common Reading book

Rice selects Common Reading book
‘Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time’

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

All incoming undergraduates and other members of the Rice community are invited to read “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time,” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, and participate in follow-up discussions and activities as part of this year’s Rice Common Reading program.

Currently No. 1 on The New York Times’ list of best-selling nonfiction paperbacks,
“Three Cups of Tea” tells the story of Mortenson’s conversion from elite mountaineer to passionate education advocate. It chronicles his experiences using education to combat terrorism and build cultural understanding in the most remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Over the past 15 years, Mortenson almost single-handedly built and sustained schools for thousands of impoverished Muslim children in the backyard of al-Qaida and the Taliban.

”At Rice, we want our students to make distinctive impacts in their communities and to recognize, like Mortenson has, that identifying a social need or problem is just the beginning,” said Robin Forman, dean of undergraduates. “Providing solutions in today’s world requires the ability to cope with ambiguity, the determination to persist in the face of obstacles, an understanding of the delicate interplay between progress and culture, and respect and compassion for people who might be different from us.”

The Common Reading program, which is sponsored by the Dean of Undergraduates Office, provides freshmen with a free book, a series of fall events to discuss the reading, and Web pages with additional resources. O-Week coordinators and advisers, colleges masters, resident associates and coordinators, peer academic advisers and college academic fellows also receive free copies of the book.

”Reading ‘Three Cups of Tea’ at the beginning of their Rice career will expose first-year students to a poorly understood and consequential part of the world,” Forman said. “More importantly, it will help them begin to understand their own potential to affect meaningful change.”

The goals of the program are to welcome students to the Rice intellectual community, provide a shared experience for the entire first-year class and stimulate conversations across the campus community on one of the most pressing issues of the day.

”The story and themes in ‘Three Cups of Tea’ will resonate with the passion for service that already exists among our students,” Forman said. 

The Common Reading will provide the foundation for a series of pertinent events throughout the fall semester focusing on civic engagement — both local and global. That theme will be the focus of campuswide programs and initiatives throughout 2008-09. 

Selection was based upon the recommendation of a committee of students, faculty and staff who were charged with identifying promising options for the program. The committee had considered more than 30 books.