Developing Community One Book at a Time – UMW Common Experience
First-year students will arrive on campus for summer orientation in May and June and will take home a copy of the text selected for the Common Experience. Upon return to campus for Welcome Week in August, first-year students will join members of the UMW community – students, faculty, staff, administrators and Board members – for a two-hour discussion about the selected text and related topics. Through reading and examining the same book, students build community and learn about the academic expectations of university studies. Programming beyond the initial exposure to the text extends the experience well into the academic year. Faculty report that students reflect in class discussions years later about topics raised in their first-year Common Experience.
Starting in 2015, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot provided discussions about medical ethics, advances in medicine, and equality in health care. UMW was fortunate to host Rebecca Skloot as part of the Great Lives series. Honors Scholars traveled to Johns Hopkins University to visit the laboratory in which George Gey cultured the cervical cancers cells that did not die, and met one of Henrietta Lacks’ granddaughters.
For the 2018-19 academic year, the UMW Community explored musical theatre and tackled issues of social anxiety, the roles of social media in society, and remembering the dead by reading Dear Evan Hansen. In addition to reading the play, students were encouraged to listen to the soundtrack. Dr. Anand Rao created a video of UMW community members singing “You Will be Found.” Honors Scholars and Theatre Majors attended a book tour event for the Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel event featuring the playwrights and songwriters Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, and Val Emmich. The 2018-19 Common Experience culminated in select members of the UMW Community traveling to New York City to watch the award-winning musical on Broadway.
We are pleased to announce that the Common Read for 2019-2020 will be Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. The author grew up in a survivalist community in Idaho, isolated from modern medicine, homeschooled within the narrow confines of her parents’ beliefs, and working as a midwife and junkyard assistant from a young age. Westover tutored herself in secret to gain admission to Brigham Young University, against her family’s wishes. Her studies eventually took her to Harvard and Cambridge. All the while, Westover struggled to reconcile her upbringing with life beyond her family’s limited worldview.
This memoir addresses many issues of importance to First-in-Family college students, as well as themes of culture shock, personal growth, and grit. All students will recognize elements of their own experience as they enter college and encounter people who are different from themselves. We are excited to share this book with the new members of our UMW community!
Kelli Slunt and Amanda Ronay, UMW Honors Program