The U.Va. Engineering School
Common Reading Experience 2012

Each year the faculty at the Engineering School invited incoming first year students to participate in a common reading experience which culminates in discussion groups in the beginning of the fall semester.

Criteria for Selection of Books:

Incoming students should come prepared to discuss the book with other incoming students and a SEAS faculty member. You will be provided with details regarding the meeting location when you arrived in August. Participation in the CRE is required and fall courses may have assignments based on the book. The book is available for purchase online, at a local bookstore, from the University Bookstore or many libraries.

To Engineer Is Human

How did a simple design error cause one of the great disasters of the 1980s -- the collapse of the walkways at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel? What made the graceful and innovative Tacoma Narrows Bridge twist apart in a mild wind in 1940? How did an oversized waterlily inspire the magnificent Crystal Palace, the crowning achievement of Victorian architecture and engineering? These are some of the failures and successes that Henry Petroski, author of the acclaimed The Pencil, examines in this engaging, wonderfully literate book. More than a series of fascinating case studies, To Engineer Is Human is a work that looks at our deepest notions of progress and perfection, tracing the fine connection between the quantifiable realm of science and the chaotic realities of everyday life.

We selected the following books for the CRE in recent years:
2011 Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
2010 The Viking in the Wheat Field: a Scientist's Struggle to Preserve the World's Harvest by Susan Dworkin
2009 The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
2008 America 1908 by Jim Rasenbergerto
2007 Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
2006 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
2005 The Rocket Boys by Homer Hickham, Jr.
2004 The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way People Live With Technology by Kim Vicente
2003 Hacker Cracker: A Journey from the Mean Streets of Brooklyn to the Frontiers of Cyberspace by Ejovi Nuwere
2002 Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
2001 Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin
2000 Managing Martians by Donna Shirley
1999 Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder
1998 Airframe by Michael Crichton
1997 A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
1996 Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
1995 A Scientist in the City by James Trefil
1994 The Control of Nature by John McPhee
1993 The Final Forrest by William Dietrich and The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin

Prior to the Engineering School CRE, the University selected the following books for faculty-student discussions:
1990 Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
1989 All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren
1988 Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Please send us your suggestions for future CRE selections to: ah7sj@virginia.edu

The 2012 CRE Committee Members:
Rosalyn Berne (Science, Technology, and Society)
Fred O’Bryant (Applied Sciences, Mathematics & Statistics Librarian, Charles L. Brown Science and Engineering Library)
Michael Demetsky (Civil and Environmental Engineering)
Archie Holmes, CRE Co-Chair (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
James Lambert (Systems and Information Engineering)
Richard Price (Biomedical Engineering)
Petra Reinke, CRE Co-Chair (Materials Science and Engineering)
Kamin Whitehouse (Computer Science)
Gautam Kanumuru (‘15)
Scott Mattocks (‘14)

The U.Va. Engineering School Common Reading Experience 2012

The U.Va. Engineering School
Common Reading Experience 2012