The U.Va. Engineering School
Common Reading Experience 2012

The goal of the Common Reading Experience is encourage interactions between incoming students and engineering faculty in a small, intimate setting. The interactions will be focused around a common book which generally focuses on the engineering life experiences or the interactions of science, technology and society. The book is selected by the Common Research Experience Committee with input from the faculty, staff, and students in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The criteria used for the selection of the book includes:

• Direct experience of engineering practice/profession
• Lively/engaging reading (highly readable, not too long)
• Literary and/or well-written
• Multiple themes for discussion (technologies, ethics, teamwork, workplace, unusual career paths)
• Recent publication and/or recent interest
• A bridge between students and faculty
• Available in paperback edition
• Energizing and upbeat
• Amenability to a follow-on program (author visit, etc.)

If you have books to suggest for the Common Reading Experiences, please contact either of the co-chairs of the Committee: Archie Holmes (ah7sj@virginia.edu) or Petra Reinke (pr6e@virginia.edu)

Books Selected in Prior 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

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