Common Book, Uncommon Learning

Diverse applications

In the week of Veterans Day, two student veterans with a combined seven deployments between them led Common Book discussions in the College of Natural Resources and Environment's First-Year Experience course.

Professor Dean Stauffer sought to emphasize two primary lessons in the book: appreciating and understanding different cultures and adhering to honor and integrity. "In our college, much of what we do is taking knowledge of natural resources and applying strategies to help people, which may come across as imposing our will," Stauffer said. "It's a lot more beneficial to go into any situation and understand the culture and to work with people, rather than to force something on them."

Business-minded

When Pamplin College of Business Professor Stephen Skripak was an executive with Sara Lee Corp., he told his 140-person team that he couldn't be successful unless they were successful. Such a partnership is what Skripak gleaned from Greitens' description of SEAL training: the camaraderie to pick each other up and overcome challenges.

For his Pamplin course surveying business topics for first-year students, Skripak has underscored three themes from the book: leadership and teamwork, ethics and social responsibility, and cultural awareness. "The Heart and The Fist" added a "spark to the conversation" for students across campus, he said. "[The book] gives everybody an opportunity for some sort of connection, and then they can go as deep as they want with it."

Coming to Tech from a magnet school with a heavy course load, freshman Emily Shull was leery of yet another "summer reading" assignment when she received the book during orientation activities in July. But Greitens, opening the book with his college experiences and then writing about war without sounding "pedantic," won her over, Shull said. Drawn to the internationally minded lessons on cultural sensitivity, Shull, pursuing a business information technology major and international business minor, saw a way to enhance her "profitability as a businesswoman," she said. "I ended up adding a religion and culture major, partially because of the book."

Shull also applauded the ties between the book and the university's "stress upon service." Said Shull, "I think the book is reflective of Virginia Tech's value of Ut Prosim [That I May Serve]. It's quite comforting to be at a school that cares so much for humankind [and] picked a book like this that shows 'care' in a global way.'"

"Go to your Pylon!"

As a member of the Common Book Project Committee, Marlene Preston, the communication department's assistant head and director of undergraduate programs, appreciates the committee's selection of books that reflect the Pylons' values. "When students receive a free book that everyone is reading, they immediately understand that it reflects something important to Virginia Tech," Preston said. "First-year students are exploring, changing, and affirming their personal identities. Using the book as a springboard, they can consider their own values and goals and their new lives as Hokies, college students, pre-professionals, and local and global community members."

Since the program's beginnings, instructors of the two-semester Communications Skills course in the communication department have incorporated the book as students develop writing and speaking skills necessary for university-level discourse.

On a cloudy fall day, students in Brandi Quesenberry's class crossed the street to visit the Pylons at the end of a class period.

"Everybody go to your pylon," a student called out. Students had selected a pylon value about which they would write, and as they approached their chosen pylons, they fulfilled a portion of Quesenberry's assignment by doing what college students are prone to do anyway: They took selfies.

Joe Cheatham, a freshman business information technology major from Chesterfield, Virginia, was drawn to the Ut Prosim pylon. He appreciated how Greitens' hardships informed his service and helped the soldier understand how he could make an impact. "It's deep," Cheatham said of the book. "It talks about everything that Tech values."

The Brotherhood pylon called out to Jordan Hogge, a freshman public relations major from Williamsburg, Virginia. In the Virginia Tech Summer Academy, Hogge met her best friend, on whom she's relied for support. In turn, she has applied to be a peer mentor for the 2016 academy, wanting to help incoming students build friendships. "I now know [that] being here, it's so stressful. You only have each other," she said of her friends. "Those friendships are extremely important to me."

In another communication course, advanced instructor Dale Jenkins assigned small groups different sections of the book—Greitens' time studying at the University of Oxford, hunting terrorists in Iraq, confronting poverty in Bolivia, and more—and asked them to deliver a presentation and short quiz. "Make it come to life," he said.

One group of four discussed Greitens' SEAL training. "He says that people quit because they let fear get to them," said Alison LeMair, a multimedia journalism major. "He says that, like, 20 times."

LeMair cited a particular page, and the others flipped to the passage while she read aloud.

Amy Margolin, who is still undecided in her major, reminded her classmates of how Greitens described the perspective of a soldier who continuously—and jokingly—threatened to quit, but never did. As Greitens wrote, "I can quit later if I have to, but this, whatever this is that I have to do—hold this log over my head, or sit in the freezing surf, or run down the beach with the boat bouncing on my head—I can do this for at least ten more seconds, and that's really all I have to do."