2009 - 10 Common Book Project
The Virginia Tech community is committed to inventing the future.
We strive to use our academic, professional, and social lives in ways that enrich the present and improve the future for those in our immediate surroundings and beyond.
Our Common Book Project (CBP) is now in its eleventh year and provides all first-year undergraduate and transfer students with shared educational experience to encourage a sense of community through critical thinking, discussion, and action.
This fall's 6,000 incoming students each received a copy of Daniel Goleman's ECOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything.
In March 2009, Time Magazine's cover story identified ecological intelligence as one of the "10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now":
What if we could seamlessly calculate the full lifetime effect of our actions on the earth and on our bodies? Not just carbon footprints but social and biological footprints as well? What if we could think ecologically? That's what psychologist Daniel Goleman describes in his forthcoming book.
Goleman challenges the hype of sustainability with a call to informed action. The book's focus on logical decision making for consumers can prompt our community toward more critical thinking and action through our roles in product design, manufacturing, promotion, consumption, and disposal.
Please join us in building our Ecological Intelligence and inventing the future!
Return to this site to connect and contribute to the discussion. Resources will go online during the fall semester.