Overall Rating Silver - expired
Overall Score 61.91
Liaison Emily Vollmer
Submission Date Aug. 2, 2011
Executive Letter Download

STARS v1.1

Virginia Tech
ER-T2-8: Themed Semester or Year

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.25 / 0.25 Angie De Soto
Campus Sustainability Planner
Facilities Services, Office of Energy and Sustainability
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Has the institution chosen a sustainability-related theme for its themed semester, year, or first-year experience during the past three years?:
Yes

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A brief description of the themed semester, year, or first-year experience:
The Common Book Project at Virginia Tech was established in 1998 as a means of enriching the first-year experience and creating a sense of community for undergraduate students. Since the first full-scale distribution in 2000, all incoming first year students have been given a book to engage them through the lens of shared reading and to provoke conversation among students and their professors. The 2010 - 2011 selection was Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver, "the tremendously popular, best selling narrative that tells the story of how the author’s family was changed by one year of deliberately eating food produced in the place where they live." The 2009-2010 selection was Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything by Daniel Goleman. In this book Goleman challenges the hype of sustainability with a call to informed action.

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The sustainability-related book that was chosen, if applicable:
1. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver; 2. Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything by Daniel Goleman

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The website URL where information about the theme is available:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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