Life of the Mind Program

The University of Tennessee offers an exciting program for first-year students called “Life of the Mind.” As part of your academic orientation to UT, you will join all incoming students in reading an assigned book during the summer and will participate in a group discussion of the book during Welcome Week.

The goal is to create a shared intellectual context for incoming students, to stimulate discussion and interaction, and to cultivate the skills of critical thinking, reading, and engagement with ideas that you will employ throughout your academic life and beyond.

The Life of the Mind book for 2008 is Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, "one of the most important war stories of our generation. The arming of children is among the greatest evils of the modern world, and yet we know so little about it because the children themselves are swallowed up by the very wars they are forced to wage. Ishmael Beah has not only emerged intact from this chaos, he has become one of its most eloquent chroniclers. We ignore his message at our peril."

Here is how the Life of the Mind program works:

1. Purchase your copy of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier at the University Bookstore during Summer Orientation or through your local or online bookseller. The University Bookstore and some online booksellers offer it at a discount.

2. Read the book prior to coming to campus for Welcome Week. Take notes on ideas or questions you may have. Write a one-page response to the book to bring to your discussion group, making two copies of that response. Writers of the ten papers judged the best by discussion leaders will be invited to a private luncheon with the Chancellor.

3. You will be contacted this summer via your UT email account about registering for your discussion group.  Bring your copy of the book and one copy of your response paper to your discussion group, and join other new students and a UT faculty member in exploring themes, issues, and ideas presented in the book. You will need the second copy of your written response for your first English composition or honors class meeting.

Contact

Michael Modarelli
407F Andy Holt Tower
The University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996
(865) 974-9289

E-mail: mmodarel@tennessee.edu