Rice University Common Reading

Rice undergraduates are members of a community in which students and scholars share a love of learning and collaborate as partners in two timeless pursuits: the search for truth and new knowledge through research and other creative endeavors, and the betterment of our world through service and education.

This year's Common Reading, Three Cups of Tea:  One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time, by Greg Mortenson and David Relin, illuminates both pursuits.  Three Cups of Tea tells the story of Mortenson's conversion from elite mountaineer to advocate for using education to combat terrorism and build cultural understanding in the most remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Against great odds, over the course of the past fifteen years, Mortenson almost singlehandledly built and sustained schools for tens of thousands of impoverished Muslim children, especially girls, in the backyard of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The Common Reading program serves two important purposes: To welcome new students to the Rice intellectual community, and to provide the foundation for a shared experience for the entire first-year class.  We also ask new students to read the book because we believe Mr. Mortenson's experience offers a valuable example as they contemplate their collegiate futures. At Rice, we aspire to produce graduates who will make distinctive impacts in their communities but who also recognize, like Mortenson, that identifying a social need or problem is just the beginning. Providing solutions in today's world requires the ability to cope with ambiguity, the determination to persist in the face of obstacles, a recognition of the delicate interplay between progress and culture, and respect and compassion for people who might be different from us. Reading Three Cups of Tea at the beginning of a Rice career will not only expose students to a poorly understood but consequential region of the world; more important, it will help them begin to understand their own potential to affect meaningful change.

Global citizenship is the subject of extensive attention by a wide variety of public, private, and institutional organizations.  To help you explore the topic and forge your own opinion on the related issues, we have compiled a list of helpful links.

1. Greg Mortenson's personal website and the website for The Central Asia Institute:
   http://www.gregmortenson.com/welcome.php
   http://www.ikat.org/
   
   
2. Beyond Traditional Borders:
   http://beyondtraditionalborders.rice.edu/
   
   
3. Engineers Without Borders:
   http://ewb.rice.edu/
   
   
4. Rice University Center for Civic Engagement:
   http://cce.rice.edu/
   
   
   

Information about Pakistan and the locations described in the book

1. Timeline of Pakistan's History (BBC):
   http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/country_profiles/1156716.stm
   
   
2. Statistical and Political Profile of Pakistan (BBC):
   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/country_profiles/1157960.stm
   
   
3. Information on Baltistan, the setting for much of Three Cups of Tea:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgit-Baltistan
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skardu_District
   
   
4. Information on K2:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2
   
   
5. 3-D animated maps of the Karakoram:
   http://www.earthshot.net/cg_world/k2/animations.html
   
   
6. Google Map of Baltisan:
   http://maps.google.com