Serena Loranca, an undecided freshman major, does not know many adults who went to college.

She is the first person in her family to attend college.

Because of the Eastern Reads program, Loranca gets to meet an adult who was in her shoes about 10 years ago.

Cedric Jennings, the subject of “A Hope in the Unseen,” the first required book in Eastern’s summer reading initiative, will speak at 7 tonight in McAfee Gymnasium.

The book follows Jennings’ experiences from an inner-city high school to success at an Ivy League university.

Bonnie Irwin, dean of the honors college, was part of the committee that chose “A Hope in the Unseen” as the first book for the Eastern Reads program.

She said the goal of the program was to give students common ground so they could interact with one another on an academic and social level.

Loranca and other students in Eastern’s Gateway program have the opportunity to meet with Jennings and ask him questions in a small group before his presentation.

Gateway is a program for first-generation college students, students who come from an economically depressed area or low-income households and students who are part of an underrepresented ethnic group.

Although not all freshmen did their homework or attended their reading circles during Prowl Week, Irwin said she believes the program was still a success.

“Not all the students liked the book,” Irwin said. “And not all the students finished the book, and we know that. But the really great thing was that we had everybody thinking about the book and talking about the book and having an academic conversation.”

Irwin said she overheard many students discussing how far they had gotten in the book, what they thought of it and whether or not they had done the homework.

She said when she first read “A Hope in the Unseen” she found Jennings’ story to be extremely inspirational. She said even if students could not relate to Jennings’ experiences before college, she hoped his experiences at Brown would help students anticipate what problems or challenges they might face at Eastern.

Loranca is one of the students who hopes to apply the book’s lessons.

“For me and a bunch of people I know, none of our parents went to school,” she said. “So I’m just interested to hear anybody who has gone to school recently and gotten through it and to know what they know. Because no adult figures around me have ever been to college.”

Jennings attended Ballou High School in Washington, D.C., located in one of the capitol’s most dangerous areas. While many of his classmates were affiliated with gangs and had no plans of furthering their educations after high school, Cedric took on extra assignments and studied hard in order to prepare himself for the next step in his education: attending a top-rate university.

Toward the end of high school, Jennings was accepted into a competitive Milwaukee Institute of Technology summer program for top minority students. MIT was the school of his dreams. However, Jennings found he had to do twice as much work as his peers in order to succeed.

At the end of the summer his dreams of attending MIT were crushed.

But Jennings never gave up his goal of attending an Ivy League school.

He went on to attend Brown University, majoring in education and minoring in applied math. Jennings graduated with a 3.3 grade point average.

Jennings now works as a clinical social worker and youth minister at his childhood church.

Jennings’ many struggles and triumphs can convey a variety of themes to readers, but Irwin said the one message she hopes every reader takes from Jennings’ story is that the value of persistence is the most important.

“If you have a goal, and you work toward that goal, it won’t always be easy but if you persist and you keep moving forward you will be successful. And I think Cedric epitomizes that experience,” she said.

Irwin said being able to hear Jennings speak is a great opportunity for students because few people actually get to see something they read come to life.

The Eastern Reads committee tries to choose books where the author or subject may be able to come to campus because they feel it will make the reading more meaningful.

Irwin said Jennings will speak about the challenges and experiences addressed in “A Hope in the Unseen.”

He will also touch on some issues regarding education and inform Eastern students how they can help youth who are in difficult situations similar to those of his past.

Irwin said she hopes Jennings will also share what it was like to have a book written about him and how having an author follow him around affected his family and friends.

“He’s going to talk about things of interest whether or not you read his particular story,” she said.

Irwin said she is anxious to see if the real Jennings is the same as the Jennings she got to know while she was reading “A Hope in the Unseen.”

“It’s weird when you read a book like this because we all come away feeling like we know him,” she said. “And we may be surprised. Maybe we don’t know him as well as we think we do.”