Cyprian Amede, freshman pre-med major, believes the Eastern Reads program is successful and worth participating in.

“The program is great,” Amede said. “It gave me a better understanding of what I read and see people’s point of view in the book.”

Eastern Reads is a program aimed specifically toward freshmen. During the program, students read a book with a wide variety of real life topics and answer several questions upon their arrival to Eastern’s campus.

Freshmen participated in those discussions of this year’s book “Mountains Beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder on Friday.

“The program was started a few years ago to give freshmen a communal experience that would bring together a variety of topics to help set an academic tone,” said Karla Sanders, one of the founders of the Eastern Reads program.

During this year’s discussions, students were asked a series of questions about what they liked about the book and how it could relate to their life.

Some students, however, could not relate to the book.

Liz Pizzolato, freshman accounting major, admits she wasn’t interested in the story.

“I honesty think it’s a waste of time because in my group nobody read the book,” Pizzolato said.

The program began in January 2007 – making this the second year EIU Reads has been utilized.

Faculty members including Sanders and Bonnie Irwin, director of the Honors College, were on several committees together and decided to come up with the program that would give freshmen something in common once arriving to Eastern.

Eastern is one of 100 institutions using this program recently. Other institutions using this kind of program include Ball State University, Buffalo State College and Duke University.

Ideally, by reading the book, students can relate together and discuss the topics in the book during the sessions.

“We wanted something for students to do during the summer and come back to be involved with,” Sanders said.

This year’s novel discusses topics such as social justice, health care and world health.

Sanders said research was done on books other schools were using and a list of books was compiled for possible choices for this fall.

The program is successful when she sees the professors from different departments discuss the book and their prospective, Sanders added.

Eastern Reads also has set a scheduled curriculum for the fall to continue the learning experience with events relating to the book.

Although Pizzolato could not relate to the book, she thinks it will be exciting to learn more about the main character at the upcoming events.

Brittni Garcia can be reached at 581-7942 or at bmgarcia@eiu.edu.