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First-year students enrolled in ASC 101: Introduction to University Life will share the common experience of reading No Impact Man by Colin Beavan.

The goal of this common reading program is to create a shared learning experience that fosters student engagement, retention, and personal development beyond the classroom.  In pursuing this initiative, CSU joins college campuses throughout the country that make this part of the freshman year experience.  Although directed primarily at freshmen, we hope to engage the entire campus in this reading experience through promoting the book in other courses and sponsoring campus-wide activities to highlight the reading and its intersection with different disciplines and issues.

This year's book, No Impact Man by Colin Beavan, is an "engaging look at one man's decision to put his money where his mouth is and go off the grid for one year — while still living in New York City — -to see if it's possible to make no net impact on the environment. In other words, no trash, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no air-conditioning, no television. After this mad endeavor, Beavan explains to the rest of us how we can realistically live a more 'eco-effective' and by turns a more content life in an age of inconvenient truths."— from Baker & Taylor Content Café

Books chosen for the Common Reading Experience in previous years include:

• 2009-2010: Copenhagen by Michael Frayn
• 2008-2009: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
• 2007-2008: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Hadden