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The Connections Project: Becoming a Successful Learner and Competent Citizen

Did you know that, "Full Development of the Human Person" is one of the core values of the Holy Names Sisters?

Common Reading

The Connections Project (see: what you need to do) is one of the ways you will "connect" with the HNU community. All first-year students participate and the experience involves acquiring "tools" for success in college:

• learning how to learn
• learning how to serve
• learning how to lead

through mentoring, service learning, leadership programs, workshops, community dialogues, and a common reading.

What You Need to Do

Since all first-year students participate in The Connections Project, there is nothing you need to join. You are automatically a member. However, there are a few things you need to do to get off to a successful start:

1. Determine which Connections Project Course, Connections Project Lab, and learning community that appeals to you. Talk it over with friends and family and definitely with your academic advisor. You can also talk about the options with Laura Lyndon, Dean for Student Success, who is one of the coordinators of the program.
2. Enroll in a course. This will likely happen when you attend a Hawk Day.
3. Read the common reading selected for the program. You will receive a complimentary copy of the book at Hawk Days so you can get a head start during the summer.
4. Meet your Peer Mentor and begin working as a member part of a small group (cohort). Peer mentors are upper-class students who will help guide you and your cohort through the many opportunities and resources on campus. Although you may meet your peer mentor and classmates prior to your arrival to campus, you will definitely meet them and begin your education to success at Orientation.

Common Reading

“Zeitoun” by Dave Eggers

• All incoming first year students receive a complimentary copy of the book during Hawk Days so they may read it during the summer.
  
• In choosing Zeitoun, the Connections Project 2011 Book Selection Task Force found Zeitoun "powerful, relevant, engaging, meaningful, and full of wisdom," to quote one task force member. From the book’s website: “When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four, chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. In the days after, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. But, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared. Eggers's riveting nonfiction book, three years in the making, explores Zeitoun's roots in Syria, his marriage to Kathy—an American who converted to Islam—and their children, and the surreal atmosphere (in New Orleans and the United States generally) in which what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun became possible. … Zeitoun was written in close collaboration with its subjects and involved vast research—in this case, in the U.S., Spain, and Syria.”
  
• Dave Eggers’ other five books include What Is the What, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award.  His website notes, “Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco. In 2002, with Nínive Calegari he co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for youth in the Mission District of San Francisco.”
• The library has also made a special subject guide for Zeitoun (http://hnu.libguides.com/zeitoun), and to help build on the Zeitoun reading experience, has purchased a special collection of books and DVDs related to Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans.

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