Even books like Dr. Seuss' Oh, the Places You'll Go! can be driving inspiration for a highly accomplished academic.

And it is newly tenured professor Matthew Mench's.

"It was given to me on the day I graduated from high school by my parents," wrote Mench, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, in an e-mail message.

"I have found the words to be as full of truth and enduring as any other book I have read, besides the Bible."

Several tenured professors like Mench are being given the opportunity to showcase their favorite or most meaningful books in an exhibit sponsored by the University Libraries and the Office of the Provost.

Catherine Grigor, manager of public information for university libraries, said the professors choose their own books, which are then purchased by the libraries or taken from the existing collection.

"Some choose a childhood favorite, others a book by a mentor or one that inspired them," Grigor wrote in an e-mail message.

The exhibit, which is on display in 109 Pattee until Oct. 29, houses a widespread collection of different genres of books with various personal statements by professors from all Penn State campuses.

Steven Ettinger, professor of medicine at the Hershey campus, chose Elie Wiesel's Night as one of her favorite books.

Ettinger described what it was like to meet Wiesel and how the book impacted him.

"It was an incredible moment to meet a man who survived the Holocaust," Ettinger wrote. "Through the eyes of this survivor, Night details not only the horrors of man's inhumanity to man, but the incredible strength and resolve of the human spirit in its struggle to survive."

Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead was the choice of Lolita Paff, associate professor of business economics at the Berks campus.

"Thinking back to my undergraduate experience, this book was the first text to challenge my perceptions," Paff wrote.

The topics of the books are diverse, ranging from the politics of sports to modern techniques in neuroscience research to a comparison of women and the coming of the motor age.

A few of the selections were personal and sentimental in nature.

Frances Sessa, associate professor of psychology at the Abington campus, chose The Victoria's Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming and Other Lessons I Learned from Breast Cancer by Jennie Nash.

"Midway through my tenure journey, I was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer," Sessa wrote. "Cancer changes your perspective on many things and how you choose to move forward in life."

Sessa continued, writing that "achieving promotion and tenure is accomplishment enough; it is also my validation of having been able to learn what it means to be a 'young survivor.' "

Grigor wrote that professors honored were chosen as they reached tenure, which is a "measure of scholarship and academic ability."

Penn State's Promotion and Tenure Recognition Program is a standard measure of performance in many universities, she said.

Grigor wrote that the honorees' selections are book-plated with the professors' names and the year they were honored and then placed in the Libraries' permanent collection.