By Rob Tokanel

Greg Mortenson, author of New York Times bestseller “Three Cups of Tea,” touted the value of promoting peace and providing worldwide education at Matthews Arena Thursday night as the capstone of the freshman program First Pages.

The three-year old First Pages program had previously been limited to Honors students, but was expanded to all freshmen this year. The program provides incoming students with books to read during the summer and kicks off the school year with a lecture by the book’s author and group discussion about the book.

Maureen Kelleher, director of the Northeastern Honors Program, said the growth of First Pages came from a desire to bring incoming students together.

“[First Pages] is another way to get the excitement built up, to get ideas percolating, to get [students] to have something in common in their first days on campus,” she said. “They can talk about it to any other first-year students on campus, which is wonderful.”

The English department will discuss “Three Cups of Tea” in freshman College Writing classes.

Mortenson told the near-capacity audience about his failed attempt at climbing the mountain K2 in Pakistan and how the kindness shown to him by the members of the Korphe mountain village inspired him to build schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. He later wrote “Three Cups of Tea” about this experience.

Freshman business major Tess Beatrice said the reaction to the speech has been positive but not necessarily a prevalent topic of conversation among the entering class.

“I haven’t heard too many people talking about it, but from those who did they really liked it and thought it was interesting,” she said.

Kelleher said “Three Cups of Tea” was chosen because of its widespread appeal and Mortenson’s ability to effectively relay his political and humanitarian insights as an orator. The book was on the New York Times bestseller list for 84 weeks, beginning in 2007, the majority of which it spent at No. 1.

“The goal is to have a great read and a great speaker,” she said. “So when we look at books we’re also looking for someone who is out there communicating the message of the book.”

Mortenson stressed the importance of experiential learning and the necessity for building relationships with impoverished countries as a means of improving their educational infrastructures.

“To help alleviate poverty, to understand poverty, we have to smell poverty, we have to touch poverty, we have to taste poverty and we have to feel poverty,” he said. “We can’t solve poverty from a think tank in Washington, D.C.”

Freshman health sciences major Kati Phillips said she was surprised by the power of Mortenson’s presentation.

“Having read the book, I know he doesn’t like speaking in front of people, so I didn’t really expect him to be amazingly entertaining,” she said. “It was really cool for him to actually be here after reading about him.”

Phillips said she thought the decision to allow all freshmen to take part in the project was worthwhile because it provided students with a wealth of information about a topic they might not have known much about.

“There’s so much going on that I would never have known if Northeastern hadn’t given me the book,” she said.

Freshman finance major Steven Deck said that while he thought it was unfair to require students to read the book, he could see the value in students learning from Mortenson’s experiences.

“I don’t know if they should force everyone to read it, but it’s a good book and a good lesson,” he said.

Although students constituted the majority of the audience, some members of the surrounding community were in attendance. Kim Aalfs, 47, of Wenham, said her friend found out about the event on Mortenson’s website and they pair decided to invite other members to attend the book club.

“When we found out Greg Mortenson was going to speak, a lot of us were very interested to meet him in person,” she said. “He’s a very intriguing person, and the work that he’s done is so terrific that we couldn’t resist.”

Mortenson used a slideshow of pictures from his travels in the Middle East to demonstrate the impact that building schools has had in the small communities he has worked in. He said the only way to end extremism in places like Pakistan is to stop fighting and work together to create a literate populace.

“Americans are a compassionate people and a generous people, but if we just fight terrorism, that’s based on fear,” he said. “If we can promote peace, that’s based on hope.”

The two previous summer programs featured authors were Tracy Kidder, author of Mountains Beyond Mountains and Michael Patrick MacDonald, author of Easter Rising: An Irish American Coming Up from Under.