This personal reflection describes events at the Appalachian State University that celebrated the Darwin Bicentennial throughout the 2008-2009 academic year. Prominent speakers and writers joined with a film series, theatre productions, and art exhibits to focus on Darwin and his scientific discoveries. The Darwin Bicentennial provided the members of this university community with the unique opportunity to come together to discuss, argue, debate, and challenge issues concerning theories of human origin, contemporary scientific knowledge based on theories of evolution and natural selection and, of course, issues of faith and reason. For a year, the university itself became a wide open classroom with a "commons" defined by Darwin and his legacy.