College Textbook Publishers

Kendall Hunt Publishing's Higher Education Division has announced the location and dates for the next Student Success in College & Beyond Symposium. The next incarnation of this very popular event will be held in Baltimore, Maryland October 5-7, 2012. You can find more details here: http://www.thrivingincollege.com.

In case you're not familiar with the Student Success symposium, let me explain a bit. Kendall Hunt Publishing holds this symposium twice a year, in the spring and in the fall, at various locations across the country. Our most knowledgeable and well known authors present interactive workshops on important topics for institutional effectiveness for promoting student success and retention at a college or university. Each of these authors is an expert in their field and they have all authored college textbooks and ebooks on the topic of student success.

The symposium addresses the full range of factors that promote college student success, focusing especially on high-impact practices that are well grounded in research on student learning and persistence, and which educate the student as a whole person.

Individuals from across the country and as far away as the Netherlands have attended past symposia. All agree that it was time and money well spent, and that their student success program will be better for their attendance at the symposium.

Click  or above to check out Student Success for yourself!

Much has been made lately about customizing existing textbooks for use by other schools. Kendall Hunt Publishing offers three options for getting the college textbooks and ebooks you need. With our highly trained editors, you can create custom textbooks, using your own, original material. Our publishing professionals support and guide you every step of the way because, just like you, our goal is to turn out the best possible product.

You can also customize one of our existing items, blending your content with ours. The other option is to adopt one of our existing products for use in your classroom. Remember, these don't just have to be printed materials. KH offers a wide variety of content delivery systems and options. eBooks, course packs, other types of digital delivery let you determine what works best for you and your students and meets everyone's needs.

There are so many options and products to explore. Visit the Higher Education area of our website and see all the ways we can work with you to create your best product!

Earlier this week I was reading a couple of articles about trends in higher education publishing when I noticed that a couple of the ads that “randomly” appeared on the browser page were for “publishers” offering to publish your book for a flat fee (both just under $200). I wonder how many authors of higher education textbooks have looked into those companies. I know the here at Kendall Hunt Publishing we have a nationwide cadre of highly trained publishing professionals who walk our authors through every step of the publishing process to attain the best results.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a custom textbook, a traditional higher education textbook, or a specialized higher education course offered as an ebook or through a digital coursepack. Our editors are trained to identify your needs and show you how Kendall Hunt Publishing can meet and exceed them. So don’t fall for the “we’ll publish your book for $200” routine. If you have college course materials you’d like to turn into a book or through a digital learning environment, get in touch with one of our editors today. There’s one in your area, and you can find them here: http://www.kendallhunt.com/findRep.aspx?taxid_p=440.

As we all wait anxiously to see whether the groundhog will see his shadow or not tomorrow, I thought I'd take a minute to brag a bit about the custom college publishing expertise that Kendall Hunt's Higher Education division has to offer.

Do you struggle to find the college ebooks or higher education textbooks that are just right for your class? My guess is that even if you find a book that works, you're still supplementing it with your own material such as articles, research, images, graphs, etc. Why bother with all that? By the time you do all that extra work, you could create your own book with Kendall Hunt.

We've been in the business of custom college publishing for more than 60 years. You can write your own book from start to finish, you can use some of our material and some of your own to build your book, or you can take one of our existing books and customize it to meet your needs. With a wide selection of content delivery systems, from printed material to ebooks, to digital coursepacks and more, you choose what works best for your class and what best meets the needs of your students.

We have experts that serve every state in the country. Some are located near you and some work from our home office in Dubuque. No matter who you work with, you'll benefit from our extensive experience in the industry and our unparalleled service. Look into our custom publishing options today and let us make your job easier!

So, what do you do if you teach a unique higher education course and you can’t find the perfect book to fit your needs? You create your own custom college textbook.

That is what education professors at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa did.  They teach a Human Relations course, which seems basic enough, except they took it one step further for their education students.  They teach their Human Relations course specifically for educators.  Since educators face different human relations situations than persons in other careers, they wrote their book to prepare pre-service teachers for those situations. Congratulations  to Scott Arnett, Susan Burns, and Susie Lubbers on their publication Human Relations for the Educator.

With the opportunities available in custom publishing, you can create a traditional printed textbook, lab manual, digital course pack, college ebook or a combination of any of them.

Discover your Create... Customize ... Adopt solutions at www.kendallhunt.com/highered.

As the days get longer and the weather warms up, I can’t help but think about cold treats. There’s an ice cream store in my hometown of Dubuque, Iowa that is called Cold Stone Creamery.  I’m sure you are probably familiar with this business concept.  The customer walks in, looks at a large sample of ice cream flavors (ranging from vanilla to cookie batter, to banana) and numerous mix-ins (such as Oreo, Snickers, brownie, or Cookie Dough). 

Now the customer can do one of three things when they enter: they can order an existing creation directly from the menu; use the menu as a template and add their own mix-ins; or create their own treat from scratch.

This concept dovetails perfectly to my work at Kendall Hunt Publishing.  As a leading higher education textbook publisher, we allow professors to create, adopt, or customize a variety of our college textbooks and ebooks.

Like my father-in-law orders his ice cream treats directly from the menu, so to can a professor adopt a textbook directly from our online college textbooks catalog.  This serves him well.  He gets a tested and proven ice cream treat – similar to a professor getting a classroom tested textbook.

Or you could be like my wife and use the menu at Cold Stone as a guide.  She looks up a certain ice cream flavor and consults a list of recommendations to meet her palate.   Her favorite is the cake batter ice cream with the cookie dough mix-in.  This is very similar to Kendall Hunt’s customization process.  Professors can meet with one of our educational consultants, discuss their higher education course, and discuss their options.  They can adopt an existing book and add their own content to create a digital course pack; they could consult our digital learning center to see some of our existing material to add, or they could create a new digital coursepack and deliver via our content delivery system.  The possibilities are truly endless!

Finally, the customer can walk into this ice cream store and invent their own ice cream creation.  This is how I like to roll.  Throw a little bit of this, little bit of that, and bam, a new creation!  As always, Kendall Hunt Publishing offers the educator to create their own course content to meet the needs of them and their students.  Professors can create their own college ebooks, college textbooks, or digital coursepacks. This is the principle that Kendall Hunt was based on and has followed for over sixty years…

All this talk about ice cream is making me hungry…..Thank heavens that Kendall Hunt Publishing offers online content delivery so I can work on the run….I’m off to the ice cream store!

On the CBS show Undercover Boss last week Tim White, Chancellor of University of California, Riverside visited a chemistry course in a lecture hall where they had invested heavily in technology. The Chancellor pointed out how involved the students were during the lecture.  Why?  They participated via technology. 

The professor used Clickers to get student feedback on her questions.  The students participated and were engaged in the course content.

What about your course?  Kendall Hunt Publishing offers custom opportunities to bring a digital learning environment and Clickers to any college course.

Writing a textbook isn't what it used to be.  Now, you can write some of your own material, and borrow selected chapters from our current material and put it into a single book that fits just for your course.  You are teaching what you want, and students aren't paying for material they don't use.

Click here to find out more about our custom publishing program.

As you float in the pool or sink the ball on the 8^th hole, I’m sure the upcoming school year seems far off. But I have to ask this question, more out of curiosity than anything else: What do you do in the summer to prepare for the new school year? Is there a rhythm to your summer? If you’re a teacher of gifted students, my guess is preparing lesson plans for gifted and talented is at the top of your priority list. How about those of you who teach inquiry based science? Do you spend hours sitting on your deck pouring over physical science textbooks as you soak up the rays? Wait, I forgot, we’re not supposed to soak up the rays anymore, sorry.

 

No doubt that school is never far from your minds. Here at Kendall Hunt Publishing summer is actually our busiest time. It’s when we finalize all our new and revised titles, and begin filling orders from school districts and college bookstores around the country. There’s a rhythm to the summer here, starts out quietly enough then builds to a frenzy by the end of August. It’s kind of comforting. Not as comforting, mind you, as the rhythm of my hammock swinging back and forth between my two big maple trees, but hey, we take what we can get, right?

As a follow-up to the fun and learning Kendall Hunt Publishing employees were a part of on the inaugural National Lab Day, there’s something I really want to get off my chest. Yes, Kendall Hunt is an educational publishing company, we sell educational materials and solutions. Books for gifted students, high school chemistry textbooks, teacher edition textbooks, online learning solutions, and more…we make it, and yep, we want to sell it.

But as I saw my fellow employees participate in and react to their National Lab Day experiences, it made me feel really good. Because for us, it really is about the kids. It’s about them learning, and growing, and, eventually, making the world a better place. And we know we can influence that, we can help them along the way, we can make a difference for them. We’ll never be a giant monolithic publisher who sells more high school biology books that everyone else combined. But we don’t want to be that. We want to help teachers, real classroom teachers, from kindergarten through college, find the best solution for their students.

I think it’s just that we care about the kids, we believe in what we do, and we hope to make a difference. It’s what keeps each of us going every day. As loyal readers, I just thought you might like to know what drives us.

I know this is student teacher time. How do I know this? There's a student teacher in my son's class right now. So when I came across this book the other day, I thought I should share some information about it. It's not a high school chemistry textbook, or even a teacher edition textbook, but it might make a great thank you gift for a student teacher. 

Anyway, it's called Getting Hired: A Student Teacher's Guide to Professionalism, Résumé  Development and Interviewing. The book is designed to accompany a student teaching experience and provides step-by-step guidance through student teaching, interviewing, and into a job. It's set up in three phases:

Getting Ready -- Prepares individuals for the teacher job search by making the most of the student teaching experience.  It includes insider advise on multiple topics, 100 things employers will ask about you, and maintaining a professional web presence.

Getting There -- Teaches the essential tools of the teacher job search including résumés, cover letters, interview portfolios, and tips on where to find jobs.

Getting Hired -- Provides strategic interview responses, knowledge of various interview settings, common interview questions and sure-fire tips to make you stand out above the rest with a knock'em dead interview.

Each book comes with individual access to the Getting Hired Companion Website, which contains a plethora of resources, including: ePlanner Activities: Templates for résumé/letter writing, philosophy statements, common interview questions and topics, and success planning.

Interview Portfolio: Build an Interview Portfolio that can easily become an ePortfolio showcasing standards-based teaching abilities, as well as a tremendous interview preparation tool. The 10 Interview Portfolio templates comprise a powerful self-promotion and interview success tool.

Videos: Watch sample interviews for all levels of instruction, listen in as employers give job seeking advice, and key interview questions and topics.

This book can be used for student teaching courses through college or universities, or to support a job search for an individual in the education field. So if you can't decide what to get your son or daughter who is beginning their student teaching, the student who has helped you create lesson plans for your gifted and talented students for the past three months, or the friend who will be student teaching in the Fall, check out Getting Hired on the Kendall Hunt Publishing website: http://www.kendallhunt.com/gettinghired. 

Many people throw around the words "research-based" when selling science textbooks. To some this could mean the actual research that helped with the writing of the curriculum.  To others this would also include the research on the program itself.  

At Kendall Hunt, we are lucky enough to partner with one of the most prestigious authoring groups in science curriculum development, BSCS.

BSCS has been established for over 50 years researching and developing science curriculum for prek-college.  As a well respected organization in the science arena, BSCS has the research to back up the programs it has created.  To see that research, go to: 

http://www.bscs.org/researchevaluation/data/index.html  

I'm just saying.....50 years???? They must be doing something right...

  

Texas high schools are taking action to ensure their students are well-prepared for college and the workforce when they graduate.  Beginning with the class of 2011, students in Texas are required to have 4 years of math and science coursework to graduate.  Gone are the days of skating through that last year with study halls and electives (not that I am speaking from experience)!  The Texas Education Agency put the 4x4 graduation requirement in place to give students continuity in their studies and avoid that potential lapse in their last year of high school.

We are pleased to offer several secondary school textbooks and digital learning products that align with courses being added as fourth year options for science.  These programs include Global Science for Environmental Systems, Forensic Science, and Starry Night for Astronomy and Earth and Space Science.

Please contact me for more information about these, or any other programs from our comprehensive line of science textbook publishing products.  I will be happy to provide correlations with the TEKS or the standards in your state.

How many times have you heard, why do you need to know this stuff? I'm sure that if you had a nickel for every time you heard it, you would be rich. I'm happy to say that Kendall Hunt Publishing has a chemistry textbook that will answer that question. Kendall Hunt Chemistry is engaging with a new thematic approach to help students discover chemistry in their lives. Core concepts are introduced within 12 real-life chapter themes. The chemistry needed to understand the theme is introduced within each chapter so that students see the relevance and cross-concept connections of chemistry in their everyday lives.

The textbook is designed to engage all students and provide an application-based approach that is college-preparatory in its rigor. In the end, this program includes real inquiry- both students designing their own experiments and students being guided by careful questioning to discover concepts before lecture/reading about them.

Click Here to take a look at the Kendall Hunt Chemistry textbook.

As an educational publishing company, Kendall Hunt has always been about supporting educators and administrators whenever possible.  To that end, each year we partner with National Science Education Leadership Association to present the Outstanding Administrator Support Award.  This year the award went to Dr. Ruth Ann Carr, Superintendent of the Ardmore (Oklahoma) City Schools.

Carr was chosen for her extensive efforts in sustaining the standards-based science program at Ardmore City Schools.  She has furthered the cause of process, research and inquiry based science education by improving the science labs, implementing the rigorous Oklahoma Scholars Program which requires 4 science credits for College Preparatory Curriculum (versus the state required 3 credits) for graduation, and enhancing professional development far beyond simple teacher edition textbooks to helping science teachers become science leaders in their schools.  At right is a picture of Charley Cook, Vice President of our K-12 Division, presenting the award to Dr. Carr.  Congratulations Dr. Carr!