The eighth installment of TAA Member Phil Wankat’s curation and commentary of the archival issues of the TAA Report (now The Academic Author), Software, is now available. Articles include “Multimedia: 20 Questions for Prospective Software Authors,” and “12 Compelling Reasons for Authors and Publishers to Create Software Enhancements to Books.“

Wankat selected articles that have information that is still valid today, and included commentary on each. We will be adding these articles to the web page, “Articles from TAA Report Archives (now The Academic Author) with Commentary,” over the next few months. The articles are organized into 10 categories, including Authors Needed, Cartoons, Contracts, Ethics, Money, Production, Recognition and Rewards, Software, Textbooks as Scholarship, and Writer’s Block. 

After 47 years at Purdue University, Wankat retired as the Clifton L. Lovell Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and as Professor of Engineering Education in 2017. At Purdue he served as department head, Interim Director of Continuing Engineering Education, Interim Associate Dean of Engineering for Undergraduates, and Director of Undergraduate Degree Programs in Engineering Education. While at Purdue, he wrote eleven books on chemical engineering and engineering education. During the pandemic, he became bored and started writing the fifth edition of his textbook, Separation Process Engineering, which was published as his twelfth book by Pearson in 2023. He retired for the second time and has stopped writing books. Now that he has actually retired, Phil has more time to spend with his wife Dot and their new granddaughter. He also has more time but less energy to enjoy his hobbies of fishing, canoeing, and camping.