Laura Frost Inducted Into TAA Council of Fellows

Chemistry textbook author Laura Frost was inducted into the TAA Council of Fellows at the 2024 TAA Conference on Textbook & Academic Authoring in Nashville on June 22.

The TAA Council of Fellows distinguished authors who have a long record of successful publishing. Any author whose textbook or other instructional and academic works have established his/her presence in scholarly publishing over time and who has been innovative in the presentation of material, is qualified for nomination into the TAA Council of Fellows. Induction into the Council of Fellows is the premier honor bestowed by TAA.

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Cultivate Your Dissertation Flow

By Noelle Sterne

In your dissertation writing, you’ve probably experienced the all-too-common range of emotions from initial elation to paralyzing fear to plunging despair, and between many starts, stops, and freezes. Here I suggest how to at least cut down on those maddening swings and invite, coax, and, toward more consistent and actually enjoyable writing, entice . . . the Flow.

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Daphne C. Watkins Receives Pynn-Silverman Lifetime Achievement Award From TAA

Daphne C. Watkins, a Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan, has been awarded the Pynn-Silverman Lifetime Achievement Award from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA). The award was established to honor individuals whose achievements over a career of devoted effort and service demonstrate the highest degree of commitment to excellence in authoring works to advance their discipline; encourage, enlighten and support the work of colleagues; and educate students in the field. The award is named for Ron Pynn and Franklin Silverman, two charter members of TAA who pursued and modeled these qualities in their own work.

“I am deeply honored to have been selected for this award,” said Watkins. “Thank you!”

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Why You Shouldn’t Publish a Custom Textbook (And Why You Should)

By Sierra Pawlak

In her 2023 TAA webinar, “Is Custom Textbook Publishing Right for You?” Rebecca Paynter describes the journey of creating a custom textbook. Paynter is the associate director of the editorial team at the University of Arizona Global Campus, or UAGC. UAGC hosts online courses that are five weeks long, “which is not a lot of time for students to read a traditional textbook in full,” says Paynter. Because of this, her department creates custom textbooks for many of these courses, with the help of “faculty and other subject matter experts to better meet student needs… and potentially [create] books that can meet unmet needs out in the broader market,” she says.

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TAA Member Phil Wankat’s Curation and Commentary of ‘The Academic Author’ Archives – Installment 2

The second installment of TAA Member Phil Wankat’s curation and commentary of the archival issues (1994 to 2010) of the The Academic Author, Bios, is now available. Articles include “And now, 50 books later, a bio of Mike Keedy, author of mathematics textbooks and the founder of TAA,” and “Cognitive Aspects of Writer’s Block,” and “Author Profile: Philip Zimbardo, Improving the human condition.”

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