Changing learning, changing lives
Conversations with Pearson authors
As higher education evolves, it’s important to recall the intrinsic value of education. Great teachers focus not on maximizing knowledge, but on teaching students to think and reason so they can learn beyond college.
Great content is essential to this equation. Great content is the product of great authorship born of great teaching. When done well, both content and teaching are compassionate and responsive, never generic or static. Getting both right requires unwavering commitment.
What’s at the heart of teaching? Of creating? Spend key moments with our authors. Read the transcript.
Reflections on education
Watch some of our authors discuss teaching, creating, technology, and their hopes for the students and teachers they reach. Or view the complete roundtable discussion. Read the transcript.
On teaching
Teaching is more than transferring knowledge. It’s inspiring students to be passionate and discerning learners, throughout their lives.
On creating
Great learning content gives students the tools they need to think critically, preparing them for the unknown careers of the future.
On learning technology
Teachers can use technology to transform classrooms into vibrant, interactive learning forums that stimulate real and lasting excitement.
On empowering students
Engaging, meaningful education equips students to think for themselves, to pursue lifelong learning, and to actively participate in the democratic process.
Elayn Martin-Gay (moderator)
Elayn Martin-Gay has taught mathematics at the University of New Orleans for over 25 years. She is the author of 13 published textbooks and numerous multimedia interactive products — including videos, tutorial software, and courseware — all specializing in developmental mathematics courses. Her educational materials can be combined into various types of integrated teaching and learning packages.
Prior to writing textbooks, Martin-Gay created an acclaimed series of lecture videos to support developmental mathematics students. These highly successful videos originally served as the foundational materials for her texts. Today, the videos are specific to each book in her series. She has also created chapter test prep videos for students, along with instructor-to-instructor videos with teaching tips, hints, and suggestions for every developmental mathematics course, including basic mathematics, prealgebra, beginning algebra, and intermediate algebra.
Martin-Gay has received numerous teaching awards, including the local University Alumni Association’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Outstanding Developmental Educator at the University of New Orleans, presented by the Louisiana Association of Developmental Educators.
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Eric Gaze
Eric Gaze is a well-known leader in the quantitative reasoning community. After teaching a liberal arts math course and an Excel course early in his career, Gaze aspired to give students a truly meaningful experience in math. He also observed that spreadsheets were a powerful way to engage students in real-world problem solving while learning math concepts. Excited to discover like-minded educators discussing quantitative reasoning, Gaze began constructing a framework for a new course based on both proportional reasoning and Excel.
Gaze directs the quantitative reasoning (QR) program at Bowdoin College, is chair of the Center for Learning and Teaching, and is a lecturer in the mathematics department. He is president of the National Numeracy Network (NNN) (2013–2018) and a past chair of SIGMAA-QL (2010–12). He writes a column, Ratiocination, for the NNN website. Gaze has given talks and led workshops on the topics of QR across the curriculum, creating a QR entry point course, writing with numbers, QR assessment, and running a QR program. He has also served on review teams of QR programs.
Gaze is the principal investigator for an NSF TUES Type I grant (2012–14), Quantitative Literacy and Reasoning Assessment DUE 1140562. This collaborative project builds on Bowdoin College’s QR instrument, which is used for advising purposes and is available to interested schools. Prior to arriving at Bowdoin, Gaze led the development of a master’s in numeracy program for K-12 teachers at Alfred University, as an associate professor of mathematics and education.
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On engaging students
"What is the mathematical experience students need to fully participate in that conversation?"
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On empowering students
"We want them to fully participate as citizens in this democratic society."
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On feedback from educators
"Faculty — that’s real, I think, when they thank you."
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David Laibson
David Laibson is chair of the Harvard Economics Department and is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1994. Dr. Laibson is also a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves as a research associate for their asset pricing, economic fluctuations, and aging working groups.
His research focuses on behavioral economics, intertemporal choice, macroeconomics, and household finance, and he leads Harvard University’s Foundations of Human Behavior Initiative. He serves on several editorial boards, as well as on the Pension Research Council (Wharton), Harvard’s Pension Investment Committee, and the Board of the Russell Sage Foundation. Dr. Laibson has previously served on the boards of the Health and Retirement Study (National Institutes of Health) and the Academic Research Council of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Dr. Laibson is a recipient of a Marshall Scholarship and a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been honored with the T. W. Schultz Prize from the University of Chicago, the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security, and Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Prize in recognition of teaching excellence.
Dr. Laibson holds degrees from Harvard University (AB in economics), the London School of Economics (MSc in econometrics and mathematical economics), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD in economics).
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On making economics relevant
"Economics is about every single choice we make in life."
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On making economics accessible
"I’m not that interested about how you perform during the semester. What I really care about is how you use this for the next 50 years of your life."
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On inspiring students
"I want the student to have a personal transformation."
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Jeff Manza
Jeff Manza is a professor of sociology and the former chair of the Department of Sociology at New York University. Before joining the NYU faculty, he taught at Pennsylvania State University (1996–98) and Northwestern University (1998–2006). His teaching and research interests combine inequality, political sociology, and public policy. His research has examined how different types of social identities and inequalities influence political processes such as voting behavior, partisanship, and public opinion (at both the macro and micro levels).
One line of his research looks at the causes and consequences of the disenfranchisement of felons in the U.S.; his book Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2006) is the standard work on this topic. He is now completing a book entitled The Two Inequalities: Rights, Recognition, and Redistribution in American Politics (to be published by Oxford University Press). He has also published widely in leading scholarly journals and in popular magazines and newspapers.
In addition to his research and scholarship, Manza is a dedicated and award-winning teacher. As chair of the NYU Sociology Department, he launched The Sociology Project: An Introduction to the Sociological Imagination, a joint venture of the department faculty which seeks to develop a new model for the introductory textbook. Each chapter is authored by a faculty member who teaches and writes on the topic at hand. Profits from the book will be reinvested into NYU’s graduate and undergraduate sociology programs.
Three other upper-level texts — on social problems, changing families and intimate relationships, and race and ethnicity — are now in development under his direction. The texts on social problems and changing families will launch in 2018.
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On teaching students to ask questions
“... when they leave college they will have that kind of mind that is determined to ask hard questions about the social world that they’re living in.”
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On flipping the classroom
"I can flip the class and give them the responsibility to teach each other and push themselves ... ."
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On student accountability
"There's so much more in the digital learning environment that we can convey through these materials.”
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Tracie Miller-Nobles
Tracie Miller-Nobles, CPA, is an associate professor at Austin Community College, Austin, TX. She has previously served as senior lecturer at Texas State University, San Marcos, TX; as chair of the department of accounting, business, computer information systems, and marketing/management at Aims Community College, Greeley, CO; and as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas. She also has public accounting experience with Deloitte Tax LLP and Sample & Bailey, CPAs.
Miller-Nobles is a member of the Teachers of Accounting at Two Year Colleges, the American Accounting Association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and the Texas State Society of Certified Public Accountants. She is secretary/webmaster of the Board of Directors of Teachers of Accounting at Two Year Colleges, a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants nominations committee, and chair of the Texas Society of CPAs Relations with Education Institutions committee.
Miller-Nobles has also served on the Commission on Accounting Higher Education: Pathways to a Profession. She has spoken at numerous conferences on topics such as using technology in the classroom, motivating non-business majors to learn accounting, and incorporating active learning into the classroom. She is a recipient of the Texas Society of CPAs Rising Star Award, TSCPA Outstanding Accounting Educator Award, NISOD Teaching Excellence Award, and the Aims Community College Excellence in Teaching Award.
Miller-Nobles received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting from Texas A&M University and is pursuing her PhD in adult learning, also at Texas A&M University. In her spare time, she enjoys being with friends and family, as well as camping, kayaking, and quilting.
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On preparing students for rapidly changing fields
“Now we’re looking at students graduating with a degree in accounting ... in careers that we probably don’t even know about today.”
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On challenging students to think
"... yes, you have to know accounting, but you also have to be a really great thinker."
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On reaching the middle students
“In accounting we always say, 'If you don’t know the first four chapters, then it’s going to be a disaster ... .’”
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On creating lifelong learners
"If I don't teach them how to learn, I'm doing a disservice to them."
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Lourdes Norman-McKay
Lourdes Norman-McKay is a professor of microbiology and anatomy & physiology at Florida State College at Jacksonville. She was a National Institute of Health postdoctoral fellow in microbiology and immunology at Pennsylvania State College of Medicine.
In addition to fifteen years of teaching allied health studies on the associate, baccalaureate, and post-baccalaureate levels, Dr. Norman-McKay has served as an academic dean for STEM programs. In 2016, she received the Outstanding Faculty Award at Florida State College at Jacksonville.
Dr. Norman-McKay is an active participant on the ASM Microbiology in Nursing task committee. Her new textbook in allied health microbiology will publish in 2018 with Pearson. She earned her BS from the University of Florida and her PhD from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine.
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On being an author
"There’s not a real understanding as to how much time really goes into this.”
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On the benefits of Mastering
"Learning science is a lot like learning how to make spaghetti."
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On saving lives through relevance
"What they know will either save lives or end it."
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Mary Anne Poatsy
Mary Anne Poatsy is a senior adjunct faculty member of Montgomery County Community College, teaching various business, management, and computer application and concepts courses in classroom and online environments.
Since 1995, Poatsy has taught at various elementary and secondary institutions, including Gwynedd Mercy College, Montgomery County Community College, Muhlenberg College, and Bucks County Community College. She has also trained in the professional environment and presented at several conferences. Before teaching, Poatsy was a vice president at Shearson Lehman Hutton in the Municipal Bond Investment Banking Department.
Poatsy holds a BA in psychology and education from Mount Holyoke College and an MBA in finance from the Northwestern University J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
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On the importance of understanding technology
"Knowledge has changed."
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On creating interactive learning experiences
"We're really cognizant of the fact that students learn in different ways."
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On working with Revel
"We’re incredibly excited to have that type of technology [Revel] finally catch up with our vision.”
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Niva Tro
Niva Tro is a professor of chemistry at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA, where he has been a faculty member since 1990.
He received his PhD in chemistry from Stanford University for work on developing and using optical techniques to study the adsorption and desorption of molecules to and from surfaces in ultrahigh vacuum. He then went on to the University of California at Berkeley, where he did postdoctoral research on ultrafast reaction dynamics in solution.
Since arriving at Westmont, Professor Tro has been awarded grants from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund, from Research Corporation, and from the National Science Foundation to study the dynamics of various processes occurring in thin adlayer films adsorbed on dielectric surfaces. He has also been honored with Westmont’s Outstanding Teacher of the Year award three times and with the college’s Outstanding Researcher of the Year award.
Professor Tro lives in Santa Barbara with his wife, Ann, and their four children, Michael, Ali, Kyle, and Kaden. In his leisure time, Professor Tro enjoys surfing, mountain biking, and being outdoors with his family.
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On getting the most out of classroom time
"I want my students at the end of the day to be competent and passionate."
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On active learning
"We learn better when we're involved."
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Brooke Whisenhunt
Brooke Whisenhunt is a professor of psychology at Missouri State University, where she has been a faculty member since 2002. Her research has focused on body image, obesity, and eating disorders, as well as the scholarship of teaching and learning. She teaches undergraduate courses, including introductory psychology, abnormal psychology, and teaching of psychology, in addition to graduate-level courses in psychological assessment. She is also a licensed clinical psychologist.
Dr. Whisenhunt was a member of the introductory psychology redesign team at Missouri State University as part of a statewide mission in course redesign through the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT). The redesign team transformed introductory psychology at Missouri State University into a blended course and demonstrated significant improvements in learning outcomes. The results of this project have been published in Psychology Learning and Teaching and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology.
Since completing the redesign project, Dr. Whisenhunt has served as a Missouri Learning Commons scholar, assisting other institutions in the state to implement redesign projects. She is also an NCAT redesign scholar. Dr. Whisenhunt has presented across the country about pedagogical strategies to improve learning, decrease institutional costs, and boost retention in introductory psychology.
She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas in 1997 and her PhD in clinical psychology from Louisiana State University in 2002.
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On leveraging the science of learning
"That's been the greatest thing about technology — is that we can actually use the science now."
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On the importance of educators
"You get to be that person who nudges that student on the next step on their journey."
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On writing for a digital platform
"Did it work, did it not work? Did I just spend three years of my life on nothing?"
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On the future of the printed textbook
"... which, really, I don’t even think about as a textbook. I think about it as a digital learning program."
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