The MSU Authors Collection is an important part of the University Archives' holdings because the works in this collection document the intellectual heritage of the university and the contributions of MSU faculty, staff, students, and alumni to contemporary scholarship.
Beginning in 2008, the University Archives has hosted a biennial reception honoring MSU faculty, staff and emeriti faculty authors who had written and/or edited monographs, musical scores or recordings, films or videos. This digital collection showcases the books, scores, recordings, films or videos created by faculty and staff at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Where appropriate and where copyright allows, full-text versions are made available of certain MSU Authors' works.
For more information about the MSU Authors Collection, visit https://library.mnsu.edu/archives/collections/university-archives/msu-authors/ .
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Anything You Want
Geoff Herbach
When Taco's longtime crush, Maggie, not only goes to junior prom with him but ends up pregnant Taco sees it as a fresh start but her parents have other plans.
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10 Essential Instructional Elements for Students with Reading Difficulties: A Brain-Friendly Approach
Andrew P. Johnson
This book is the definitive resource on how the brain creates meaning from print. Drawing from five key areas of neurocognitive research, Andrew Johnson provides a ten-point teaching strategy that encompasses vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, writing and more. A key resource for creating intervention plans for struggling readers, features include:
- Information on the importance of emotions in the process of overcoming reading struggles
- Strategies to promote voluntary reading, even for the most reluctant students
- Useful
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Academic Writing: Process and Product
Andrew P. Johnson
This book provides a foundation and framework to enhance your understanding of the various processes involved in academic writing. The term, academic writing, here refers to the types of writing used in college level writing courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level. However, this book was not written simply to help you pass another English class or to get you through the next writing intensive course (although it will certainly do that). At some
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Gender Politics in US College Athletic Departments: The Case of the University of Minnesota Merger
Lisa A. Kihl, Vicki D. Schull, and Sally A. Shaw
This book examines the gendered politics in the context of a merger of the women's and men's athletic departments at the University of Minnesota over a ten year plus span. Examining the athletic department merger helps us understand women's continual under-representation in University athletics despite Title IX legislation passing 40 years ago. Using interview with organizational stakeholders and archival document data, the book explores how organizational change in the form of a merger is gendered
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Bernie and the Deadbeats
James Paul Mackey
It's tough starting over at a new school and Bernard Mullens has gotten off to a bad start. First he humiliates himself in front of his homeroom class, then he manages to get on the bad side of the seniors. Now he's kept up every night by the world's worst neighbors. Despite their manners, Bernard is thrilled to live in the same apartment complex as a rock n roll group, especially one as talented as
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Desert Boys
Chris McCormick
"In the tradition of startling debuts such as We, the Animals by Justin Torres, Desert Boys follows the life of Daley Kushner, growing up, coming out, and grappling with the remnants of his childhood in California's Mojave Desert. This series of powerful, linked stories illuminates Daley's world--the family, friends, and community that have both formed and constrained him, and his new life in San Francisco. Back home, the desert preys on those who cannot conform:
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Real World, Real Challenges: Adolescent Issues in Contemporary Society
Sarah K. Sifers, Julene Nolan, and Daniel Houlihan
Real World, Real Challenges: Adolescent Issues in Contemporary Society provides a comprehensive overview of adolescent psychology. The book uses a problem-based learning format to engage students, facilitate learning and retention, and foster critical thinking skills. The introduction explains how biological, psychological, and social factors have redefined adolescence over the past century. Specific chapters are devoted to issues such as school and dating violence, mood and eating disorders, sexuality, and the impact of technology and social
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Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life
Dennis Waskul and Michele Waskul
“In the top corner of the window a pale, milky-white wisp is rising almost to the top of our ten-foot ceiling…. I am startled but not afraid…. Mostly, I am engrossed; I have never seen anything like this before (or since) and it fascinates me.”
Dennis Waskul writes these lines—about his first-hand experience with the supernatural—in the introduction to his beguiling book Ghostly Encounters. Based on two years of fieldwork and interviews with 71 midwestern
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The Power of Project-Based Learning: Helping Students Develop Important Life Skills
Scott D. Wurdinger
Project-based learning is a teaching approach that motivates and inspires students to learn and helps them to become self-directed learners over time. Students learn not only the content surrounding their projects, but also important life skills such as problem-solving, creativity, collaboration, communication, time management, and responsibility. Author Scott Wurdinger has implemented this approach over the past ten years in his own classrooms, has conducted numerous research studies on this topic, and has seen the effectiveness
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To Live and Dine in Dixie: The Evolution of Urban Food Culture in the Jim Crow South
Anglea Jill Cooley
This book explores the changing food culture of the urban American South during the Jim Crow era by examining how race, ethnicity, class, and gender contributed to the development and maintenance of racial segregation in public eating places. Focusing primarily on the 1900s to the 1960s, Angela Jilly Cooley identifies the cultural differences between activists who saw public eating places such as urban lunch counters as sites of political participation and believed access to such
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Understanding Communication Research Methods: A Theoretical and Practical Approach
Stephen Michael Croucher and Daniel Cronn-Mills
"Understanding Communication Research Methods helps students better grasp the theoretical and practical uses of method. While many texts describe methods only from a theoretical perspective, this book clearly illustrates practical applications and offers students an engaging how-to approach that draws from scholarship, real-life, and popular culture. The book defines all the main research traditions, illustrates key methods used in communication research, and provides level-appropriate applications of the methods through theoretical and practical examples and exercises.
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The Power of Playful Learning
Joyce Hemphill and Laura Scheinholtz
Collection of play activities that support classroom curriculum. Games and activities can be made from common household recyclables. Activities are organized based on applied skills including estimating, measuring, and graphing, planning and development, putting things together, sequencing, making connections, and spatial relations, and developing an understanding of objects in motion.
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A Murder in Mundelein
Michael Larson
Our father is gone. And as for Monica, if she is out there somewhere, I can only imagine how she must have been haunted all along, maybe even daily, by all of this.
Benjamin and I, I don’t believe either of us has any burning desire to find Monica and bring her to justice. Deep down, I guess I think that she probably has served her life sentence for her crimes several times over –
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Linear Algebra
Sang-Gu Lee, Jon-Lark Kim, In-Jae Kim, Namyong Lee, Ajit Kumar, Quoc Phong Vu, Victoria Lang, and Jae Hwa Lee
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Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Man-Made Vacuum
Roy C. Booth and Nicholas Johnson
Steampunk Victorian England is brought to life in this rousing tale of murder and intrigue featuring literature's greatest detective: Sherlock Holmes. In an era of boilers and coal, inventor Samuel Brown finds himself persecuted for daring to apply his genius to the development of a kerosene powered internal combustion engine. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are tasked with uncovering the source of the conspiracy, and quickly find themselves in the web of a mysterious network
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Bubbles, Roses, and Rump
Marilyn Janice Bos
Wendy Winkworth visits her hometown and is hired by a local teacher to find out if his ex-con mother is going to show up and ruin his chances of marrying the love of his life, who is also the richest girl in town. Meanwhile, the sheriff is trailing Wendy, either because he likes her or because he wants to stop her from looking too closely at what’s really going on in town.
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Fat Boy vs the Cheerleaders
Geoff Herbach
When the high school cheerleading team takes over a soda vending machine's funds, which were previously collected by the pep band, Gabe Johnson, an overweight "band geek" tired of being called names and looked down on, declares war.
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Hernani
Victor Hugo and John J. Janc
This is a critical edition, or “édition critique,” of Victor Hugo’s play Hernani. The in-depth introduction includes a study of the manuscript, the galley proofs and all other original documents. The preface and play contain a critical apparatus that indicates all modifications made by Hugo during the composition of the work. Following the play, there are literary, historical, linguistic and critical notes, indexes of all words and proper names, a list of the differences between
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A South Dakota Country School Experience
William E. Lass
A South Dakota Country School Experience concerns the Emmett School in Union County near Beresford. Based on both teachers' records and the author's recollections, this history covers the period from September, 1934 to May, 1942. During those eight years at Emmett, William E. Lass and his schoolmates experienced the effects of the Great Depression and the start of World War II. The depression especially overshadowed all aspects of their school years by impacting the way
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Shaping the North Star State: A History of Minnesota's Boundaries
William E. Lass
How Did Minnesota Get Its Shape?
Why is Isle Royale part of Michigan?
What’s with that knob on top of Minnesota? And why doesn’t it include the entirety of Lake of the Woods?
What about the bump on the western border?
How long has the rivalry between Wisconsin and Minnesota actually existed?
How were the boundaries mapped before GPS?
Find the answers to these questions (and more) inside!...Read More
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The Stray Pitch
Marilyn Janice Bos
Born into a family of thieves, Wendy Winkworth becomes a private investigator because "you don't go to jail if you're caught." In 1950, 24-year old Wendy is hired by the mobster/owner of the Star Spangled Girls Baseball League to infiltrate the Burton City Hornettes and find the murderer of its star pitcher, a blonde bombshell of amazing physical powers and influence. First problem: Wendy's not much of a ballplayer. Second: She finds that lust, jealousy,
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We'll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger's Daughter
Rachel Hanel
This book presents the unique, moving perspective of a gravedigger’s daughter and her lifelong relationship with death. It is also a masterful meditation on the living elements of our cemeteries: our neighbors, friends, and families and how these things come together in the eyes of a young girl whose childhood is suffused with death and the wonder of the living.
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I'm with Stupid
Geoff Herbach
"It's nerd-turned-jock Felton Reinstein's last year before college, and the choices he makes now will affect the rest of his life. That's a lot of pressure. Before leaving home forever, Felton will have to figure out just who he is, even if, sometimes, it sucks to be him"-- Provided by publisher.