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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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.
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Marion de Lorme
Victor Hugo and John J. Janc
This is a critical edition, or “édition critique,” of Victor Hugo’s play Marion de Lorme. A critical edition is much more than a typical scholarly publication of a literary work that only contains a brief introduction, the text, and endnotes. The in-depth introduction in this critical edition details the history and genesis of the play from its inception through its première, as well as a study of the manuscript and of all other original related
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Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Reactions
Martin F. Price
Mountain Geography is a comprehensive resource that gives readers an in-depth understanding of the geographical processes that occur in the world's mountains and the impact of these regions on culture and society. The volume begins with an introduction that defines mountains, followed by a comprehensive treatment of their physical geography, including origins, climatology, snow and ice, landforms and geomorphic processes, soils, vegetation, and wildlife. The concluding chapters discuss the human geography of mountains and our
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A Philosophy of Global Pluralism: Multicultural Approaches to Political Theory
Jacqueline Marie Vieceli
Taking a multi-cultural approach to political theory, this book explores a sample of Western and non-western thinkers’ positions on key questions of normative political philosophy. The author includes thinkers from Confucian, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, African, and Western traditions to synthesize a new approach to political theory. Her thesis is that there are very few scholars employing a multicultural approach to political theory, and that engaging in dialogue with other cultural traditions can bring a superior
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Tell My Sons
Mark M. Weber and David Murray
At the high point of a soaring career in the US Army, Lt. Col. Mark Weber was tapped by General David Petraeus to serve in a high profile job within the Afghan Parliament as a military advisor. Within weeks a routine physical revealed stage IV intestinal cancer in the thirty-eight-year-old father of three. When Mark realized he was not going to survive this final tour of combat, he began to write a letter to his
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Follow the Blackbirds
Gwen Nell Westerman
In language as perceptive as it is poignant, poet Gwen Nell Westerman builds a world in words that reflects the past, present, and future of the Dakota people. An intricate balance between the singularity of personal experience and the unity of collective longing, Follow the Blackbirds speaks to the affection and appreciation a contemporary poet feels for her family, community, and environment. With touches of humor and the occasional sharp cultural criticism, the voice that
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The Cambridge Guide to Second Language Assessment
Christine A. Coombe, Peter Davidson, Barry O'Sullivan, and Stephen Stoynoff
This collection of original articles provides language teachers with a theoretical background of key issues associated with language testing as well as practical advice on how to improve the effectiveness of the tests they develop and implement. Written by internationally prominent researchers and educators, the chapters are organized into five sections: key issues in the field, assessment purposes and approaches, assessment of second language skills, technology in assessment, and administrative issues. Chapters assume no particular
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