Vol. 128, No. 77 Wednesday, January 23, 2019
OPINION
SPORTS
ARTS & CULTURE
Going home for break can be unhealthy
Women’s hockey fights through barriers of female club athletics
6 tips for starting the semester off right
page 6
page 8
page 14
Various textbooks for Colorado State University courses are piled up on a table. Between creation, selection and being purchased by students, college textbooks follow a complicated route to the classroom. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY FORREST CZARNECKI COLLEGIAN
From studies to shelves: the story of the college textbook By Samantha Ye @samxy4
For Colorado State University students, textbook culture means a lot of staring down price tags and making sure the online homework systems don’t crash the night an assignment is due. So much more happens before the books end up on our required lists. This is the story of the textbook.
The Creation Michelle Stanley, flute professor in the music department, capped off her 14 years of teaching music appreciation by writing a textbook for the very same course. Years later, her book, “Music Appreciation: Successful Listening in All Music,” is a required e-text for all students taking an MU-100 class, CSU’s Music Appreciation course. For MU-100, individual pro-
fessors do not get to choose the textbooks, Stanley said. In fact, when she first started teaching at CSU, she was assigned which MU100 book to use. That did not bother her at all, she said. It was not until a textbook representative approached her multiple times that Stanley would actually think of writing her own book. “I had an idea of a dream textbook that I wanted to use for Mu-
sic Appreciation that was not just classical music but encompassed jazz, popular music, folk, music, and cultural music,” Stanley said. At the time, she could not find any books like that. And while Stanley said she had never really dreamed of writing a textbook, a publisher convinced her she could do it. Over the course of three years, she put together a text which she hoped would give students a more comprehensive
view of music. Stanley has not taught the class since the book came out nor did she have any input on the book’s selection, she said. The text was determined by the department chair. For Stanley, she said it made sense to write her own text because on top of her years of
see TEXTBOOKS on page 4 >>
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