Featured Ebooks
Welcome
It's back-to-school time, and we have featured ebooks to help with college success! Topics include learning strategies, wellness, campus life, online learning, and career development!
Back-To-School
The Freshman Survival Guide
A completely revised and updated values-based guide to navigating the first year of college speaks to college students in their own language and offers practical tools that readers need to keep from drinking, sleeping, or skipping their way out of college. The updated edition features new research and advice on issues such as mental health, sexual assault, and finding balance. It also features expanded sections on dating, money management, and an increased focus on how the over 1.5 million incoming freshmen can prepare themselves for the most significant change they've encountered: heading off to college.
College Belonging
College Belonging reveals how colleges' and universities' efforts to foster a sense of belonging in their students are misguided. Colleges bombard new students with the message to "get out there!" and "find your place" by joining student organizations, sports teams, clubs, and the like. Nunn shows that this reflects a flawed understanding of belonging and how it works. Drawing on the sociological theories of Emile Durkheim, College Belonging shows that belonging is something that members of a community offer to each other. The group must extend a sense of belonging to every member. It happens by making a person feel welcome, that their presence matters to the group, and that they would be missed if they were gone. This critical insight helps us understand why colleges' push for students simply to "get out there!" does not always work.
The Canine-Campus Connection
Many college and university personnel have implemented initiatives that offer students the documented benefits of positive human-animal interaction (HAI). Accumulating evidence suggests that assistance dogs, therapy dogs, and shelter dogs can support student wellness and learning. The best programs balance the welfare of humans and canines while assessing students' needs and complying with all laws and regulations. The Canine-Campus Connection provides authoritative, evidence-based guidance on bringing college students and canines together in reciprocally beneficial ways. Authors take the stance that enriching and enlarging interactions between college students and canines will require university personnel who plan and evaluate events, projects, and programs. The book concludes with the recommendation that colleges and universities move toward more dog-friendly campus cultures.
Eat That Frog! for Students
Adapted from Brian Tracy's international time-management bestseller, Eat That Frog!, this book will give today's stressed-out and overwhelmed students the tools for lifelong success. Like adults, students of all ages struggle with how to manage their time. College brings more freedom and less structure, making time management even more critical. Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog! has helped millions get more done in less time. Now, this life-changing global bestseller has been adapted to the specific needs of students. Tracy offers readers tips, tools, and techniques for structuring time, setting goals, staying on task (even when you're not interested), dealing with stress, and developing the skills to achieve far more than you ever thought possible.
Unfinished Business
For at least the last 100 years, more than 40% of all students who enrolled in American colleges and universities have not persisted to graduation at four-year institutions. Their stories are varied, but in every case, something got in the way of that pursuit. Life happened. They became one of the nearly 36 million Americans who have some college but no degree. For many, the stigma of not finishing college is a closely held secret that weighs heavily as they discuss, engage, and compete to meet the challenges of the workforce in the 21st century. Contrary to the deficit mindset that often permeates the retention and persistence discourse, this book highlights the stories of those who successfully returned to what was left unfinished. As you read, don't miss the role that engaged advisors, supportive family members, and well-designed programs played in helping students to the finish line.
Teach Yourself How to Learn
Following up on her acclaimed Teach Students How to Learn, Saundra McGuire here presents these "secrets" direct to students. Beginning with explaining how expectations about learning and study efforts are required, the author introduces her readers, through the concept of metacognition, to the importance and powerful consequences of understanding themselves as learners. This framework and the recommended strategies that support it are useful for anyone moving on to a more advanced stage of education, so this book also has an intended audience of students preparing to go to high school, graduate school, or professional school. The author combines introducing readers to concepts like fixed and growth mindsets, and what brain science has to tell us about rest, nutrition, and exercise, together with such highly specific learning strategies as how to read a textbook, manage their time, and take tests. With engaging exercises and thought-provoking reflections, this book is an ideal motivational and practical text for study skills and first-year experience courses.
A Student's Guide to College Life and Changing Relationships
The transition to college is full of new and exciting opportunities! But with those opportunities also comes significant change. Living away from friends and family, making new connections, ensuring your safety, and making healthy decisions are just a few of the challenges you'll face as you transition to college life. A Student's Guide to College Success: Personal Safety, Relationships, and Transitions provide you with all the practical advice you'll need to address the physical, social, and psychological challenges associated with becoming a college student. In this guide, you'll learn basic skills for living on your own, managing your money, asserting yourself, establishing boundaries, and keeping yourself safe in new social situations. This guide will help you approach your new college lifestyle with confidence, self-awareness, and the tools you need to take care of yourself and succeed throughout your college career.
Dare to Lead
In her #1 New York Times bestsellers, Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she's showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead. Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential.
Relationship-Rich Education
A mentor, advisor, or even a friend? Making connections in college makes all the difference. What single factor makes for an excellent college education? As it turns out, it's pretty simple: human relationships. In this revelatory book brimming with the voices of students, faculty, and staff from across the country, Peter Felten and Leo M. Lambert focus on students' influence in shaping the learning environment for their peers, as well as the key difference a single, well-timed conversation can make in a student's life. They also stress that relationship-rich education is particularly important for first-generation college students, who bring significant capacities to college but often face long-standing inequities and barriers to attaining their educational aspirations. Relationship-Rich Education provides readers with practical advice on how they can develop and sustain powerful relationship-based learning in their own contexts.
Learning Online: The Student Experience
What's it really like to learn online? Learning Online: The Student Experience Online learning is ubiquitous for millions of students worldwide, yet our understanding of student experiences in online learning settings is limited. The geographic distance that separates faculty from students in an online environment is its signature feature, but it is also one that risks widening the gulf between teachers and learners. In Learning Online, George Veletsianos argues that in order to critique, understand, and improve online learning, we must examine it through the lens of the student experience. Each in-depth chapter follows a single learner's experience while focusing on an important or noteworthy aspect of online learning, tackling everything from demographics, attrition, motivation, and loneliness to cheating, openness, flexibility, social media, and digital divides and draws on these case studies to offer recommendations for the future and lessons learned. Writing in an evocative, accessible, and concise manner, Veletsianos concretely demonstrates why it is so important to pay closer attention to the stories of students--who may have instructive and insightful ideas about the future of education.
What Color Is Your Parachute? 2020
With more than 10 million copies sold in 28 countries, the world's most popular job-search book is updated for 2020, tailoring Richard Bolles's long-trusted guidance with up-to-the-minute information and advice for today's job-hunters and career-changers. In today's challenging job market, the time-tested advice of What Color Is Your Parachute? is needed more than ever. Recent grads facing a shifting economic landscape, workers laid off mid-career, and people searching for an inspiring work-life change all look to career guru Richard N. Bolles for support, encouragement, and advice on which job-hunt strategies work--and which don't. This revised edition combines classic elements like the famed Flower Exercise with updated tips on social media and search tactics. Bolles demystifies the entire job-search process, from writing resumes to interviewing to networking, expertly guiding job-hunters toward their dream job.
Educated: A Memoir
One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who was kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. The #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Boston Globe bestseller, Tara Westover was born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho. Westover was seventeen at the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far and if there was still a way home.
Readiness Realities
For higher education scholars and practitioners and those generally interested in the future of college, this book helps tell a novel story about the transition to college, from the perspective of an experienced college professor. The first-year experience is conceptualized as a two-way relationship between students and colleges, involving introductions, resistance or acceptance, collaboration and exchange of ideas, and learning. There are both success stories and stories that end in a parting of ways. These stories show what college readiness really means and offer valuable insights about the academic, social, monetary and other forces that can overwhelm the typical college-bound student. Higher education scholars and professionals will benefit from these rich and detailed accounts as they help shape the landscape of 21st-century college readiness.
The Rubber Brain
Failed an exam, bungled an interview, screwed up a relationship, broken your diet, or stuffed up at work? Your brain is the key to getting back on track. Learn how to ‘rubberize' your brain, making it more flexible and resilient. Deal with challenges in an optimal way, and ‘bounce' back from adversity. Essentially, your brain doesn't always deliver the kind of thinking that leads to desired positive outcomes, such as maintaining supportive friendships and doing well in your work, studies, and social life. In this book, you can discover how resilience and psychological flexibility combine to allow you to choose ways of thinking in response to different situations that will produce the best outcome for you for that situation. Learn how to optimally tackle issues of motivation, stress, time management, and relationship maintenance.
The Naked Roommate
For 10 years (and counting), The Naked Roommate has been the #1 go-to guide for your very best college experience! From sharing a bathroom with 40 strangers to sharing lecture notes, The Naked Roommate is your behind-the-scenes look at EVERYTHING you need to know about college (but never knew you needed to know). This essential, fully updated edition is packed with real-life advice on everything from making friends to managing stress. Hilarious, outrageous, and telling stories from students on over 100 college campuses cover the basics, and then some, including topics on College Living: Dorm dos, don'ts, and dramas; Finding People, Places, & Patience: Friend today, gone tomorrow; Classes: To go or not to go? Dating: The Rules for College Love; The Party Scene: Sex, drugs, and safety first; Money: Grants, loans, and loose change. Luckily, The Naked Roommate has you covered!
Open Mic Night
Winner of the 2018 AERA Division B Outstanding Book Award for Outstanding Edited Collection in Curriculum Studies. There is an increasing understanding that performance poetry and spoken word is much more than entertainment. Within disciplines such as English, Ethnic, Women's, and Cultural Studies, scholarship has identified spoken word's role in developing political agency among young adults; its utility for promoting authentic youth voice; and its importance as a tool of cultural engagement. This book - compiled by scholar artists, including internationally recognized spoken word performers - offers guidance to student affairs professionals on using spoken word as a tool for college student engagement, activism, and civic awareness. Open mic nights offer college students a way to speak out, advocate, lead, educate, and explore with their peers. This book presents a mix of critical essays and college student writing that explore themes of spoken word, student engagement, and campus inclusion.