Pat McKeague:
Aerospace setback changed his life

Pat McKeague, author of 14 math textbooks, all among the bestselling in their field, says although he didn't start out to be a teacher and writer, he ended doing exactly what he should be doing. "I thought I'd be a programmer or an engineer," said McKeague. "But when I was looking for a job in 1970 it was one of the biggest recessions in the aerospace industry. People were being laid off all over the country. It turned out you could teach high school in California if you had a master's degree in an academic subject. Three weeks after I found that out, I was teaching mathematics full time at Lompac High School."

He didn't think he was going teach for a long time, but "I was really enjoying it." Still, he continued looking for other career routes. He applied to medical school and took the exams to be an actuary. He also applied to teach at community colleges. "I got a few offers in industry, but by the time those offers came in I was pretty happy teaching and wanted to do it for a few more years," he said. "I liked the students, the whole atmosphere." After three years at high school, he got a full-time job at Cuesta Community College in San Luis Obispo, California. Three years after that he started writing textbooks. "Although I didn't have this in mind when I started out, what I ended up doing, teaching part-time and writing textbooks, is exactly the thing I should have been doing. I ended up right where I should be," he said. He now teaches math part-time at Cal Poly State University and at Cuesta College.

McKeague said he's most proud of three of his textbooks: Elementary Algebra, in its eighth edition in 2007, Prealgebra, in its fifth edition in 2005, and Trigonometry, in its sixth edition in 2007.

"Elementary algebra is one of my favorite courses to teach," McKeague said. He has taught it for 28 years, and says he really likes those students because they're just starting out in algebra and he gets to start with the basics and build up their skills from there. "When I teach that course it also gives me the chance to teach them study skills, and how to be successful in school and in their careers," he said.

He wrote Prealgebra so he could add topics that would appeal to adults, like negative numbers and solving equations: "I wanted to make the course a little more interesting and get them ready for algebra."

McKeague's Trigonometry is designed to get people into trig as quickly as possible, so it has very little review of algebra. Students are already into trigonometry by the third section. The book also ties all the topics together in one coherent body of knowledge, said McKeague: "The later topics build on the earlier ones."

All 14 books, which have collectively sold more than three million copies, are accompanied by their own set of videotapes. "We were the first people to have videotapes to go with college textbooks in developmental math in 1981," McKeague said. The videotapes are 15-minute to 20-minute problem-solving sessions given by McKeague on each section of the book.

In 1998, McKeague coauthored two new interactive CD-ROMs with his son Patrick, and Denny Burzynski of West Valley College in Saratoga, California. An Electronic Companion to Precalculus, and An Electronic Companion to College Algebra, both published by Cogito Learning Media, were ancillaries designed to accompany any leading precalculus or college algebra textbook on the market. "The CD-ROMs gave us a chance to do some things with teaching math that you can't do in a textbook, like animations, video and sound," he said. Ultimately, those products never sold much and Cogito Learning Media went out of business. "It was a valuable experience. We all learned a great deal about multimedia."

McKeague and his son Patrick have worked together for 13 years. "He brings a lot of the new technology and innovative things into the textbook business. He keeps up with things that are going on in technology and on the internet that I don't really have time to do." He and Patrick share a suite of offices in downtown San Luis Obispo, which contains a television studio, three offices, and a library. "I come down to the office at 9 and stay 'til 5," he said. "It's just like a regular job. I don't do any work at home."McKeague said a good textbook should:

• Be a good support for the instructor in the classroom. The instructor shouldn't have to go back and explain something that was in the textbook.
• Tie together the topics within the books. Instead of having a book that has 60 different topics, it should be one coherent body of knowledge. Everything should fit together and the topics should link to each other. The later topics should build on the earlier ones.
• Be written for students. It shouldn't talk down to them or patronize them. He said what he likes most about writing is sitting at the computer trying to write material that initially seems like it's going to be difficult to do in written form. "If it looks like it's going to be difficult to organize and get on paper, I like that," he said.

The best writing advice he ever received, he said, was from fellow math author Karl Smith, who told him to buy his own copy machine. "It made my life much easier," he said. Other advice:

• Write a little bit every day. If you can write 15 minutes to a half hour every day you would be surprised how much you can get done in six months.
• Don't evaluate your writing initially. Write, put it away for a while, and come back to it and rewrite it.

Of the five professional associations he's been involved with over the years, his association with AMATYC, a national organization for two-year college math teachers, and Text and Academic Authors, have been the most helpful to him as a writer and teacher. He hasn't missed an AMATYC meeting in 30 years: "It's an association of really wonderful, innovative people. Just being a member has inspired me to do a better job as a teacher and a writer." TAA, he said, has helped him out with the legal aspects of writing, like contracts: "I have some really good contracts and I think part of that is due to my association with TAA."

McKeague and his wife Diane have two children, Patrick, born in 1966, his coauthor on the CD-ROMs and full-time coworker, and Amy Jacobs, born in 1970, who previously sold textbooks for Brookes/Cole Publishing. The McKeague's have six grandchildren: Marissa, Kendra and Justin, Ethan, Brooke and Ava.

— Originally published in 1998. Updated in November 2006.