Peggy Stanfield:
Nutrition author began with learning modules

Stanfield wrote her first book, Nutrition and Diet Therapy, in its third edition in 1997, during her second year at Southern Idaho. "When I started teaching in the nursing department I discovered that students were unable to learn from the large books I was using," Stanfield said. For each chapter, she wrote modules of information students needed to know and a series of progress checks. At the end of a module she included a post-test.

"One day a salesman from Wadsworth was in my office and asked to look at some of the modules on my desk," she said. "He said his editor would be interested in seeing them." The editor asked Stanfield to write a book of modules. He paired her with Y.H. Hui who was teaching and writing at Humbolt State University in California. He helped her with formatting and other basics of writing a textbook. The result of the collaboration: A 600-page softcover textbook with self-instructional modules for undergraduates planning a career in nursing, nutrition and other allied health professions. It is used for distance learning, self-paced instruction and in classrooms.

Nutrition and Diet Therapy, originally published by Wadsworth, was later sold to Jones & Bartlett. After its successful first run, the company decided to publish a series. In 1987 Basic Nutrition was published, which was intended to become the first of a nutrition series. While the book sold, the series idea never materialized, and the book was not picked up for another edition.

In 1990, the company asked Stanfield to take over a book on the health professions that the current author was not going to revise. "The book was incomplete and outdated, and I had complained about it, but the original author did not want to do anything about it," said Stanfield. "The editor then asked me to rewrite it, I did, and it sells well, now being in its fourth edition." Introduction to the Health Professions is a 400-page softcover book for students entering the health profession but are unsure about which field they want to go into to. The book features 60 health professions and their scope of practice, employment opportunities, working environment, educational requirements, future trends and earnings. "It needs to be updated quite often because the information in these fields is always changing," Stanfield said.

In 1989, Stanfield wrote Mastering Medical Terminology, also based on self-instructional modules and used for distance learning and independent study courses as well as regular classroom instruction. Although the medical terminology field is filled with many textbooks, Stanfield found it was easy to break into because of the way her book was arranged. "There are so many students in the health professions, and all of them must master medical terminology at some time in their studies," she said. "It's not easy to learn because the terms are taken from Greek and Latin." She said her self-instructional book was a "niche book" and the formula "just happened to do for students things the others were not doing." Two years later she wrote Essential Medical Terminology as a shorter version for students who need only one semester of basic medical terminology, such as vocational nurses, dental hygiene majors, medical assistants and pre-law students. An instructor's manual comes with both books and features many case studies, flash cards, additional words, transparencies, as well as test questions. Each book has audio tapes for learning pronunciation. "These features are a real help for students and their instructors," she said.

When Stanfield started college, there weren't many career choices for women. "You could be a school teacher, a nurse or a secretary," she said. "I was majoring in home economics but saw other students going off to internships at hospitals, and I liked that idea, and decided I wanted to do that." She said she had wanted to be a doctor but couldn't afford it, and women were not readily accepted into medical schools then, so she went into dietetics. She is now a registered, licensed dietitian and a certified nutrition specialist.

She did clinical and administrative work for hospitals in Tennessee, Texas and Idaho, while also working as a freelance dietary consultant for nine years, until she began teaching at the College of Southern Idaho in the department of nursing and then the department of science and allied health. She taught there 21 years. Her last year of teaching was at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, in Honolulu, in the department of food science and human nutrition. She is now professor emeritus at Southern Idaho, president of Dietetic Resources in Twin Falls and in partnership with her former authoring mentor Y.U. Hui at Science Technology System in West Sacramento, California.

In 1997 Stanfield was elected vice president of Text and Academic Authors and ascended to the presidency in 1998, and to a second term from 2000-2002. Her main objective as president was to help expand TAA and make it well-known and respected throughout the country. "I want to help spread the word about TAA, what we are about, what we can do for authors, and to expand the membership. There are many out there who have not heard of us, nor are they aware that it would be beneficial to them to belong to TAA," she said. She also wanted to do more to help new authors get started. Workshops are a good beginning, she said.

Stanfield also wanted to see the mentoring program by senior authors. "I realize this takes a lot of time and commitment from the senior authors, who do not have a lot of time to give, but I had Dr. Hui as my mentor, and it has saved me from many pitfalls and has been a tremendous help. I believe that beginning authors need that kind of assistance," Stanfield said. "I also hope that in the future our contract publishing guidelines will become the standard for all TAA authors, as I have seen many thorny problems arise through poor contract agreements."

— reported by Kim Pawlak, 2000