|
 < back to authors list Karen Timberlake:
By Kim Seidel In her first textbook written 40 years ago, author and professor Karen Timberlake presented real-life chemistry examples that would connect with nursing and other allied health students. The successful textbook, Chemistry: An Introduction to General, Organic and Biological Chemistry, published by Pearson, is in its 10th edition. The idea for the text, referred to as GOB, was developed at Los Angeles Valley College, Valley Glen, Calif., where she began teaching in 1965. “After a few years of teaching, I was assigned to allied health chemistry, a class I soon realized was completely uninteresting and intimidating to students,” Timberlake said. “I also realized that the students were taking the class only as a requirement for nursing and allied health, but they could not understand why.” Timberlake often heard comments such as, “I only want to be a nurse. Why do I have to take chemistry?” She began to sit in nursing classes to see how chemistry fit in. “To my surprise, most topics contained chemistry but the students followed the topics because they were interested in the relationship of chemistry to nursing,” she said. Next, Timberlake read nursing, respiratory therapy and nutrition textbooks to find ways to connect the chemistry she was teaching with topics in allied health. “As I brought these real-life connections to the classroom, I observed a change in attitude in the students,” she said. “They became interested in chemistry and began to provide health examples from their own experiences in the health field.” In addition, Timberlake observed more students finishing and passing the class, working successfully in their allied health career choices, passing state nursing exams using their chemistry knowledge and even changing their majors to chemistry. Timberlake concluded that the way to help students learn chemistry was to connect it to the health fields that were the career choices of students. After about five years of combining chemistry with allied health examples, Timberlake had the opportunity to discuss her ideas with a textbook editor who was visiting her chemistry department. “I wrote a set of learning goals as my proposal for a new kind of general, organic and biological chemistry text,” she said. “Three months later, I received a contract and an advance.” Yet, she had not written one chapter of the textbook. This presented a problem until Timberlake decided that she would write the text in the same way that she taught her chemistry class. She started writing the first edition in 1973, and the first edition of GOB was published in 1976. Since then, Timberlake has added two more texts, one for a two-semester GOB class, and another for a preparatory chemistry class. Published by Pearson, these textbooks are General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry Structures of Life (first edition published in 2002) and Basic Chemistry (first published in 2004). In addition, Timberlake wrote the laboratory manual for General, Organic and Biological Chemistry, first published in 1976. Timberlake’s Essentials Laboratory Manual was first published in 2001. Throughout her teaching and writing years, Timberlake has witnessed that the field of teaching chemistry became more involved with how students learn. “With this trend, I introduced more and more pedagogical aids to help students learn how to study and learn chemistry, using their individual learning styles,” Timberlake said. “Also during this time, learning resources began to appear on the Internet.” All three of her textbooks have manuals and study guides published with them. The textbooks and its supplements include:
In addition, Timberlake created a website for her textbook several years ago, before publishers entered the Internet and added online materials to textbook pages. At www.karentimberlake.com, students can access learning and teaching activities that complement her chemistry classes for allied health, as well as her first textbook, GOB. The website was developed for the text’s seventh edition, and it’s old by Internet standards, she said. However, Timberlake leaves the website up, because it’s still visited and linked by instructors to their classes. The website currently is managed by Pearson, which continues publishing the latest editions of her books. When the textbooks are used in class, students use the internet website linked to the textbook by Pearson. Timberlake has continued to write new editions and to keep up on trends. She updates health, environment and green applications to her textbooks. Since 1973, Timberlake has collaborated on the textbooks and supplements with her husband Bill, who taught chemistry at Los Angeles Harbor College and West Los Angeles College. They have a good combination for writing the textbooks – his degree was in organic chemistry and hers was in biochemistry. While they are retired from teaching, the Timberlakes continue to write. “All three textbooks, supplements, and laboratory manuals are in production,” she said. “A new edition of each text and its supplements are published every three years, which means we complete a manuscript for a text and its supplements each year. We begin a new edition in January and the book is in print by the following January.” The GOB third edition 2010 and its supplements have recently been published. The Timberlakes are currently working on the manuscript and supplements for Basic Chemistry third edition with a publication date of 2011. Timberlake follows a process for writing new editions. She begins receiving reviews of a text in December, which gives her ideas for revising the text. In each update, she writes new material and deletes old material, and she moves sections and chapters of the text into a different sequence. She reviews the art, updates the photos and adds new art and photos into the textbook. “The updated manuscript is sent out for reviews, which are used to finalize the new manuscript,” she said. “After a review or two of final pages, the text is published as a new edition.” This can be considered a great compliment to a textbook author: “Even today, students say they can hear me teaching in the classroom as they read the text,” Timberlake said. Throughout her years of teaching and writing, she has achieved her objectives through her textbooks. “One obvious goal is to help students successfully learn chemistry,” she said. “Another goal is that students want to open the text. I hope that they look forward to learning interesting things when they read the book, so it is not a chore. I hope that the students develop a positive attitude to chemistry.” Instead of students saying to their children, “I never liked chemistry,” Timberlake hopes they say, “I really liked chemistry when I was college because it helped me understand many things.” While some students may never use chemistry again, it’s Timberlake’s goal that they “develop a positive attitude about science for life.” Looking back at balancing writing and teaching, she said it seemed she was doing both all the time. “Weekends were never for rest, but time to catch up with teaching or writing,” she said. Both Karen and Bill taught chemistry for 36 years. “We spend our spare time playing tennis, watching our grandkids, ages 5 and 8, and traveling extensively,” she said. “I often have a computer with me on our trips.” In fact, Timberlake responded to questions for this article, writing on her laptop in Kauai, Hawaii. — Kim Seidel is a professional writer who lives in Wisconsin.
|
