Crimson and Gold Connection; Dr. Paul Grimes

Dr. Grimes, thanks for taking the time out of your day to join us. You have been the dean of the KELSE College of Business since 2011. What all does that entail? Great question. That entails a lot of things. Primarily, I'm the Chief Academic Officer for the KELSE College of Business, which means I oversee all of the academic programs, and that of course includes the students, the faculty, all of our outreach efforts, and everything associated with our programming. You are joining us today to talk about textbooks that you and other professors of the KELSE College of Business have authored or co-authored. What textbooks have you co-authored or authored, where are they in use, and what types of classes are they used for? Well I am the co-author of the Economics of Social Issues, which is published by McGraw-Hill. It is a college textbook primarily aimed at introductory economic students, and I have been the co-author since the 11th edition of the book, and we are now in the 21st edition. So it's been ten full editions that I have been a co-author, and we do a new edition every two years.

That's 20 years that I've been working on this. The book is primarily aimed at students who are taking their very first economics course. However it is written in a way that can also be used for upper division courses as a supplement. We primarily take social issues, social problems, things like, let's say, unemployment, inflation, poverty, discrimination, even sports, and from those issues we develop economic models and show them where the economic theories come from, with the primarily the idea being that we are going to show everyone who is taking this course, reading the book, how economics is interrelated into their lives, and how to use economic reasoning to solve problems. How did the opportunity of co-authoring a book come about, and how did you decide that it was something that you were interested in? Primarily, the Economics and Social Issues textbook was originally developed by Dick Left Witch and Ansel Sharp, two professors at Oklahoma State University.

I had the great pleasure of studying under both of those gentlemen while I was a graduate student there in the early 1980s. When they retired, they were looking for some of their protegees to take over the book, and I was chosen, along with Charles Register, one of my classmates, to continue the pursuit of the book. We've actually been co-authoring it. Charles and I have been on the book longer than the original authors have, believe it or not. This book goes all the way back. The origins of the book go back to the mid-1970s. It's been a very successful book. It's been used all over the world. A lot of big universities have used it here in the United States as well as in Europe and Asia, and there's even a Canadian edition that's been re-tooled for that market. There are other professors as well in the KELSE College of Business that have authored or co-authored books. Can you talk about their writings briefly and where those books are in use and what they're about? Yeah, sure. One of the things we're really proud of in the KELSE College of Business is the number of textbooks that our faculty co-author. The most prolific would be Professor Don Bach. He has a book on integrated advertising, promotion, and marketing communications.

He also has a book with another one of my colleagues, Dr. Eric Harris. The book that Don and Eric co-authored together is an international marketing book. Eric has another book on consumer behavior, and then there's also Maeve Cummings up in the Accounting and Computer Information Systems class who has a book on management information systems. So those are just a few of them. There's a couple others floating around, but those are the major books. They're used at all kinds of places around the world. Don Bach's books are used at places like New York University, Vanderbilt, Indiana, Eric's books are at Michigan State, University of Washington, Arizona State, places like that. Maeve's books are being used at Purdue, Texas A&M, UCLA, Southern Cal. There's a lot of folks around the world taking classes using textbooks authored right here on the Pittsburgh State University campus. What does student reaction been like here on campus when they realize that they are learning out of a textbook that has been authored by their professor that they're learning from?

I think most students are very pleased to know that their professor also wrote the textbook. I think many of them are often surprised that that's occurring. It gives the professor a degree of authority that they are well-known in that particular field. I think it makes it a little bit easier for the professor to get student buy-in in terms of, hey, we're going to study something really cool because professors who write the textbooks generally have a passion for their material because there's been a lot of time and effort writing these books and that generally shows up as enthusiasm in the classroom. So if you're a student taking a class co-author by one of our authors, you're going to be in for a real treat. What are the benefits of contributing your writing to not just Pittsburgh State University but other universities as well? The way I look at that is that writing a textbook is an extension of your teaching. Every time a student anywhere in the world opens your textbook to study for their class, wherever they happen to be, we're teaching.

They are learning from pit state authors all around the world and so it's a way for us to expand our outreach and it's good branding for Pittsburgh State University's Kels College of Business. What does it mean for the Kels College of Business and the University to have multiple professors that have textbooks not just here but worldwide? Yeah, well, it certainly helps our name recognition. Pittsburgh State University, you know, relatively speaking, we're small college in the middle of the country right here, not many people know much about us other than our great athletic tradition. When folks open that textbook and they see our authors name and they look at where they're affiliated, we're branding the university, we're branding the college of business and of course that increases our reputation, not only with students but also with the faculty that are adopting these books at other universities. Folks around the world have a chance to learn a little bit about us and we get to share that great tradition of what Pittsburgh State University is all about. You mentioned it earlier that your book has a new edition come out every two years. Why is it important for students to have textbooks with the newest information?

Well, that's a great question. Obviously, in today's information age, it is really difficult to keep textbooks up to date, particularly in my area and in economics it's a very fast-moving, fast-paced change. Every evening on the news there's an economic report about the latest statistics, whether it be the stock market or unemployment or inflation and so when you write a book, you want it to be relevant and you want it to be relevant to the student's lives and so if that information is not up to date, you can lose some credibility there. It's really difficult to manage that line of keeping everything up to date, keeping it relevant but also being able to make sure that it's still carrying those time-worn theories and ideas and applications that you really want to get across and so as textbooks changing evolve, a lot of textbooks are now supplemented with websites and other electronic media and I think as things progress you're going to see more and more of that and textbooks are going to be like the music industry, it's going to be a real change in the paradigm.

It's going to be shifting because the digital world allows you to keep that data up to date and make it more relevant for the students. What do you see in your future in terms of authoring and updating your textbooks? Well, I'm right in the middle of edition number 21, it's a lot of work, I've been a lot of time digging up those relevant pieces of data we were just talking about so it's a real chore but I think it's worthwhile and hopefully students aren't going to learn something from it. What would your advice be to any professor or teacher who has maybe thought about authoring or co-authoring a textbook but is still kind of on the fence about it? Every time you write a textbook you're going to learn something because you need to be the authority and that forces a lot of research and a lot of time and effort into making sure you're providing the most up-to-date, relevant material and you've got to be careful not to say anything wrong because there's going to be a student out there that's going to catch you. It's a great learning experience not only for the students who read the book but also

for the authors.