Beginning and Intermediate Algebra: Building a Foundation

Authors Paula McKenna and Honey Kirk hail from the state of Texas, where they teach students of all ages, skill sets, and backgrounds. As active teachers in diverse classrooms, their aim is to provide developmental students with a solid mathematical foundation, while also giving them the means to expand on that foundation after they leave the classroom.

 

As authors, they help students build their mathematical foundation by teaching algebra as a story, emphasizing applications, problem solving, and language to help students understand how topics relate to one another and to the world around them. They begin this book with a thorough review of prealgebra to ensure that students begin building their algebra skills on a solid base, and each chapter opens with an application that serves as a running theme for the content throughout the chapter. The authors make problem solving easy for students through the “4 P’s” problem-solving process (Prepare, Plan, Process, and Ponder), which encourages critical thinking and thoughtful discussion.

 

Review of Real Numbers and Problem Solving; Equations and Inequalities in One Variable and Applications; Linear Equations, Inequalities, and Introduction to Functions; Linear Systems of Equations and Inequalities; Exponents, Polynomials, and Applications; Factoring Polynomials; Rational Expressions; Roots and Radicals; Functions; Complex Numbers and Quadratic Equations; Conic Sections; Inverse, Exponential and Logarithmic Functions

 

For all readers interested in algebra.

Paula McKenna (San Antonio College) is a native Texan who received a B.S. in mathematics, graduating magna cum laude, and an M.S. in mathematics, from the University of Texas at San Antonio. As a young adult, she worked in the business world before realizing that she wanted to finish her education. She knew that teaching was her destiny the first day she walked into a classroom. After teaching at her alma mater, she elected to move to the community college classroom and joined the faculty at San Antonio College in 1994. Her motivation to write a developmental mathematics textbook came from her students. Paula wanted to write a text that would be both mathematically accurate and easily understood by developmental students. She asked Honey Kirk to join her in this endeavor, and they worked together, writing each chapter as they would teach it.

 

Honey Kirk (Palo Alto College) received a B.A. in mathematics and psychology from Washington and Jefferson College, an M.A. in education from Pepperdine University, and an M.S. in mathematics from the University of Texas at San Antonio. As an army wife of 30 years, she taught mathematics to students of all ages in many states, as well as overseas in Germany and Korea. She and her husband are now settled in Texas where Honey is a community college professor at Palo Alto College in San Antonio. As an empty-nester, she decided it was time to incorporate all the great teaching strategies she learned through the years from her students and colleagues into a series of developmental math textbooks.