Dear Students: I am both honored and privileged to teach you A&P. To me, you are the most important people on earth. You are posterity. You are the reason a teacher exists. My primary goal is to educate you. I want you to be able to understand, appreciate, respect, and revere life and its processes. Work with me. Give me a chance to open your mind to new and fascinating ideas about living things. You WILL learn A&P after reading my book! My book is presented in two volumes. Both read like a novel and comprise a uniquely different, full-course, in-depth, comprehensive A&P textbook using unparalleled learning examples. They are a consequence of the total me, not just the professional me. Using this approach I have tried to eliminate that barrier between student and professor that I think prevents most students from wanting to learn, as opposed to having to learn. You are going to be tutored by me, "personally". My books INTEGRATE the typical lab coverage of other A&P courses. I approach the subject from a function to structure, rather than structure to function, perspective. Contents for Volume 1: My Teaching Approach and Other Basic Information; Some Basic Biology (Story: Car-truck crash=survivors); Membranes and Glands (Story: I hate shoes! Any hope for sensory Nirvana?); Skeletal System (Stories: My cross-continent bicycle trip/The Gossamer Condor challenges / Birds of Prey); Muscle System (Story: Olympic Athletes and Dancers); Nervous System (Story: Tabinid flies: beautifully designed, but I still won!); Sense Receptors (Story: Sailboat in Pacific, earthworm pain, abortion. Knowing our world); Endocrine System (Story: Who's at the Door? Come in?) Contents for Volume 2: Circulatory System (Story: Waking to the clock radio); Immunology and the Lymphatic System (Story: How to die. Death IS life); The Respiratory System (Story: Aspirated bug on my bicycle trip); The Digestive System (Story: Thanksgiving dinner. Where does all that food really go?); The Urinary System (Story: My dog and the "fire-hydrant". I'm absolutely amazed!); The Reproductive System (Story: "Have you ever really loved a woman?"); Fluid, Electrolyte, and pH Balance (Story: Eating crabs, lobsters, etc.); Book Summary/Epilogue: What we have accomplished.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR My career has been characterized by me immersing myself in each student academically, as well as into their personal lives, if asked by them. I found that personal counseling was an integral component of academic counseling. Allowing myself to see students as the most important people on earth, and treating them accordingly, provided an entirely new range of teaching possibilities, because they then actively chose to engage themselves with me. It was the personal interactions and individual help sessions, encouraged by the nearly 24 hour continuous interactions with students in the more remote study sites of Central and South America (Dominica, Costa Rica, Ecuador: Amazon Basin and Galapagos), that helped modify my personal approach to teaching, which I then brought back to students of my "every-day" classes on campus, thus serving to generate the basis of this book as it is written. Of course it is necessary for any professor to interact with other faculty and administrators in a variety of ways to further the academic success of his students, including, but not limited to, various campus committees and national - international professional organizations. I will also say, however, that I strongly believe there is more to life than simply a career. Indeed, those important other factors such as family, community, and my own personal needs, significantly affected the manner whereby I approached the career component of my life. This book is, therefore, a consequence of the total me, not just the professional me. That's the reason this book differs from others. In this book I have tried to eliminate that barrier between student and professor that I think prevents most students from wanting to learn, as opposed to having to learn. I want this book to be as successful towards reaching that goal as my career has been. Peter Karch
