Ivan G. Dole began teaching with the Dallas County Community College District in 1999 while earning an MA in Linguistics from the University of North Texas in Denton. Over the course of his career, he has taught all levels of developmental reading, developmental writing, and ESOL, including two years overseas in South Korea. Professor Dole began writing textbooks while serving as coordinator for the Developmental Reading Department at North Lake College in Irving, Texas. The desire to write a textbook arose early in his career and was fostered during his involvement with an award-winning, innovative, multi-discipline faculty team from his campus that focused on effective teaching and learning across academic disciplines. The emphasis on concepts such as collaborative learning, critical thinking, scaffolding of knowledge, making connections across academic disciplines, solidifying learning outcomes, and increasing student retention helped refine the thoughts and ideas for ENGAGE: COLLEGE READING.
Leslie Taggart has developed more than one hundred college textbooks in the disciplines of college reading, developmental writing, first-year composition, linguistics, literature, and study skills, mostly as a freelance editor. She has contributed chapters to college textbooks in the fields of English as a Second Language, literature, and rhetoric, co-authored an edition of a developmental writing text, and revised several texts, including two handbooks and a fivebook composition series. Leslie has taught English as a second language at the high school level, and English as a foreign language at an agricultural college in China. She has been a volunteer literacy tutor and spent two years tutoring in the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program. Leslie earned the Master Practitioner certificate in Neuro-Linguistic Programming from the New England Institute of NLP.
