Inquiry into Life (17th Edition) – PDF

About The Author

Michael Windelspecht

As an instructor, Dr. Michael Windelspecht has taught human genetics, introductory biology, and genetics in the traditional, online, and hybrid environments at community colleges, military institutions, and comprehensive universities. For over a decade Dr. Windelspecht served as the Introductory Biology Coordinator at Appalachian State University where he directed a program that enrolled over 4,500 college students annually. Dr. Windelspecht currently serves as an adjunct professor of biology at ASU where he teaches non-majors biology and human genetics in the online and hybrid formats. He got his education from Michigan State University and the University of South Florida. He is also active in promoting the scientific literacy of secondary school educators. He has led multiple workshops on integrating water quality research into the science curriculum, and has spent several summers teaching middle school teachers from Pakistan. As an author, Michael Windelspecht has published 5 reference textbooks, and multiple online and print lab manuals. He served as the series editor for a 10-volume work on the human body. For years he has been active in the development of multimedia resources for the online and hybrid science classrooms. Along with his wife, Sandra, he owns a multimedia production company, Ricochet Creative Productions, which actively develops and assesses new technologies for the science classroom.

Sylvia Mader

Dr. Sylvia S. Mader has authored several nationally recognized biology texts published by McGraw Hill. She is educated at Harvard University, Bryn Mawr College, Tufts University, and Nova Southeastern University and holds degrees in both Education and Biology. Over the years, she has taught at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell; Suffolk University; Massachusetts Bay Community College; and Nathan Mayhew Seminars. Dr. Mader's ability to reach out to science-shy students led to the writing of her first textbook, Inquiry into Life. Highly acclaimed for her crisp and entertaining writing style, Dr. Mader's books have become models for others who write in biology.

Although her writing schedule is always quite demanding, she enjoys exploring and visiting the various ecosystems of the biosphere. Her several trips to the Caribbean coral reefs and Florida Everglades resulted in talks she has given to different groups around the country. She has visited the tundra in Alaska, the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, the taiga in the Canadian Rockies, and tropical rain forests in Australia and South America. A photo safari to the Serengeti in Kenya resulted in several photographs for her texts. She was also a member of a group of biology educators who traveled to China to meet with their Chinese counterparts and exchange ideas about teaching modern-day biology. She was thrilled to think of walking in Darwin’s steps when she journeyed to the Galápagos Islands with a group of biology educators.