Issue 26(2)

Academic Transformation: The Road to College Success. (2005). D.E. Sellers, Carol W. Dochen, and Russ Hodges. Upper Saddle River , NJ : Prentice Hall, Pearson Education, 370 pp. Price $25.00. ISBN # 0-13-048615-9.

Review by: Irene Burgess

Office of Academic Affairs

Wilmington College, Wilmington, OH

Academic Transformation aims itself at an audience of incoming students who need support to succeed in college. The authors focus on the student's need to gain the ability to autonomously learn as they provide a comprehensive overview to the psychological, social, and academic issues that can plague the long-term success of college students. Unfortunately, the textbook's content and presentation does not lend itself to interest by any but the most motivated student.

For the advisor and those who teach introduction to college life courses, the textbook would be a nice refresher of the behavioral and cognitive concepts behind academic motivation, learning styles, and goal achievement. In addition, there are a limited amount of the standard tips for in and out of classroom learning, time management, and stress reduction. Some attention is paid to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and how personality can affect the best strategies for learning and studying. In addition, there is an interesting group of questions and answers in the final chapter that directly addresses how students should think about different kinds of performance evaluations.

Clearly the book is geared toward students themselves with ongoing exercises, summaries, key concepts, and guided journal questions for each chapter as well as examples of students who fulfill the concepts under discussion. Despite the wealth of good information available, the writing is frequently textbook-like and clinical in tone with diction that fails to grasp the attention of the student who is already under-motivated.

Given the nature of the book, I would not recommend it as a text for a standard introduction to college life course. However it would be a useful book for a student who's hit a bump in his/her path and has the motivation to seek alternatives to counter-productive behaviors. Also, professionals will find the text is a helpful reference tool for advising students about strategies for handling the life problems that impact academic achievement and success. The premise of the book is good, but the delivery of the information needs to be more carefully geared to its target audience.