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This textbook and its accompanying spreadsheet templates were designed with and for students wanting a practical and easy-to-follow guide for developing a business plan. It follows a unique format that both explains what to do and demonstrates how to do it.

No matter your field, having professional communication skills is essential to success in today’s workplace. This book covers key business communications topics that will help you in your career, including intercultural communication, team work, professional writing, audience analysis and adapting messages, document formatting, oral communication, and more.

This book is an adaptation of Principles of Microeconomics originally published by OpenStax. This adapted version has been reorganized into eight topics and expanded to include over 200 multiple choice questions, examples, eight case studies including questions and solutions, and over 200 editable figures.

This Beginning Excel textbook is intended for use in a one-term introductory spreadsheet course for all majors taught at two-year colleges. The basics of Excel, as they apply to the professional workplace, are introduced, including spreadsheet design, data entry, formulas, functions, charts, tables, and multi-sheet use.

Contact Diane Shingledecker (dshingle@pcc.edu) for inquiries about accompanying online quizzes, tests, What’s Wrong with this Spreadsheet critical thinking exercises, midterm, and final projects that currently reside in a Desire2Learn online course shell.

Chemistry: Atoms First 2e is a peer-reviewed, openly licensed introductory textbook produced through a collaborative publishing partnership between OpenStax and the University of Connecticut and UConn Undergraduate Student Government Association.This text is an atoms-first adaptation of OpenStax Chemistry 2e. The intention of “atoms-first” involves a few basic principles: first, it introduces atomic and molecular structure much earlier than the traditional approach, and it threads these themes through subsequent chapters. This approach may be chosen as a way to delay the introduction of material such as stoichiometry that students traditionally find abstract and difficult, thereby allowing students time to acclimate their study skills to chemistry. Additionally, it gives students a basis for understanding the application of quantitative principles to the chemistry that underlies the entire course. It also aims to center the study of chemistry on the atomic foundation that many will expand upon in a later course covering organic chemistry, easing that transition when the time arrives.

The second edition has been revised to incorporate clearer, more current, and more dynamic explanations, while maintaining the same organization as the first edition. Substantial improvements have been made in the figures, illustrations, and example exercises that support the text narrative. The first edition of Chemistry: Atoms First by OpenStax is available in web view here.

The goal of this textbook is not to make you an expert. True expertise in any field is a years-long endeavor. Here I will survey some of the basic topics of chemistry. This survey should give you enough knowledge to appreciate the impact of chemistry in everyday life and, if necessary, prepare you for additional instruction in chemistry. Throughout each chapter, I present two features that reinforce the theme of the textbook—that chemistry is all around you. The first is a feature titled, appropriately, “Chemistry Is Everywhere.” Chemistry Is Everywhere” focuses on the personal hygiene products that you may use every morning: toothpaste, soap, and shampoo, among others. These products are chemicals, aren’t they? Ever wonder about the chemical reactions that they undergo to give you clean and healthy teeth or shiny hair? I will explore some of these chemical reactions in future chapters. But this feature makes it clear that chemistry is, indeed, everywhere. The other feature focuses on chemistry that you likely indulge in every day: eating and drinking. In the “Food and Drink App,” I discuss how the chemistry of the chapter applies to things that you eat and drink every day. Carbonated beverages depend on the behavior of gases, foods contain acids and bases, and we actually eat certain rocks. (Can you guess which rocks without looking ahead?) Cooking, eating, drinking, and metabolism—we are involved with all these chemical processes all the time. These two features allow us to see the things we interact with every day in a new light—as chemistry.

Diverse and inclusive practices is an ongoing process of recognizing and valuing the perspective of individual learners in all learning environments. Diverse and inclusive practices are not a set of ways to fix what or who doesn’t fit. It is not a reaction to different types of people. It is instead a conscious effort, making the space we share accessible to and representative of all. We cannot know what everyone will need to feel they belong, but we can share our diversity with pride and make space for conversations and actions to expand further. This open textbook is a guide to understanding how to support meaningful participation, make space for people and create engaging and welcoming learning environments.