Rothwell Produces Two New Books on Workforce Development

by Joe Savrock (September 2008)

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – William J. Rothwell, professor of workforce education and development at Penn State, recently co-produced two new books that emphasize nationwide efforts to improve America’s workforce.

 Rothwell, along with James Alexander and Mark Bernhard, co-edited Cases in Government Succession Planning (HRD Press, 2008), a compilation of case studies that address how government agencies internationally and at the U.S. federal, state, and local levels are coping with large numbers of retirements. The book presents action-oriented strategies for public-sector human capital management, workforce, planning, succession planning, and talent management. Alexander deals with government succession planning at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Inspection Service; Bernhard is chief of continuing education at Virginia Tech.

Rothwell and H.C. Kazanas, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, co-authored Mastering the Instructional Design Process (Pfeiffer, 2008), a textbook for corporate trainers who prepare employee training. The fourth edition of a classic work, this book describes how people may build their skills in the challenging world of corporate training, an area of increasing importance as workers globally compete for jobs.

These two books carry the same theme—the improvement of America’s workforce—as three other books that Rothwell produced earlier this year. Rothwell co-edited Linking Workforce Development to Economic Development: A Casebook for Community Colleges (American Association of Community Colleges, 2008) with Patrick E. Gerity; co-authored Human Resources Transformation (Davies-Black, 2008) with Robert Prescott and Maria Taylor; and co-authored Working Longer: New Strategies for Managing, Training, and Retaining Older Employees (American Management Association, 2008) with Diane Spokus, Harvey Sterns, and Joel Reaser.