By Lisa Chontos

Hidden Talent: How Leading Companies Hire, Retain, and Benefit from People with Disabilities

edited byMark Lengnick-Hall ©2007 Praeger Publishers

The employment rate for people with disabilities is only 33 percent—a statistic that spurred professor of management Mark Lengnick-Hall and his colleagues to research and write Hidden Talent: How Leading Companies Hire, Retain, and Benefit from People with Disabilities.

After discussing the need for skilled labor and the concerns employers may have, Lengnick-Hall and fellow researchers profile companies that are actively recruiting employees with disabilities. Included are Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft, Hewlett- Packard, Dow Chemical and Marriott, as well as a company with only 20 employees. Each profile ends with a summary and a short list of “Lessons Learned.” A user-friendly appendix details tax incentives for hiring people with disabilities, lists resources and includes a clear explanation of the Americans with Disabilities Act in a question-and-answer format.

The researchers shared the same simple motivation. “We were all concerned about the low employment rate and the previous emphasis on the rehabilitation model, where people with disabilities were prepared and then presented to employers as applicants,” says Lengnick-Hall.

“What mattered to us was investigating why some employers were proactive in hiring people with disabilities, and why others chose not to hire them. We wanted the book to serve as a summary of our research on what people are doing, but also to help employers who are interested in this but aren’t aware of exactly how to do it. We wanted to give them good examples to follow.”

From Renaissance to Counter-Reformation: The Architectural Patronage of Carlo Borromeo During the Reign of Pius IV

by John Alexander ©2007 Biblioteca Ambrosiana

Thirteen years of intensive research went into this first book by John Alexander, assistant professor of architectural history. By focusing on a few defining years in the life of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, Alexander expands on what is known about the critical period of Counter-Reformation architecture created under Borromeo’s direction in 16th-century Italy.

“It’s a biographical investigation of this young man,” Alexander says. “He’s not the most sympathetic character, because he was very strict, and by today’s standards he would have been considered harsh. We see him for all the rigor, all the seriousness, all the single-mindedness that he had, and also for all of his appreciation for visual beauty. Instead of being a caricature of a religious reformer, he now becomes a three-dimensional human being.”

The book’s cover shows a striking fresco commissioned after Borromeo’s death, depicting the moment when he “received the red hat” and became a cardinal. Inside, Alexander presents a scholarly work resulting from his close study of letters, contracts and other documents that fills in the gaps in current biographical and scholarly material on Borromeo.

Alexander’s next project will build upon this research by contrasting Borromeo with Cesare Gambara, the bishop of Tortona who held differing views about the responsibilities of ecclesiastical patrons.

Talking Texts: How Speech and Writing Interact in School Learning

edited by Rosalind Horowitz ©2007 Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group

Talking may make you smarter and more interested in reading. In her book, Talking Texts: How Speech and Writing Interact in School Learning, Rosalind Horowitz and colleagues present research showing that a high level of quality classroom participation increases the likelihood that students will be inquisitive and engaged, with improved cognitive processing when reading, writing and reasoning.

Horowitz has a joint appointment in the Department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching and the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology. She explains, “Talking Texts comes after a century in which students were to be seen and not heard, where seatwork and silent reading, fill-in-the-blank or short essay writing dominated, and speaking meant recitation.”

Horowitz spent more than eight years conducting research with graduate students, compiling and editing the work of international researchers and reporting on a half century of research on classroom dialogues. The volume examines the cognitive and social outcomes of different types of opportunities for talking, including teacher-led interaction, instructional conversations, peer discussions, adult-expert collaborations, family talk and self-reflective talk.

By showing how dialogue is key in creating new knowledge, the book proposes that teachers can be trained in a range of styles of interaction targeting particular age groups and populations as they process texts they read or write.

Talking Texts also illustrates how dialogue can be used effectively in different subject areas—to teach not only the technicalities of math, science and engineering, but also the arts, poetry, drama and music.