Professor Stacey Wieland of the Communication Arts & Sciences Department (CAS) says that the Writing Nook has been great for her, because it forces her to get down to writing when there are so many other pressures and obligations that demand her attention. (For more on the Writing Nook, check out this blog post.)

Wieland's area is organizational communication. One of her Writing Nook projects looks at youth employees and how they develop during a summer jobs program. Wieland interviewed 17 young adults and their 5 supervisors in an area jobs program to find out what they learned. 

The employees naturally learned new skills, but they also found that their thinking about work was transformed. The young adults' perspectives on work were enlarged, and they found new self-efficacy as agents of change. Supervisors learned or re-discovered the importance of mentoring and immersion into the organizational culture. It became clear to them that employing young people is not about getting cheap labor; it's more about changing kids' lives through meaningful work experiences.

Wieland submitted her manuscript to a communication journal in September. After a peer-review, she was offered the opportunity to revise her manuscript and submit it for further publication. Currently Wieland is utilizing the Writing Nook as a place to apply these revisions and delve deeper into her manuscript.