Sweetland interns Hannah Clague and Ed Mayes spent the summer working with Sweetland faculty and administrators to improve both the Peer Writing Consultant Program and the Minor in Writing. They were involved with multiple aspects of Sweetland’s operations, assisting with campus-wide promotion and outreach, finding ways to make important demographic and usage data more readily accessible, and analyzing the lasting impact that Sweetland’s programs have on their alumni.
Notice anything different about the Minor in Writing website? One of Hannah and Ed’s big projects this summer was to rewrite the website content promoting the Minor in Writing to prospective students. This process began with a lot of research into similar minors offered by the University and the ways these programs market themselves. After completing the new content, the interns worked with Aaron Valdez, Sweetland’s Communications Coordinator, to determine the best way to visually organize the website. You may notice some new featured quotes from Minor in Writing alumni—thanks very much to everyone who contributed their experiences! These quotes help demonstrate the immense value of the program, and, together with the new written content, will hopefully draw more students to the Minor in Writing.
While content creation was the focus of their work for the Minor in Writing, Hannah and Ed’s efforts on behalf of the Peer Writing Center primarily consisted of data collection and analysis. One of their tasks was to design an alumni survey based on the national Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project (PWTARP) model. The goal of the survey was to better understand the lasting impact that working in the PWC has on the lives and careers of our alumni. The number of responses Hannah and Ed received was encouragingly high, and their analysis of the data revealed some useful insight into the enduring value of working as peer writing consultant.
Hannah and Ed learned so much during their time as Sweetland interns. They developed new data collection and analysis skills, discovered valuable lessons about program promotion and content creation, and got to know WCOnline very, very well. They even built new strategies for collaboration between co-workers, using their respective strengths to complement one another’s efforts and together produce the best work possible. Hannah and Ed loved working with Sweetland this summer, and hope to use their newfound skills to continue supporting both this program and others like it as they begin their post-grad careers.