If you've got a problem at work, a good option is to talk it out. Or, to take it a few steps further, there's Rachael Levine's approach: An anthropological study.
Levine is a people-watcher, which is one reason she joined the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to major in anthropology and psychology. But she's also an active observer, and after seeing some discontent faces at a previous workplace, she returned there as a scholar to study how her former bosses and coworkers could better get along.
The graduating senior used a study method she learned in class, along with a twist she tried on a hunch. Ethnographers sometimes ask interview subjects to draw a map of their day, which reveals what's important to them. Levine asked her subjects—from student employees up to full-time administrators—to map their work relationships instead.
The results were revealing. While administrators generally drew organizational charts, lower level employees were more emotional. One drew a picture of a boy struggling to feed a fish while he was tangled in red tape coming from the mouth of a man in a suit.
Levine detailed the evident communication gap at the Undergraduate Research Symposium. Her former employer has acknowledged the problem.
"I like to be active in whatever community I'm part of," Levine says. "I like to see how things are working, what's not working, and see if the problem can be fixed. It's the approach I took with this."
Levine plans to study school psychology this fall in graduate school at Illinois State University. She considers her time in LAS well-spent, as she progressed from being undecided in her field of study, to studying anthropology, to feeling certain of where she wants to go.
"I tried some other things just to be sure," Levine says. "But I'm happy with this."
