What story would you tell?

What were some of the stories you were told when you were in college? I remember at my alma mater, Gonzaga University, everyone knew of our most famous alumnus (who actually never finished his program). Bing Crosby, who later received an honorary degree from the university, and who donated the money to build a library which was later converted into the student center but still bears his name, had grown up in Spokane, WA, and attended both Gonzaga High School and Gonzaga University. In reality, his passion for acting and music was inversely related to his interest in education and led to his departure, but in the stories we told on campus, his departure was initiated by a number of glamorous reasons, including unsuccessfully trying to hoist a piano through the fifth-floor window of one of the residence halls and dropping said piano to the ground instead. This is one of the many stories alumni of Gonzaga know upon commencement, an example of what I've come learn is called a "saga."

Clark (1972) introduced higher education to the concept of the organizational saga. A saga, as he wrote, refers to how members of an organization, such as a college or university, develop a collective understanding of some unique accomplishment in the organization's history that has significant meaning for the members. This collective understanding develops into a saga as organizational members retell the tale of that particular accomplishment but tend to add affect and embellishment in the retelling. It is through the added feeling organizational members give a particular story that the relative coldness and rationality of the organization melts away, inspiring strong feelings of loyalty to and pride in the organization among established and new members. Gonzaga alumni take some pride in the fact that they share an alma mater with Bing Crosby (though I will disclose there are aspects of the entertainer's life, like his history of abuse, which problematize this legacy).

Clark defined an organizational saga as an expression of a unified set of beliefs about an organization by its members that emerges from the organization's history about some unique accomplishment, characteristic, or circumstance and is held with conviction. Learning the sagas of a particular college or university is a way to understand its culture and values (not simply its history). I focused much of my final for my Organizational Analysis of Higher Education course on organizational saga, and found myself extremely fascinated with the whole idea of institutional "saga."

In doing a little outside research for my final, I came across an excellent example of a higher education organizational saga. President Emeritus of the University of Michigan Dr. James Duderstadt wrote an excellent overview of The Michigan Saga covering the university's history, symbols, and succession of leadership. The whole read was intriguing, but most surprising to me was how Dr. Duderstadt highlighted how the university's trend toward privatization could be linked to aspects of its history. It made me wonder whether the story would have been written in the same way at a different point in Michigan's history.

Sagas also emerge out of the multitude of experiences students and alumni have with their alma maters. Michigan State University started a project called "Spartan Sagas," collecting stories from current students and alumni describing how MSU played a pivotal role in their lives. The collective experiences we have with our alma maters shapes our values and our lives in ways that shape our loyalty to our institutions, the pride we take in having attended, and thus the overall legacy each institution has in our world. Reading through a few of these demonstrated for me much of MSU's legacy.

Think back to your own experience in college. What were some of the "great stories" that were told about your institution? What are some great stories from your time in college that have shaped your values and goals? If you were to write the organizational saga of your college or university, what story would you tell?

**Edit: Forgot to include my reference!
Clark, B.R. (1972). The organizational saga in higher education. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17(2), 178-184.

Bryce
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