What is the UIndy Saga Project?

The project will produce four Enduring Contributions:

1. Establish an archive of stories and history of the UIndy experience in the 21st century.
2. Write capstone essay (based on archive) for a book about university’s institutional culture.
3. Fund a series of arts collaborations to be carried out with faculty and students as we embrace the imperative of one of our predecessors “to tell the whole story . . .”

UIndy Community Conversations 

Having community conversations has become customary at UIndy over the past decade. At the same time, we rarely take the time to talk about “the UIndy experience” and the ways we now tell the story of the University as opposed to narratives of previous decades.

The UIndy Saga in the 21st Century Project provides the occasion for this latter kind of conversations. The Project Director and the Steering Committee will work with departments of the Shaheen College of Arts & Sciences as well as the professional colleges and schools of the University to design occasions for discussion about what we have experienced over the past two decades (since the turn of the century). Such gatherings will invite persons to gather (in person as well as virtually) for searching conversation about the diverse experiences of faculty, staff, students, and alumni. The public occasions will be recorded for future use (curated for the 21st century archive).

S.P.I.R.A.L.

The process we will follow will take shape as a spiral. Various patterns of engagement will emerge during the next two years, but we anticipate that the conversations will include these elements:

Searching and Participatory

As UIndy employees, colleagues, students and alumni we will engage one another in conversations the outcome of which cannot be predetermined. We carry out the quest together knowing that the project goals call for everyone to be able to participate.

Iterative and Recursive

The quest is ongoing. We will move forward...we will step back as necessary to consider and reconsider what has been said before even as the addition of new voices alters the distillation of previous conversations. This movement back and forth gives dynamism to the process and calls for the capacity to change course.

Archived and Living

We will be keeping track of the conversations. We will take notes, not because anything that is said constitutes the last word on topics but because we want to capture the provisional thoughts that will enable us to continue to have these conversations at the next opportunity to engage one another in the course of carrying out our work. The conversation about the UIndy experience is never-ending as long as the university exists as a community of learning!