Documenting institutional identity: Strategic writing in the IUPUI comprehensive campaign
Karen Lynn Bishop
- School: Purdue University (0183)
- Degree: Ph.D.
- Date: 2002; pp: 200
- Advisor: Rose, Shirley K
- Source: DAI-A 64/09, p. 3275, Mar 2004
- Subjects: Language, Rhetoric And Composition (0681); Education, Higher (0745)
- ProQuest Document Number: 764941311
- ISBN: 0-496-52478-X
- UMI Number: AAT 3104911
Abstract:
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This dissertation considers the discourse generated in the IUPUI comprehensive campaign as "documentary
reality" or illustrative of how issues, such as authority and decision-making, are negotiated within
hierarchies for the purpose of creating institutional identity. Regarding the scope of the dissertation,
the project chronicles the one-year strategic planning phase before the public phase of the campaign,
through rhetorical analysis of documents. Specifically, these documents are ones generated by the
university, the School of Liberal Arts, the School of Dentistry, and the IU Foundation, and have
been selected because of their discursive features that lend themselves to the process of creating
and articulating a concrete identity for the institution. Among these documents are mission
statements (for the institution and both schools); cases for support drafted by both schools;
preliminary and final institutional cases for support; and the campaign plan. Central to IUPUI's
campaign is the issue of creating an institutional identity for itself from the myriad of programs,
hybrid programs, and schools. A favorable outcome or cohesion of these programs as they
contribute to the identity of the campus is dependent on the successful writing of the program/school
cases for support and how they are in effect translated into the larger institutional case to
construct that identity. Considering IUPUI through documentary reality becomes a way of recording
knowledge of processes and events for the campaign, which have significant implications for
program administrators in various contexts. Through written discourse we are able to analyze
organizational reporting procedures, patterns of interaction between departments, features of
genre and other acts within the institutional context to ultimately aid in the effective
administration of those contexts. The evidence of this reality becomes documentation strategies--written
plans which account for the method of analysis just described and are a vehicle for reflective
practice as well as knowledge production.
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