A521.1.4.RB_Stories in Your Organization

The stories I am going to examine are from a different perspective. Due to the nature of the organization I work for I am heavily influenced by both faculty and students. The culture of my organization is centered around educational excellence and the experiences we can provide as an institution of higher learning. What we do now to help students will only further the foundation and culture of the institution.

I have worked in higher education going on 5 years now and I think I have heard every excuse from students that can be told (and some of the stories can be rather entertaining and others are heart wrenching). There are not too many stories that go on in my field of work asides from the excuses we hear from students. The jobs completed by the faculty and staff are heavily influences by our students. I can sympathize with students but I don’t necessarily agree with what they are saying. My journey in my career field started when I was student so I have the ability to understand where the student is coming which enables me with ability to have the student think of the same story they were sharing in different ways.

More commonly than not the story always started with, “I cannot return to school because…” Right there I find myself stopping the student in mid-sentence and I ask them to think about what they are saying; do they really believe that to be true? After I do that I am given a list of reasons why they feel it is a true statement. Believe me I have heard all the stories in the book about how they cannot afford to go to school or they have time constraints but their stories lack many different elements. I understand that finding additional time for school is hard especially when you are a parent returning to school and trying to raise a family but excuses do not fix the overall problem. I find some of the stories to be cop-outs or an escape goat. Life is full of challenges but if you are going to tell me a story giving me meaning. I have a tendency to think students who know they are going to want to withdrawal from school because of time, money or level of difficulty have these situations mapped out in their minds but when it comes time to execute their plan they look like little puppy dogs with their tails between their legs.

Working in education I know that as an organization we want to provide as many avenues as possible to help students get the best education money can offer. I think of our students as customers and we are the service they are seeking. I focus on keeping things simple and customer focused. If we allowed every student to tell their story and let them leave without addressing the situation then we are failing the student and I don’t mean academically. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has a reputation for educational excellence; we would not still a leading competitor in higher education learning if we didn’t want to help our students succeed. With that being said we cannot save every student and at times we have to listen to the stories being told, provide the student options and allow the student to make the final decision.

I think smaller stories that go on within our organization stem from the moments where we can save a student from leaving and see them finish their goal. Those pivotal moments in a student’s educational career is what helps show others they can do it too. At one point in my career I answered the Information Center phone line and I can vividly remember a student who wanted to leave because he was frustrated with the system. As an institution we were able to see to it that they student received everything they needed for success and ultimately that student graduated which goes to show if we stick to what we know and execute our jobs correctly we can success stories and those stories can go on to inspire others.

Whether we are able to help a student or lose a student the stories that spawn from those situations are what helps to bring the organization closer. I like to think of those stories as the building blocks because each time we learn something new or make a process easier we are laying a newer and better framework for the organization. Stories are born on a daily basis as the start from a certain situation taking place; what we do with those stories (or how we use them) ultimately influences our organizational culture.