Lessons Learned and Applications

Dr. Kenny Morrell

Rhodes College

Since the first meeting of what later became Sunoikisis at Rhodes College in the spring of 1995, we have accumulated a considerable amount of experience both in creating collaborative relationships among faculty members at different institutions and using technology to support those relationships and courses we have designed and offered. This presentation will examine some of our findings, look briefly at efforts to apply some of them in other academic contexts, and then describe some initiatives that are now underway and some possible avenues for future development.

With regard to our findings, I will address three issues. The first concerns the tensions that exist between what we have described as the “centripetal” demands of the institutions, which require faculty members to devote more energy and time to campus-based based activities such as teaching and advising, and the “centrifugal” forces of the discipline, which draw faculty members into professional relationships, generally with an emphasis on research, with their colleagues outside of their institutions often within the context “super-institutional guilds.” Sunoikisis has had to find a way of adapting to and reconciling these forces. The second concerns the asynchronous cycles of academic communities. Although we are all engaged is essentially the same professional enterprise we work within a set of slightly asynchronous and sometimes incompatible daily and yearly cycles, which in turn operate within three larger asynchronous periodic systems: the four-year student cycle, the cycle of administrative turnover, and the career cycles of contributing faculty members. This array of temporal constraints has influenced the project in a number of ways from the times we offer courses, to the number of courses in each series, to the ways we attempt to manage our relationships with our administrations. The third issue concerns the products of scholarly engagement, the role of peer review, and shifting paradigms of evaluation.

This presentation will also look briefly at efforts to export and adapt the conventions of Sunoikisis to other academic contexts, for example in an initiative among the institutions of the Appalachian College Association to develop expertise in the ancient world, and, finally, outline several initiatives at various stages in the planning process that have the potential to expand the scope and reach of Sunoikisis, including, for example, an emerging role for the Center for Hellenic Studies as a nexus of interaction and collaboration. 

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