Sunoikisis
Sunoikisis
is a consortium of Classics programs at national liberal arts colleges. "Sunoikisis"
comes from Thucydides (3.3.1) in reference to
the alliance formed by the cities of Lesbos (Methymna excluded) in their
revolt against the Athenian empire in 428 B.C.E. Likewise, this
collaborative program seeks to develop a set of common goals and achieve
a degree of success and prominence that goes beyond the capacity of a
single program.
Curricular elements within this program include:
Sunoikisis enables students and faculty at participating institutions
to benefit from opportunities normally available only at large research
institutions while maintaining the advantages of a small liberal arts
learning environment.
The large and diverse national faculty within Sunoikisis permits us to
broaden and deepen our Classics curriculum, both in literature and in
archaeology. The cycle of Sunoikisis team-taught literature courses exposes students
to a wider range of subject material and faculty than would be possible
otherwise. Indeed, the president of an elite northeastern college
commented in October 2004 that Sunoikisis courses surpass courses offered
by large institutions in that their collaborative nature unusually enriches
them in terms of content and methodological approach. The program, by
providing a range and quality of opportunities
for majors, prepares students who choose to continue their training in
graduate school to compete with graduates from the leading research universities
in the country.
The inter-institutional collaborative courses within Sunoikisis necessarily
make use of technology to connect institutions. The class sessions are
synchronous, and student attendance and participation are required. In
addition, students engage in asynchronous discussion with one another
outside of “class” time.
Skills required to successfully negotiate the synchronous and asynchronous
sessions have a direct application to various careers outside of Classics,
for example in business, medicine, law. As our global environment becomes
more and more the norm, effective workers must be able to function within
multi-layered virtual offices. A recent Latin major, now an accountant
with a leading firm, reports that skills learned during Sunoikisis courses
placed him well ahead of his contemporaries in terms of abilities to work
with colleagues located in remote offices.
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