Collaboration: An antidote for atomized academics

Human history has repeatedly shown the value and necessity of cooperation, but we in academia know better. Faculty members practice a mostly solitary art: preparing our classes, pursuing our own research, and even advising students is often an atomized activity, each faculty member alone in her pursuit of the project. The collective business of running departments and universities, a potentially non-atomized professional moment, is often the subject of the greatest faculty grievance, perceived as frustrating, time-wasting, boring, or worse. Informed of the benefits of “collaboration”, many of us wonder where we will find the time in an already too-packed schedule, or why we should engage in an activity as rife with inefficiency as collaboration? This interactive workshop will build on faculty expertise in order to retool collaboration. Beginning with a leadership game (hint: each of us is a leader), the workshop will identify challenges in faculty work experiences and imagine what solutions collaboration –how, with whom, in relation to what? - might bring.