Small Philosophy Departments

Other Voices: "The Terrors and Triumphs of Teaching in a One-Person Department"

2009-09-01T14:18:00.000-07:00

There doesn't seem to be much literature on the topic of teaching in a small department, but the anthology Teaching in the Small College: Issues and Applications edited by Richard A. Wright and John A. Burden (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986) seems a fairly good repository of some reflections on small college teaching generally.

James K. McReynolds' contribution, "The Terrors and Triumphs of Teaching in a One-Person Department" is a perceptive first-person account of what it is like to be in this singular (!) situation. The terrors are common enough--being overburdened, underappreciated, and isolated--but I find that his discussion of the triumphs worth focusing on. [My term hasn't started yet, so for now I have a positive outlook on life; maybe when the first stack of grading comes due, I'll change my tune.]

McReynolds claims that the triumphs of teaching in a one-person department

emerge in three areas: (1) curricular constuction and control, (2) institutional advantages, and (3) student development. (18)

Regarding (1), McReynolds points out that in singelton departments (and this may go for 2- and 3-person departments as well) faculty exert comparatively more control over the curriculum than in larger departments, and the sense of control over the curriculum is something to be valued. McReynolds suggests creating flexible courses, the specific content of which can be varies from year to year, so that faculty can experiment either with content or pedagogical methods without having to visit the college curriculum committee every term. With fewer people looking over one's shoulder, one is freer to try out new things in the classroom, and, perhaps, teach courses that merge with one's research interests.

McReynolds also recommends (and this was suggested by some respondents to my survey) using more active-learning pedagogies. This may enable faculty members to, among other things, more readily teach courses in which they are not expert and deal with a heavy course load. [The literature on active learning is rich--I shan't recapitulate it here.]

Regarding (2), McReynolds says this:

The small college experience offers a wonderful opportunity to feel a deep sense of community--that one is supportively and constructively involved in the life of the college. A professor can have a substantial impact not only in his or her department, but in the institution in general. (20)

This may be true in the small college, but, clearly, not every small department exists in a small college, so this claim may be true for some, but not all, of those of us teaching in small departments.

Finally, regarding (3)--student development--McReynolds anticipates some of the remarks made by survey respondents regarding the value of being closely involved in the growth and development of one's students. I have found this to be the most significant aspect of thriving in a small department: faculty who are genuinely interested in being instrumental in the academic, emotional, and intellectual development of their students will do well in small departments. Not only is it the sort of attitude that chairs, deans, and hiring committees look for in new faculty, but it is one of the rewards of being in such a position. That is to say, if you do not get satisfaction from being involved in student development in this way, you may not enjoy life in a small department, as the satisfaction that comes from such involvement is one of the chief benefits offered to us.

Data Analysis: Ways of Recruiting and Retaining Majors

2009-08-24T11:19:00.000-07:00

I've done an examination of the many helpful suggestions that survey participants made in response to the question of how they recruit and retain majors. The full list of comments is available here, but what follows is (my admittedly amateur) content analysis of those responses.

In order to recruit and retain majors, here is what survey participants suggest (in order of frequency)

1. Create high-quality courses, especially introductory level courses (15)
2. Hold outside-of-class social events with students (10)
3. Ensure that students can double-major, combining philosophy with some other field (7)
4. Connect philosophy courses with the general education program (7)
5. Engage in advertising via majors fairs, high school visits, brochures, etc. (7)
6. Promote the value of a phil. major for law school or other (non-philosophy) grad programs (6)
7. Close faculty-student relationships (4)
8. Personally inviting students to major (4)
9. Be flexible with the major requirements (4)
10. Give public lectures on campus (4)

It seems that having a respectable number of philosophy majors (and minors) is particularly important for a number of reasons. More majors means more upper level courses which means (as will be discussed in a future post) the ability for faculty teaching in small departments to connect their resesarch with their teaching, and this is an oft-recommended way to get research done while teaching a heavy course load. Moreover, in an economic situation where administrations may be looking to cut those departments that have only a handful of majors, recruiting more majors may be necessary for the very existence of the department itself.

Have other folks found creative solutions to the problem of recruiting and retaining majors?

What kind of person does well in a small philosophy department?

2009-08-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to look at the survey data below and construct a description of the sort of person who would do well at a small philosophy department? Well, the data was hardly gathered from a scientifically respectable sample, and, even if it were, it would be a precarious endeavor to generalize from that data to an "ideal" faculty member in a small department, but perhaps looking at the concerns and, particulary, the advantages, it might be possible to make a first attempt.

Picking up on the questions I asked in the last post, I'm thinking about this question in the context of new folks on the job market. If you want to succeed in a small department, you should be the kind of person who...

...is happy putting teaching ahead of scholarship on your priority list

...can handle a heavy teaching load

...is content to be in a department that may not enjoy prestige on campus

...is content to be a member of a "service" department--i.e., a dept. that serves other majors.

...enjoys forming close mentoring relationships with undergraduates

...can teach a wide variety of courses

...is content to be the only person on your campus who works in your field

...can be happy without much, if any, intellectual engagement with campus colleagues

...can find intellectual stimulation interacting with people from different disciplines

...is able to recruit majors, primarily through teaching engaging and interesting courses

...is willing to advise a philosophy club or honorary society

...is willing and able to serve on college committees and in other service capacities

...derives satisfaction from seeing students learn

...doesn't require professional accolades or prominence in the discipline

...enjoys learning about areas of philosophy you've never studied before

...enjoys the freedom to create new courses

...enjoys seeing the same students in multiple courses

Again, this is a rough list, and the imprecision of social science has to be borne in mind here. Doubtless there are people who thrive in small philosophy departments who have few, if any, of the above characteristics. But given what people in the survey said about what the advantages were, and what their concerns were, this seems to be at least a fair first pass at the sort of qualities needed by people who will be content working in small departments.

Other suggestions?

Preparing graduate students for jobs at small departments

2009-08-15T13:55:00.000-07:00

My first year on the job market, I was very close to getting a campus visit at a small (2-person) philosophy department at a good liberal arts school in the midwest. I wasn't invited to campus, and the department chair told me that the reason was that I did not have any experience at a small college: I didn't attend a small college as an undergraduate and, clearly, as a graduate student I was at a large university. It being my first year on the job market, I had no experience teaching at such colleges. I can't remember his exact words, but his point was that working in a small college, as a member of a small department, requires an understanding of the nature of small colleges and since I didn't have that, I wasn't going to be invited to campus.

At the time, I thought this the height of injustice, but now, having worked at a small college for 10 years, I can see that he was right. The demands of working at a small college require a certain set of skills, and, unless a job candidate has small college experience, it can be difficult to tell if he or she has those skills.

All of this leads me to ask what steps, if any, are graduate departments taking to prepare their students for jobs at small colleges? What suggestions do faculty who teach at small colleges have for our colleagues in Ph.D. programs? What would you like to see in potential job candidates? What do job candidates think about their preparation for jobs at small colleges? Do you feel well-prepared for such jobs? What could be done to make you more prepared?

I can offer one suggestions--perhaps readers will have others. For the last few years I have been helping out the big university down the road from mine by mock interviewing their students as they enter the job market. Very few, if any, of the faculty there have experience at a small college, so while they conduct mock interviews from the perspective of a research university, they are unable to accurately simulate what an interview with a college like mine would be like. So I come in and mock interview the students. This has been, from the reports of both faculty and students, incredibly helpful. Are others doing anything like this?

Welcome to the Small Philosophy Departments Blog

2009-08-15T13:06:00.000-07:00

In the spring and summer of 2008 I conducted a survey of faculty working in departments that consisted of three or fewer full-time philosophers. I called these "small philosophy departments". Survey respondents were asked to comment on the challenges and advantages of life in a small philosophy department, and I'm using this blog as a forum both to present the results and to take up discussion of the issues. The results are preliminary, and I plan to do some further analysis of the data presented here. I hope this will be a forum for faculty working in small philosophy departments to engage with each other and share advice, best practices, and stories of our success.

The statistical analysis below was performed by Dr. Michele Acker of the Psychology Dept. at Otterbein College.

Please feel free to comment on the posts below, which encapsulate the survey data. I plan further posts with content analysis of the comment sections and with links to resources that can help faculty who work in small departments to thrive.

Survey Results: Concerns

2009-08-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

Survey respondents were given a list of 14 possible issues of concern for faculty teaching in small philosophy departments. They were asked to rank these issues on a scale of 1-5 where 1 indicated "no concern at all" and 5 indicated a "high priority concern" Here is the list of issues, along with the mean scores, standard deviations, and number of respondents for each item. They are listed in order from most concerning to least concerning.

For each of the concerns listed here, respondents were asked to indicate how, if at all, they had addressed these various issues. Clicking on the concern listed below will take you to a separate post that lists those responses.

Respondents were also prompted to list any other concerns that they had, and a list of these other concerns can be seen here.

	Concern	N	Mean	S.D.
1	Finding time and resources to support scholarly work	107	4.12	1.007
2	Recruiting and retaining majors	97	3.59	1.214
3	Convincing undergraduates of the value of philosophy	108	3.35	1.146
4	Excessive teaching responsibilities	108	3.25	1.382
5	Creating a sense of community among majors & minors	103	3.15	1.115
6	Acquiring resources from college administration	108	3.13	1.305
7	Effectively preparing majors for graduate school in philosophy	99	3.08	1.104
8	Excessive college service responsibilities	107	3.02	1.251
9	Convincing administration of the value of philosophy	107	3.01	1.450
10	Effectively teaching courses outside one's area of expertise	100	2.77	1.230
11	Convincing faculty colleagues of the value of philosophy	109	2.68	1.353
12	Excessive departmental service responsibilities	108	2.54	1.286
13	Finding faculty to teach philosophy courses	101	2.44	1.244
14	Managing interactions with any non-philosophers in the department	79	2.16	1.245

Advantages

2009-08-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

Survey respondents were given a list of potential advantages to working in a small philosophy department. They were asked to rank these issues on a scale of 1-5 where 1 meant "I don't like this at all" and 5 meant "I love this" Here is the list of potential advantages, along with the mean scores, standard deviations, and number of respondents for each item. They are listed in order from most loved to those seen as least advantageous.

Respondents were also prompted to list any other advantages they enjoyed as members of small philosophy departments, and those other advantages can be seen here.

	Advantage	N	Mean	S.D.
1	Having the freedom to create new courses	92	4.26	0.982
2	Knowing the Majors and Minors well	92	4.23	0.891
3	Having the same students in multiple courses	92	3.99	0.989
4	Having the ability to teach a wide range of courses	97	3.93	1.092
5	Having the ability to effect change in one's department	93	3.71	1.079
6	Having fewer departmental administrative obligations	61	3.43	1.087
7	Interactions with non-philosophers in the institution	99	3.41	0.904
8	Interactions with fellow philosophers	78	3.33	1.181
9	Being a/the prominent "campus philosopher"	90	3.06	1.193
10	Having the opportunity to teach non-philosophy courses	72	2.97	1.267
11	Interactions with non-philosophers in the department	64	2.94	1.037
12	Having a small number of philosophy majors.	92	2.53	1.296

Other Advantages

2009-08-13T15:11:00.001-07:00

Here is a list of some other advantages to working in a small philosophy department noted by survey participants.

Basically, knowing you are making a difference in the students' ability to think critically and to cope with complexity in the world. Being able to connect what students learn in other disciplines with what I am teaching. This enables me to continually learn.
We are not driven by professional ambition.
Having the ability to debate and shape curriculum in philosophy.
I don't know if it has anything to do with the fact that our department is small, but it is a very congenial place. Nobody is a hotshot researcher, and nobody has a hotshot researcher attitude.
Total scheduling freedom!
None. I wish I had colleagues and the opportunity to have intelligent discourse with members of my profession. If I knew that this situation was my future, I would not have attended graduate school for philosophy and instead gone to law school. I consider my study of philosophy valuable on an intellectual level but worthless with regards to making a career/life.
Collegial relationships with philosophers and non-philosophers; the liberal arts curriculum and the values embedded within it; ties to alums, esp. given our smaller size;
Energy levels are high!
Wide range of areas in which I train myself. Downside, of course, is being a "jack of all trades."
The department is so far beneath the radar in the faculty and university that we tend not to get caught up in internecine warfare over lab space, allocations of teaching assistantships, etc. Our insignificance removes us from scrutiny and gives us great freedom in our individual research programs and teaching.
Life is much better in a science department. My colleagues generally tend to be smarter and nicer people, the department itself runs smoothly, and there are ample resources, so people are not fighting over copy paper and chalk. My work is genuinely interdisciplinary, so most of my contact with philosophy is through professional conferences and editorial duties. I much prefer having logic / mathematics / computer science students to having philosophy students and, although I sometimes miss having philosopher-colleagues, I thoroughly enjoy my non-philosopher colleagues.
No faculty meetings with philosophers! (Downside: faculty meetings with the entire college.)
The above questions relating to number 22 reveal some misunderstanding of the life at a (or at least my) community college. For instance, I don't have fewer departmental administrative obligations. There also is not a small number of philosophy majors here. And I don't have that much freedom in creating new courses. So I had a difficult time answering some of the questions.
I am totally puzzled by the "fewer departmental administrative obligations" item. I've got service obligations coming out my ears and can't imagine what you mean.
Freedom to teach what I want to teach--though I realize that might not be something that results from my being in a small department.
About the above list: it is not true that I have "fewer dept'al admin. obligations." There are fewer of us, so we each must take on more. And it is not true that I have the freedom to create new courses -- we have so few people and resources that we can't even get our required courses taught often enough, so there's no room for anything new.
You've already got this, but I'll repeat: it's a strong community with tremendous autonomy.
It is natural to have many good relationships with colleagues in other departments. No strangers within the department!
There is a deep satisfaction knowing that one is the sole or perhaps one of only a few representatives of philosophy in an academic community. It puts a constructive pressure on one to maintain the standards of the discipline, to represent it well, and to be recognized as an active participant in the larger community of philosophy outside of the walls of one's small institution. One becomes the (or at least a) "local expert" on the subject (as one of my colleagues put it, the "philosopher laureate"), so one is in the spotlight and one's contributions are magnified accordingly.
Lack of comparison to another faculty member who works in a similar area.
Less paperwork, fewer departmental meeting. (We had one last semester.) Being able to plan and carry out my own agenda within the department, both in course offerings and departmental service.
Very easy "department meetings" since there are only two of us. I also have a very cordial relationship with my Chair and administration, since they know that I don't really have to go back and bring various options to a large body of faculty.
I think there are lots of advantages. At this point in my career (2 years out of grad school), I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. The freedom to create new courses and get to know students personally is the best!
I can more or less shape the philosophy curriculum (such as it is) by myself. I also assume that when we hire another philosopher I will have more say than anyone else in whom we hire. (I could be wrong about that though).
Less bureaucracy, red tape. Easier to achieve consensus. A spirit of harmony (mostly!) prevails.
I am blessed with departmental colleagues who are also once in a lifetime friends.
Department politics are simpler.
Working closely and sharing interests is almost obligatory--no room for factions.
Sometimes opens opportunities to meet philosophy faculty from departments outside of my institution.
This may be out of place, but it seems odd to have a category "having fewer departmental administrative obligations." I have far more obligations at this university than most of my peers at larger universities.
Freedom from the most destructive forms of campus politics. I don't have to attend troubled and fractious departmental meetings.
Truth is, the advantages are not generalizable. It depends on one's department. For example, I would like the opportunity to work more closely with the other philosopher in my department, but that person is generally engaged with those from other disciplines. I would like to be able to say what I would like, rather than what is the reality at my school. Or, to be able to express both.

Other Concerns

2009-08-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

Survey participants mentioned these other concerns regarding life in a small philosophy department.

I am highly motivated to write, I have two women who work in the library who I have hired to edit my manuscripts, and I spend the summer in Greece because I have a colleague in Greek philosophy, a professor emeritus from the University of Athens, who really likes me work. But this year I received no funding from the school. I pay my editors out of pocket. This year I paid for xeroxing the manuscripts out of my pocket. I have tried to apply for grants, etc. but my school is small and has no public reputation, even though it is a good school. My work focuses on a broader audience, the same audience as Plato and Aristotle were writing for and teaching:a class of generally educated people. I write to show why Greek philosophy is still relevant to US citizens today. I do not write to please the professionals who are making hair-splitting distinctions and basically just talking to each other. I write books that improve my teaching because they are about liberal education. But I can't find a way to get any funding. This is the hardest part of teaching at a small place: I focus on a broader notion of liberal education but I get to strokes from my profession for doing so. It's tiring.
Finding time for regular philosophical dialogue with other members of the department.
I have recently returned to the USA after teaching at a major university overseas for a number of years. I have been unpleasantly reminded of the dismissive attitude that colleagues at large universities sometimes have towards philosophers working in small liberal arts colleges.
At the vocational/technical school, there are no colleagues, no academic exchange/discourse, no possibility of convincing anyone in power of the value of philosophy. When the general education department attempted to assess critical thinking, my perspective on the effort was disregarded entirely. In short, I along with all of the other liberal arts professors, am nothing more than a teaching machine designed to provide general education courses for our institution. It is a far cry from an engaging occupation.
In a university where ours is the smallest department there is a tendency to equate size with quality, so we are routinely viewed as being intellectually backward, unengaged, etc., in comparison to departments with PhD programs; and here in Canada where we are likely the smallest university department of philosophy among our peer universities (approx 10000 student body) we tend to be viewed as having failed to show the sort of skills needed to do the obvious job of convincing 'the administration' that we ought to be larger. Negative attitudes from colleagues within and without philosophy are evident within and without the university.
I would say that life in a Computer Science department is much better than life in a Philosophy Department.
A big concern is finding the expertise for a search committee when hiring a new philosopher. How do you find a "real" philosopher when, by necessity, most of the search committee is made up of non-philosophers (who may be well-intentioned, but bring their own disciplinary background to the search).
Finding time to talk philosophy with colleagues. Also, there isn't much overlap in philosophical concentration. Nevertheless, the philosophical conversations are very rewarding in my small department, probably because we get along so well.
Akin to finding teachers, we simply cannot offer enough courses, especially electives, to truly serve our majors and minors. Life in a small department is therefore a bit unvaried and dull for scholars who could teach their specialties in a larger and more robust program.
Difficulty remaining friendly with philosophers in my department. Difficulty giving a damn about the Philosophy major or the students after a decade of trying -- burn out.
attracting non-majors to courses in philosophy, not in an attempt to recruit majors, but just to have non-majors taking philosophy courses (rather than some other course that satisfies their distribution requirement)
lack of travel and meetings funds lack of library funds
All my philosophy teaching is in ethics subjects. Another concern is convincing colleagues that ethical issues are not the same as legal, social, etc. issues.
You did not ask an obvious question: "Managing interactions with the other philosophers in your department." There is one person in our department who is extremely short tempered and hard to get along with. In a larger department, this would be little more than a nuisance; but in such a small department, it creates considerable difficulties.
It is so crucially important that everyone get along. To put it bluntly, if there happens to be one crazy, it can make everyone's work more difficult.
Having to be a generalist requires many courses to be taught alternate years, which means more prep time and more difficulty advising majors so that they get all their required courses in time.
Yes - since we're a mixed department, our budget is mixed with the other two departments (religion and classics) so we have no discretionary funding for lecturers and other expenses; it is controlled by our religion department chair.
We are limited in the number and range of courses we can offer majors. One conflict with another course a student needs has a major impact on their ability to take philosophy in a given semester. Providing a rigorous major program is challenging when so many courses have phil majors as a small minority and must include freshmen. Covering a wide range of courses to support major leaves less time and energy for research.
Finding colleagues with whom I share philosophical commitments and interests.
Reduced ability to keep up with field since have fewer interactions with philosophers
Looking for ways to stay in communication with other philosophers in my subfield
In a small department, one person's irrationality can control the conversation or be contagious very easily. One person's vote can substantially change not only decisions made about the department, but entire areas of departmental concern. One inactive person can make the entire department less effective. One misinformed person can substantially change the flow and course of discussion.
Right now, the greatest concern of mine is to be hired in a tenure-track line. I am currently the Director of the Philosophy Minor but am a Visiting professor (non-tenure track). We are currently waiting for the college to give us a split-line for me: either an English/Philosophy or Communications/Philosophy. Although the minor was just established this year, it has become very popular and we already have 16 declared minors in a student body of 2500. It is becoming increasingly difficult to coordinate the program given my visiting professor's teaching load of 5/5. Administration has, however, given me a paid course reduction to a 5/4 load, which is still difficult.
3 preps every semester with no opportunities for leave or course reductions makes finding time for research tough. Almost all of our philosophy courses also fulfill general eds--this is bad for our majors since then all classes must be taught at an intro level.
Under finding faculty to teach it is a concern both for full-time faculty (with no major and 4-4 load it is difficult to attract candidates) and part-time faculty (difficult to find qualified faculty).
Too much teaching. Hard to replace staff if someone is sick/on sabbatical.
Collegiality
Small private institutions such as mine rise and fall by the numbers. We were created three years ago ex nihilo. One philosopher was added then, and i was added two years ago. We are constantly mindful of numbers, and put quite an effort into attracting majors and minors. It is our belief that the growth of the department will consist in minors, not majors. We,together with all other faculty, compete for travel and research money. So much more...but I'll see what you ask on the next page.
Finding (or, more precisely, lacking) people to talk to about my own area of specialization....
personality issues
The main problem is the sense of isolation; which I make up for with close links to larger philosophy departments in the region.
My head of department is in Eastern religion; it is extremely hard to be fairly evaluated by someone so outside and ignorant of my field.
All members of staff are overworked though our majors do well than students in other departments. In fact, so many majors go on to read other special disciplines both at home and abroad.

Managing Interactions with Non-Philosophers in the Department

2009-08-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of managing interactions with non-philosophers in the department. (Many small philosophy departments are administratively linked with faculty from another discipline. There are, e.g., Departments of Religion and Philosophy, English and Philosophy, etc.)

I've learned how to teach. Teaching is an art; Socrates is the model teacher. His model is nothing like the current hyper-specialized professor who finds students just like him and tries to make clones. I get to know each student, I assign lots of short papers in which they can compare their own views with what we have read, I keep track of what they have written to let them know I care about who they are, I point out to them how much they have grown and changed over the semester, I let them speak up in class so they can see how each other is growing and changing. We all take an interest in each other as human beings. Those who are in the honor society I work with closely over the year. We program events that highlight values and lifestyles connected to religion and philosophy. I get to know they students in this capacity also. I have volunteered to participate in the spring break mission trip which gives me another wonderful chance to bond with students. Philosophy is a way of life, not a way of using words. Students can recognize this and learn more philosophy from a teacher who they respect and know as a human being.
I try to cultivate friendships with the other liberal arts professors. This effort has been successful. We sometimes do reading groups, outside lunches, etc.
Professionally, keep them to a minimum.
Participated in the department meetings of other departments and kept in close contact with my colleagues about good students.
It is general career advice: find an unmet need, fill it, and gently point out to people that you've filled it. I would add that you should be picky, too, and select things that you *want* to do.
It's never been addressed by me or coworkers, it's just a continuing sense of disjunction.
Be polite.
none successful since the non-philosophy areas claim resources are necessary for the major programs
trying to engage with the problems they see as important - ensuring I regularly consult with them so they can "see" that my teaching is relevant - trying to convince them of reasons why ethics is relevant to police generally and as part of a police-training course more specifically - not 'talking down' to them [this is important, as many of the police practitioners don't have uni quals and it can be 'easy' to talk to them in a jargon-ish sort of way that they find offensive]
For curricular consultations, we usually separate by discipline. Ditto for the brunt of job searches. From my point of view as a Continental philosopher, the chasm between my analytic colleagues and me is comparable to that between philosophy as a whole and religious studies as a whole. (This personal perspective is doubtless influenced by the fact that I also hold a doctorate in religious studies. My philosophy colleagues feel that they have little in common with the religious studies wing of the department.) Basically, we leave each other alone as much as possible.
Nothing to offer you here. We have an excellent rapport with our non-philosophers right now.
Confrontation is generally a bad idea. The most useful strategy I have found is to show interest in the research of others and to suggest ways in which philosophy is relevant to other disciplines.
I don't understand this question -- there are no non-philosophers in my department. Do you mean non-majors?
This one's not hard. We get along pretty well, and my colleagues in other disciplines appreciate the value of philosophy in their own disciplines.
Happily, I am part of a collegial department.
Largely interact on a social rather than an intellectual level. There are some exceptions for those in literature, but this is mostly the case with the linguists and theatre folks.
We have hired 2 lecturers without philosophy degrees as a result of the bias of one philosophy faculty member. This makes our department wildly unbalanced in its offerings (we teach many, many courses on Freud and on Evolution, neglecting ethics and philosophy of language and science, even though Freud and Evolution are usually not considered to be "core" topics in the undergraduate major). There is not much chance to remedy this, as the lecturers are hired and get good teaching reviews. They are good, scholarly people who deserve to have positions at a university. They just do not have areas of expertise in traditional philosophy
We're in a religion, philosophy, & classics department. Mostly my colleagues recognize the value of philosophy so that hasn't been a problem. Because there are 6 religion fac and only 2 philosophers, we're sometimes left out of decisions, but for the most part relations are collegial.
It's tricky, especially when I hear them making fun of philosophy to my students or other colleagues. I really think several of them have very little idea of what philosophy is, but I can't address this without insulting them (in my opinion). So I try to be polite and put pro-philosophy propaganda on my office door for people to read.
Religious studies faculty are supportive.
Be clear about our distinct methodologies, and work together on planning co-curricular activities.
We run an interdisciplinary BA and MA programme ("Philosophy, Media, Arts"), so we have to cooperate closely with the colleagues from the media and arts departments, which works out quite satisfactorily (with some tensions time and again). For many years the department has organised and hosted an interdisciplinary lectures series to foster discussions and cooperation across department affiliations.
We share a department with religion - three atheists in philosophy, and three believers in religion manage to get along just fine. But our merger is for administrative purposes only. Our students tend not to overlap, and we pretty much stay out of each other's business. The concerns that we do share unite us, and they are the same concerns that belong to any of the teachers in the humanities.
I have learned that the way philosophers speak to each other comes off as being a smart-ass to everyone else. Be kind, listen, etc. Be a decent human being.
We all pretty much do our own thing--the religious studies folks have their own major, and we have ours. We're a combined department purely for administrative purposes.
Regular departmental meetings.
I have kept up friendly interactions with a number of non-philosophy colleagues, which is very important. The philosophy program is well supported because the Dean of the faculty is a philosopher, though he does not teach into the program he is very supportive of it.
I have none. There is no possibility pre-tenure to manage "interactions" with hostile faculty to philosophy.
Well, I have to say that I am not very good at this.

Finding Faculty to Teach Philosophy Courses

2009-08-13T14:31:00.000-07:00

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of finding (adjunct, part-time, etc.) faculty to teach philosophy courses.

We have two tenure track positions. Adjuncts are rarely used, and rarely available in our small town.
I am it and the only game in town. The nearest trained philosopher is 90 miles away.
We are fortunate the the director of our Liberal Arts Institute has a Ph.D. in philosophy and is willing to teach an introductory philosophy course for us each semester.
An ongoing problem. We contact the director of graduate education at the giant research university in town. We sometimes advertise in the Help Wanted pages of the local newspaper. We have in the past entered notices for adjuncts in various online philosophical publications.
Each semester, we have (an) adjunct(s) teach two or three sections of our general-education courses. In the past, we relied heavily for this on a colleague who is a faculty member in political science at a neighboring institution but who had some interest in philosophy as well. Now, we are in the better position of having some local graduate students -- including three of our own recent alumni -- to recruit as adjuncts. This is especially promising for us because my two full-time colleagues and I are all men, and two of our recent graduates who are grad students living in the area are women (our overall college student population is something like 65-70% women).
Programme is interdisciplinary so a certain freedom is allowed.
Cancel courses when we don't have adjuncts, then ask the dean for a new hire.
Not applicable yet since I haven't been chair. Our department takes active steps to avoid reliance on contingent faculty: we teach our lower-level courses except when sabbatical replacements require hiring someone.
It is a constant battle with my institution to hire staff. We are all overworked, and rather than spending the money, they find stray hours from less than enthusiastic, underemployed and underskilled nay-saying colleagues for whom we end up having to do anything anyway. So we either work too much or drop philosophy from the curriculum.
Word of mouth. Local graduate schools. Ads in paper.
Interviewed extensively and conduct strong reference checks
Lowering of standards, closing of eyes and hoping, prayer to all available gods.
There is a research institution nearby with Ph.D. students needing to beef up their cv's. This pretty much suffices.
We mine the graduate pool at a nearby University of California. The problem is that the good teachers inevitably leave in a couple of years. The poor teachers or ones with terminal MAs stay. So it's really a perpetual search.
We ultimately won our arguments to administrators to add a line. Only increasing faculty has helped that problem. Oh, and we moved to shed our general education course, we no longer contribute to the gen.ed. curriculum.
We use lots of adjunct faculty. We get grad students from local PhD programs, and a few older people who are either unaffiliated philosophers looking for work or else people with masters degrees who enjoy teaching philosophy.
This is a problem we have not yet found a solution to.
sent requests to state graduate institutions for part time instruction
I have spoken to philosophers at other institutions, however most are "put off" by the fact that there is no "proper" philosophy dept here.
Ask administration as need arises.
We have two adjuncts, both with PhDs. We also launch a new national job search every couple of years to find a replacement for a departing tenure-track position.
Adjuncts, of course. It turns out in our small city there are a lot of people with Ph.D.s in Philosophy who are willing to teach a few courses. Also, I do a lot of service for other departments - teaching an overload every year, for instance - which wins our department a bit of favor and help from other departments. We recently started a joint minor in political philosophy with the Government department; we have an optional joint major with Religion; we are working on other joint majors and minors; and we collaborate a lot with Classics and Art on courses like Ancient Phil and Aesthetics.
Few natural sources for adjunct teaching (e.g. graduate programs) in our area. Just keep looking..
I call other philosophy departments in the area.
Maintained contacts with the local PhD granting institution.
I am not on the hiring committee.
Haven't really had a problem with this.
We have hired several adjuncts from the nearest university with a graduate program. This year we will be making a full-time hire, which we'll do by advertising in Jobs For Philosophers.
Newspaper ads. Our administration takes the view that anyone with at least some philosophy background (i.e. major as an undergrad) are qualified. Also contact nearby grad programs but they are over an hour away so rarely find any advanced graduate students in the area.
Most courses are taught by the two full-time faculty, and the remaining few are taught by qualified and supervised adjuncts.
Pressured management for more staff!
cooperation with a research institution situated in the region.
This is hardly a concern.
We adamantly REFUSE to become involved in this activity. The search for part-time faculty is the result of money-driven academics. Fifty years ago, the part-time professor was a well-educated community member who wanted the experience of teaching, regardless of the pay. It was fun, meaningful on-the-side employment. None of that is true today. Now, programs are FUNDED on the backs of adjunct/contingent faculty. This happens in ALL "humanities" disciplines. Need I point out the obvious irony of funding programs by having, say, poorly-paid professors teach writing intensive comp courses so that full professors can teach to classes of five on Marxist readings of literature? Together, and with the (serendipitous) approval of our dean, we have committed to never offering a philosophy course that the full-time faculty will not teach, and to adamantly pressing the Provost to make a new line when the demand for courses exceeds our contractual load. Our hand will only work, though, if we (once again) draw in the numbers.
Again, happily, there are faculty in other departments (classics and political science) with graduate training in philosophy who are happy to teach courses for us, some of which are cross-listed with their own department (the cross-listing option certainly helps here).
Not a large issue as my institution is an a large metropolitan area.
not an issue; no money.
I have recruited recently graduated doctoral students in philosophy from the major regional philosophy department. So far this has worked well, but there is a chance that the recruitment opportunities will dry up. I have had trouble finding suitably qualified people to take on our teaching of Buddhist Philosophy - and resorted to an honour student from a neighbouring university the last time the course ran. The student in question was highly qualified in other respects - with strong relevant language skills and a deep knowledge of Buddhism - and the course was highly successful. But the continuing situation is not satisfactory.
This has been difficult in our town.
I think that this is a major concern at my college that gets ignored. We have adjuncts teaching our gen ed philosophy courses who are not trained philosophers, and who as far as I can tell don't bring us majors.
Religious studies picks up a philosophy of religion class for us. Otherwise, we teach our courses.
Members of senate were convinced about the need to start a graduate programme (with the help of faculty from some American and European universities) to help fill in vacant positions. In fact, I had my Masters through such a scheme before I left to pursue my doctoral studies.

Teaching Courses Outside One's Area of Expertise

2009-08-13T14:29:00.001-07:00

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of teaching courses outside one's area of expertise.

Avoiding curriculum drift. Limiting the number of courses each faculty member is responsible for helps but doesn't solve the problem. Limit the number of changes made in courses so that I'm not always reinventing the wheel.
I think about who my students are, what would interest them, how to connect the themes in the classes with their lives and with their other courses, focus on paper writing as a skill gained from my classes, I link all of my classes together. I have a number of students who just like to take "Dr. X classes," because they have a similar format, they are interconnected and they always lead students to lead more examined lives.
Here I've simply had practice with the one course somewhat outside my area of expertise, slowly refining readings and lecture notes over time. I have occasionally (though not often) read a book in this area, and that has shaped what I do in class. Conversations with colleagues have also been helpful.
A great deal of research and reading.
Essentially, it just substantially increases the prep time.
In teaching cross-listed courses (such as aesthetics and philosophy of history), I have consulted extensively with the faculty and students of the other affected departments in order to determine their particular needs and interests for the course. I have also done research (for instance, through various professional societies and by viewing colleagues' syllabi posted on the Internet) to explore how others have framed such courses.
Summer preparation.
There are pros and cons here. It can be enjoyable to take up a new subject-matter, teach from a non-expert standpoint, and be creative in selecting readings, assignments, etc. On the other hand, it is a burden to prepare a new course in an area in which one has not researched significantly (or at all). It is also burdensome not to be able to turn this hard work into likely research projects. Finally, since these courses might keep one from teaching upper-level courses in research-active areas, it can be dispiriting to teach these other courses. To initially prepare such courses, I look on line for syllabi and other materials. I rely on textbooks rather than my own selection of primary texts & articles. I am more likely to remake such courses as these in order to make them more successful, and this requires work over the summer when I might be doing more research.
Thankfully, I haven't had to do too much of this, but what there is was less complex by far than metaphysics, so I had very little problem, for instance, teaching media studies!
Just work harder
Read, read, read, and talk with scholars in adjacent areas.
We structure the schedule so that no one ever goes too far outside their area of expertise. For example, I'm an epistemologist so courses outside my area are limited to: modern, metaphysics, and philosophy of language (i.e., core type courses). Our ethicist teaches philosophy of democracy and aesthetics (i.e., value theory related stuff).
By doing it, frankly. Of course, there are degrees of 'outside my area of expertise,' and I suppose that self-selection kicks in: there simply are areas that do not get taught at my university.
I only teach courses in my area of expertise.
My training is multi-disciplinary, so several courses per year are in other areas. My college supports such interdisciplinary teaching. (If anything, being on my own in philosophy means I don't have to answer to other philosophers about my non-philosophical teaching!)
team-teaching, learning
If have to teach something outside of my AOS, I usually contact friends from graduate school who know more about that particular area than I do.
Guest speakers, team-teaching, and being one of the students helps a ton!
Do some reading in the area, and focus on aspects that I know more about and overlap with my areas of comfort.
This I actually like, as I am provided the opportunity to learn about new issues, problems, and thinkers. I spend a fair amount of time during summers reading new material as well as secondary literature directly relevant to courses.
By avoiding it!
prepared readings in open source textbooks with online notes for coursework
For me, this relates to teaching on more policing-oriented subjects (such as one concerning vulnerable populations and policing) AND to ensuring the ethics subjects I teach are relevant to police: I have spoken at length with serving police officers to try to understand the issues that they face and to ensure that my discussions of them in the class room are accurate and relevant.
I don't.
The concept of "expertise" is, of course, a relative one. Most of the courses I teach are outside of my area of research specialization, to be sure. Yet with a broad background in the history of philosophy, as well as a second doctorate in religious studies, I rarely feel out of my depth.
Read a lot of secondary sources and be prepared.
Lots of additional study. Which I really enjoy. This is one of the great things about a small department - I get to teach everything.
I have been able to select courses that I am at least quite interested in. I sometimes give assignments that help me develop course materials, such as having students submit news articles on events relevant to readings in Environmental Ethics.
Just working really hard!
I love teaching stuff that's in books, teaching students how to read. So it's a treat, not a problem, when I get to teach Shakespeare and Jane Austen regularly in an Honors "Great Books" course.
Participated in faculty development projects
I generally have about a years lead time if I am going to be teaching outside my area. I use that time to do extended prep for the course.
I have not had to teach courses outside my area of expertise.
I read a lot and talked a lot with colleagues.
My Ph.D. was interdisciplinary, and was awarded by an English program with a highly theoretical background. So my dissertation covered the philosophy of technology using the Philosophy of Heidegger, and other major trends/ideas from psychology, Literary Theory, and Cultural Studies. When I came to this campus as a spousal hire, the chair of my department and one other faculty member were attempting to re-establish the philosophy minor, which had folded several years before I arrived. When they read my dissertation and discovered by background, they immediately invited me to help develop the minor. So, several courses I started teaching out of Philosophy were -- technically -- outside of my "expertise" (I was hired to teach English courses). I was not shy about pointing this out to administration and others on campus. But my superiors and administration were confident that I was qualified to teach these courses. I was as well, but I wanted to avoid campus politics and be accused of not being an "expert." Since then, my dissertation manuscript was picked up by a press, and will be published some time next year. So I think I can now rightfully claim my "expertise."
Trial and error; researching during the summer to get up to speed.
I just do my best. I try not to stray too far outside my areas of competence, but if I have to I let students know that I am not an expert and assure them I will do my best to find the answer to any question they ask if I don't know it right away.
Hard work in preparation.
Rely heavily on outside research at other institutions to prepare. Often new courses are developed on the fly since one ends up teaching a course when an instructor drops out at the last minute or unable to hire an instructor.
I make sure that I teach brand new courses in the Fall, so that I have the summer to prepare sufficiently for the course content.
Use textbooks, anthologies and internet resources.
This institution offers a "January Term" which stresses extra-disciplinary teaching; the institution also requires a four-semester "Collegiate Seminar" modeled on the practice at St. John's College (Annapolis and Santa Fe), which is at once fairly fertile ground for recruiting and a "natural"--so far as it supposes close reading and discussion of primary texts from diverse genres--for philosophers.
I am not sure what it means, I am commissioned into service as Philosophy Lecturer in Higher Education wherefrom almost 200 colleges are managed. Only three to four offer graduate courses in Philosophy and even in those places I am asked to let go Philosophy and teach English literature or other social sciences.
We try to do this on a limited basis. Each of the three of us teaches in no more than three areas. And over the years, we have developed a little expertise in the areas in which we teach. I think that this has served us well, and the students.
Work my ass off.
Damn you for asking. I try to put it out of my mind. Recall that in a small college "outside the area of expertise" doesn't mean that the logician teaches aesthetics. It means that the philosopher teaches something non-philosophy. Our bitter pill is "Humanities". Who on God's green earth thinks that Philosophers should tell anyone anything about visual art? Perhaps Nelson Goodman can. But I really can't. Nonetheless I do. It amounts to studying, thinking, and reading. It's not all bad. In fact, I now see much more in, say, Plato's dialogues than the dialectic. I wouldn't have taken the time to catch those things had I not been forced to. I suppose I'm grateful for that. But I still would rather be reading David Lewis.
Lots of time in the summer preparing, preparing, preparing.
Primarily using summers to prep for new classes, though I have received development money to construct some courses.
it required extra prep.
I look for books and articles that can be read without any prior philosophical knowledge.
Generally, I start by reaching out to others who have some experience in the field. I also read several "introduction to the field" texts. But, there is not teacher like experience, so I generally am learning as I go.
Create a flexible major that doesn't aim to cover every possible area so as to minimize the problem. Complete coverage isn't possible anyway. Expand my area by reading. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has proved an excellent starting point. Make sure the other philosopher in the department doesn't overlap with me.

Convincing Colleagues of the Value of Philosophy

2009-08-13T14:25:00.000-07:00

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of convincing colleagues--either other faculty or administrators--of the value of philosophy.

Our school is small. The teachers know from what students say my basic approach. They have their own opinions of the value of what I do and there is not much I can do to change that. I ask them to speak to my "World Philosophies" class about what they think is the relation between faith and reason, or faith and science. They appreciate the opportunity to stand on their soapboxes and they disagree profoundly with each other. They know I am committed to liberal education: the examination of many different viewpoints and the ability to analyze and synthesize them into one's own point of view. always being tolerant of differences while still retaining a belief that some values are better than others and having reasons for preferring some values over others.
We have sponsored interdisciplinary colloquia, debates, and seminars that involve philosophers in conversation with people in other disciplines about an issue of common interest.
We share news articles, essays, etc., written by nonphilosophers about the relevance of philosophy to other fields.
By trying to be versatile, well-informed, and accessible discussants on topics that interest colleagues in other departments. By trying to be good institutional citizens, demonstrating the value of a philosophical education for college service tasks. By clearly tying our educational goals (both in service courses and in the major) to the mission and history of the college.
Innovative teaching approach. Stress on methods rather than content.
In my institution, philosophy is only taught because the state requires humanities courses for accreditation. Administrators and colleagues see no real value in the liberal arts other than to satisfy this or that agency. Thus, I have given up trying to convince them of the relevance of our work.
We are fortunate that our dept. is valued and the members of it are respected. But if we had to dig in for a fight, we would stress the importance of philosophy for liberal arts education and cite recent media reports about the upswing in phil. enrollments, the college-wide benefits to a thriving and active phil. dept.
By referring them either to (a) the numbers currently studying it; or to (b) the number of high-grade research publications and activities the staff are involved in and thus bring credit to the institution tthrough.
Point to the success of our department's teaching evaluations and placement record.
External research dollars, books with hard covers.
For some reason, other faculty and administrators are greatly appreciate of philosophy and our program.
We are active in every cross-discipline on our campus; our administrators seem to understand the cross-disciplinary connections much more easily than the value of philo. per se. Also, our college took an aggressive turn toward sending every student abroad at some point; we are natural players in a study-abroad initiative, with two Asian philosophy specialists, and a classicist.
Ethics, ethics, ethics. Interdisciplinarity as well.
I don't really care what they think.
Faculty often are impressed by statistics about philosophy majors' success getting into law schools, for instance. Most of our faculty teach in professional programs such as nursing and occupational therapy. Many of these have a very practical outlook, and, like many students, they think of education primarily as job preparation. With some of these colleagues, defending the importance of all the humanities is a constant uphill battle. Some faculty, on the other hand, are impressed with ideas about the importance of philosophy for cultivating independent thinking and its importance for responsible citizenship.
statistical data news articles student testimony
I haven't done so
same as earlier comments re students
I am honest about it, and about what I think about other things.
There is a university-wide "Strategic Plan" afoot. We have just started consulting with each other about the implications of this. There are several other branches of our [state system] that are without a philosophy major or minor. In those institutions, there are usually a couple of philosophers who must teach exclusively intro-level GE courses in philosophy. We feel very fortunate by comparison, but we are constantly aware of the possibility of being cut back to that unenviable position at some point in the future.
This is SOOO difficult. We're been compiling numbers -- they appreciate quantitative reports. We've been looking for statistics.
By doing service, and focusing on service that puts our skills into play, like serving on ethics committees, speaking to community groups, writing books that are of general interest and not just scholarly interest.
My colleague and I try to advertise to the academic community the philosophy speakers that we bring in.
Most of them already know.
By being a active and frank participant in campus discussions. By asserting the value whenever the opportunity arises.
Largely by teaching more and more "applied" philosophy classes.
My faculty colleagues and administrators are friendly to philosophy in this old-school liberal arts college.
I am not sure this issue has been addressed well by our department. As mentioned, having few faculty gives us little voice with the administration, and any dissent between us is rather disastrous in terms of asking for funding or support in a unified, cohesive way.
I teach courses with titles like Ethics, Applied Ethics, and Comparative Religion (not my expertise, but no one will teach it if I don't). I also want us to introduce a course called Critical Thinking. Many people (including, I suspect, the school president and the head of my department) don't value philosophy, largely because they don't know what it is. But they won't stand up and oppose the teaching of ethics or critical thinking, or teaching students about Islam, say.
Trying to offer a wider range of courses which makes us look less neolithic.
Have not found any.
They are already convinced, since this is a small liberal arts college. Also, the students tell other faculty how much they love our challenging courses, so they are the best advertisement.
Demonstrate intellectual seriousness and responsibility, ask good questions, make yourself indispensable.
Arguing, ad nauseum, on committees, etc.
This department has a good track record of placing graduates in philosophical and legal studies; the administration is content to make occasional "Potemkin Village" use of that circumstance.
No comment. Not much seems to work. We are a small school with professional programs in business, engineering and education. We don't agree on why people should be educated; hence we don't agree on what courses should constitute a curriculum.
White lies.
We are lucky in that they do not need to be convinced. Our department was created before there were any philosophers here. I take that to be rare.
Again, not an issue.
this was impossible; they thought that philosophy was silly subjective stuff.
This is done informally through common room discussions. (I have found my colleagues very receptive.) I have appeared before a review committee investigating the core program of the university making the case for continuing teaching the history of ethics and political philosophy course in this program. Again, I found a receptive audience. This was a very easy case to make.
Giving public lectures at the university.
I have met with faculty members from other departments to talk to them about the value of philosophy, especially ethics, for their major.
The administrators of the university consider philosophy as very vital in the faculty of humanities. They do not need any convincing.

Excessive College & Department Service Responsibilities

2009-08-13T14:22:00.000-07:00

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of excessive service responsibilities, either to the department or to the college/university.

There really wasn't anything I could do the first five years. It isn't much of a problem now.
We try to share departmental responsibilities and tasks, and we attempt to rotate the department chair responsibility on a regular basis.
The problem is being discussed at the college level, but apart from speaking up for some kind of budgeting procedure for assigning committee work, it is difficult to know what to do.
Anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
I volunteer for as few service activities as possible though I used to enthusiastically do everything. Until my institution values me and makes time for independent pursuits, I participate only in service activities that are absolutely required.
Esp. for junior faculty, we try to limit exposure to burdensome or irrelevant committees. We ask that the chair intervene in such instances, or the dept. as a whole might talk someone out of taking on a new commitment. But we also value the ways in which faculty can shape the college, and therefore many of us are highly involved in service.
Prioritizing, deputizing, email instead of meetings. Some things never get done and are low priority. This is really a question of managing stress levels, i.e.., of deciding whether a piece of paperwork etc. has any value whatever.
Learning to say no.
Just said "No." (I'm tenured)
Our department serves on 'core' committees such as tenure and promotion, and simply isn't represented on other committees such as library acquisitions, faculty essay prizes, etc. So far the Dean hasn't balked at this practice so long as she has been able to find quorum for decision-making in the committees we are forced to regard as optional.
No good answer to this one. With a full and part-time faculty of 80, shared governance isn't possible unless people serve on (multiple) committees. Saying no to a President or a Provost is hard; perhaps this changes with tenure.
Perhaps because of the reputation for philosophers being logical and good with arguments, I seem to get more than my fair share of committee duties. Right now, I'm coming off a two-year term on my college's Appointments, Promotion and Tenure committee (the last year as chair), so I'm feeling pretty burned out on college service. I look forward to a couple years off from this duty so I can return to what I do best: teaching and research.
We're very supportive of each other here, so it's not a big problem for me (yet).
As a department, we have agreed to protect each other and say no to a lot of service requests!
None. In small departments this is especially a problem if one member decides to "check out" or shirk and leave the remaining members with all or most of the departmental obligations. With few members to help spread things around the obligations pile up.
Stop volunteering, and do a bad job when forced to be on committees so that people don't ask me again.
By trying to avoid it
not much possible here--administration has higher priorities elsewhere
Trying to have these accounted for, along with teaching loads, when finalizing workloads. This is not always successful!!
Ask others to share.
I try to remind myself not to get too worked up about these things, that there is life outside of these committees, and to not give it more energy than it really needs.
I have tried to learn to say no to excessive committee work and not feel guilty about it.
We're both junior faculty, and we're looking for ways to address this.
Try to enjoy it : )
I have encouraged my colleagues to try to resist the typical pressures placed on faculty by the administration.
Trying very hard to say "no" to new demands and only take on passing rather than ongoing responsibilities.
Lucky me, as a visiting assistant professor, I had no committee work, only a couple days worth of assessment work. My departmental service (advising the Philosophy Club, supervising the department's student worker) was manageable.
I have consistently requested and been granted a course release to direct the minor. My department is supportive of this request and continues to ask administration for these releases. Administration has been friendly and granted them.
Try to find ones that will allow networking opportunities.
More time spent on campus, less with family... this isn't desirable, but what else can we do?
There really isn't much I can do about these. I try not to volunteer for things, but we get assigned certain duties and you cannot leave everything to your colleagues. Everyone has to pull their weight.
Complain a lot; try to pick committees without too much work.
Usually results simply in lower scholarly activities for members of the department.
Select just the few that matter most to me, and which also dovetail with my research interests in philosophy of education (e.g., curriculum-focused committees).
Work harder and with suppressed resentment.
It is obvious, If Philosophers have nothing to do they will become expert managers
Again, we put up with it.
Learn to love it.
I actually enjoy these things. I just make sure that I put myself in a position to pick and choose which ones I become involved in. I like writing grants, for example. I have yet to see an administrator say "no" to that. Try writing institutional grants. You will be worshiped and adored.
No good ideas here. I pretty much just suck it up and deal with it.
more weeping and lamentation
Not much, though our institution (in theory) allows us to weight our performance categories as we see fit (the three categories are teaching, research and service), and do this on an annual basis. Since I've had some larger service years recently I've had the opportunity to weight those areas higher to reflect how I am evaluated.
i had to do it.
Complaining?
All service courses should also count towards the major, making it possible for students to major. Trying to work the service together with promoting the major by, say, hosting speakers for the whole college on bioethics or the like. Emphasizing how philosophy compliments other majors. Keeping the number of required classes as low as is respectable so we can change easily.
Every member of staff is given a specific workload apart from the courses they teach.

Preparing Majors for Graduate School in Philosophy

2009-08-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of effectively preparing majors for graduate school in philosophy.

Focus on basics of reading primary sources, writing, and being honest with students about the job prospects for philosophers.
I teach Independent study courses in which we read scholarship on Plato (after they have taken the Plato seminar). They start to understand what graduate school is like, what is being done right now, and I also assign my own work so they can see how I stand vis-a-vis other Plato and Aristotle scholars.
We have a major concentration/emphasis that recommends courses to our majors who are considering attending a philosophy graduate program that we think would best prepare them for graduate school. We also try to teach our upper division courses (e.g., metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language) using cutting edge texts and articles.
Still finding my way here.
We have increased the number of courses required of majors in light of the fact that it appears increasingly difficult to put students directly into PhD programs.
We have an assessment program - barely used - in which we gather three papers of each graduate and we read together as a department to determine the degree to which we have been successful in educating our students.
Crud, I'm not sure we do that well at all.
This is tough. We are discussing ways in which our dept. fails to effectively prepare our majors. We are considering a change to our course requirements so that they are less history-heavy and more oriented to the "core."
Recently, we have added a "major philosophical author" course, which functions like a topics course (i.e., with variable content) but is devoted to the work of a single author, sometimes even focusing on a single seminal text. We believe that this kind of close focus will better prepare our students for graduate school by supplementing our more survey-oriented history-of-philosophy courses. Also, we have recently added a year-long senior seminar, which is co-led by all three members of the department, in order to better initiate students into professional-level conversations among philosophers.
Given my own experiences in graduate school and post-doc, I would never advise someone to go to graduate school for philosophy unless they were independently wealthy and could do it for kicks.
My arrival coincided with a phil curriculum review that made our dept. course offerings less idiosyncratic and more reflective of widely-accepted practices about what a responsible set of offerings should look like. This is one way of preparing students for grad. school. Another is to encourage students to submit work to undergrad journals and conferences and to take a course or two at a nearby R1 university that has a Ph.D. program and with which we have a partnership. We routinely advise students who express interest in going on, and in recent years we have had uncommon success (four of our students are currently enrolled in Ph.D. programs that rank 10, 16, and 35 in the Leiter Report on U.S. programs, and #1 in the UK). But most of our students won't go on to grad school and some who wish to do so shouldn't, given the dim prospects for all students--and we tell them this.
by varying class formats from lecture/seminar to 2 hour reading group/workshop with student presentations; 2. by ensuring availability of an undergraduate dissertation module to capture the imaginations of budding philosophical talent.
Mixture of historical and specialized subfield courses
We have redesigned our program to include 1/2 year 'core' history survey courses from which students branch out into topics courses, and we have developed senior topics courses with 'rotating' topics so the course can be taken more than once. So a 3000-level or 4000-level philosophy of science, for example, will focus on one topic one year, another the next, and students who take it in one year can take it in the next. This requires faculty to vary content significantly which increases teaching load in an 'invisible' way to the extent that a great deal of renovation work is required each year, yet the course number and name remain the same and internal credit for 'designing a new course' is not gained.
Just the usual stuff about breadth and methodology. I advise students who apply to Ph.D. programs. There is much advising about the process (covering what constitutes an effective writing sample, how to target appropriate schools). When I applied to Ph.D. programs I was not advised at all, and consequently I made many mistakes (although I was ultimately successful).
Individual attention.
I prepare students for study in graduate school in logic and computer science; I generally discourage students from going to graduate school in philosophy.
Our students go on to undergraduate institutions because we're a community college. We've had an excellent record on this front. Simple answer to prepare our students: tough classes. I require a number of writing assignments. The content is the same as when I taught at 4-year institutions.
As a department, we decided to require a senior thesis, standardize our expectations on those, increase the rigor of our rhetoric and logic requirement, and concertedly discuss, as a department, the state of the profession and graduate school today.
I have now made a greater effort in my major courses to introduce students to the contemporary literature (so they are not only reading historical works) and also to introduce students to how to construct and research a substantial philosophical essay (for example, introduce students to Philosopher's Index and introduce them to some of the prominent journals). We have also started a yearly (possibly we'll move to twice a year) forum on Grad School. This would cover what to expect in grad programs, how to apply, and on what admissions committees are looking for. These forums are for students looking at graduate (primarily PhD) programs across the humanities.
More intentional development of capstone programs and common expectations for research papers in upper level seminars. More time "professionalizing" students and conveying expectations for work at the graduate level.
None of our majors have gone on to graduate school in philosophy.
Independent studies, in which the very small number of graduate school bound students can engage in work suited to their interests and abilities.
The very few students that have expressed interest have received tutoring and special guidance to fit their needs. (outside of regular teaching hours)
Courses are taught at a high level.
We do our best to provide our majors with a good background in philosophy. But getting them into strong doctoral programs has proved difficult. One suggestion that I have been making during the last several years is for our majors to consider enrolling in a good terminal MA program in philosophy first. Schools like Northern Illinois University, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, or Tufts come to mind. These schools have good placement records and would probably have more luck at getting our students into the top tier of doctoral programs.
Work heavily on their writing skills and critical reading skills Provide and informative gathering describing what graduate school is like and how to prepare for GREs, etc
None of our students have gone to grad school in my short time here. We think it unlikely that many will. Nevertheless, we have an annual meeting for the Philosophy club about grad school, and it is always well-attended. We tell them there how to prepare for grad school, and warn them that a simple major in our department is inadequate.
Identify early where possible and adapt coursework assignments to help work toward a solid writing sample, possible student conference submission, etc. Small classes help with this.
The primary avenue for preparing students for graduate work in philosophy is to have the students supplement their basic grounding in philosophy by enrolling in as many directed reading courses as possible.
Strongly encouraging students to take appropriate second languages, offering courses that cover authors & topics they should know
I have been engaged in an ongoing discussion with my philosopher colleague about the constitution of the philosophy offerings for the major in an effort to do as much as we can to introduce the students to an appropriate range of topics and methods.
In advising sessions and in upper level classes talk through the demands of graduate school, but also explain that the best prep for grad school is a firm understanding of the key readings in the field coupled with an ability to research and write well.
In my year here, none of our majors has planned to go to graduate school in philosophy.
I am not sure that we do. Many of our majors aspire to go to graduate school but are not accepted. I think we do not put enough emphasis on traditional preparation for the GRE and attendance at undergraduate conferences/submission to undergraduate populations. We are perhaps beginning to remedy this, but if not all faculty are involved, in a small department the burden often falls to one person.
If there are students who are thinking of grad school, I tend to slant my comments on their papers toward the concerns that graduate faculty would have.
Extra attention outside class; independent studies
Clearer assessment methods for developing critical thinking skills, paper-writing abilities, presentation skills, etc.
Use of independent study.
The three most crucial things are (1) a firm grounding in and reinforcement of logical/critical thinking skills; (2) breadth of content areas and strong history background; and (3) have them write lots of essays that take a developmental approach toward identifying and cultivating the various philosophical skills (i.e., argument reconstruction, critical evaluation, construction of a positive thesis, anticipating and responding to criticisms of one's positive thesis).
Read their papers carefully, discuss them thoroughly; ask the students what they really want to do, show them what would matter in order to achieve such a goal.
The philosophy curriculum involves a strong core of primary readings; we make wide use (for graduate school bound majors) or directed readings (independent study); we try to keep the standards of the cap-stone Senior Essay (which must be on a problem or author of contemporary interest) high. Recent graduates are presently in studies at Penn, Emory, U. Toronto, SUNY, Boston College.
University has a set up a curriculum based on Greek to 20th Century Philosophy. I need not do the same
We've designed a curriculum that has a small core of four required courses and any six upper division classes. Students work closely with their teachers here as well. Upper division classes enroll between 10 an 15 students. They tend to be vibrant and interactive.
Lots of one on one time.
I warn them away and tell them it will ruin their life.
We looked at other well-regarded undergraduate philosophy majors, and spoke with graduate advisors at a number of Ph.D granting programs in an effort to see what they wanted. We have a senior seminar offered in the fall in which the sole purpose is to prepare a writing sample for graduate applications. One assignment is to apply to a Ph.D. program. If you want to see a very fine example of meaningful learning outcomes, look at Wheaton College's handout for philosophy majors, available on the web. Wheaton College, a small liberal arts religious institution, claims to have more undergraduate philosophy majors than any other institution in America. If true, that is astounding.
Promoting work, work, work.
Requiring fall semester senior year work on the comprehensive exam colloquium paper presented in the spring; instituting a career counseling event in fall of the senior year.
When it comes to preparing them in areas in which none of the three of us have any strong training (such as philosophy of language, for example), I don't think we've done a good job there. But we've had good success teaching to our strengths, and giving students ample opportunities for independent research.
developed senior course with emphasis on grad school prep; course in philosophical writing required for majors;
Reshaping the old philosophy curriculum to make sure majors are exposed to courses in value theory, epistemology/metaphysics and the history of philosophy, while also having some background in logic.
there were none.
We have had talks on preparing and applying for graduate school. I also spend a great deal of time advising and helping students work through their application materials.
Because of the way that my teaching load is distributed (I don't teach very many major courses) this has not been an issue for me.
The majors requires ethics, Ancient, and Modern philosophy to provide a solid background in the history. Logic and language highly recommended. Independent studies and honors work with all students intending to go to graduate school. Still, we have difficulty putting out strong candidates and meeting our other requirements. We need to find a way to get "outside certification" since we doubt that our rec letters carry enough weight with admissions committees.
We have a rigorous selection process in that only the best students are allowed to read philosophy in the final year. The courses we offer are treated in depth and students spend a whole semester writing a dissertation of about 15,000 words under the supervision of a member of staff. All dissertations are vetted by external examiners from either Europe or the United States.

Acquiring Resources from College Administration

2009-08-13T14:16:00.001-07:00

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of acquiring resources from college or university adminstration.

I have been one of few colleagues who makes plans for the summer, gets out of the small town we all live in, and find ways to connect my work in Greek philosophy with philosophies from all over the world. The dean has been supportive in the past but we are now in a financial crunch and there was no money this summer. By "supportive," I mean a total of about $12,500 dollars in the last 8 years: about $1500 each summer on average. The Dean paid for me to attend a conference on how to get funding but it takes a lot of time and there are always limitations that would force me to do work the is distracting at this point in my career. I used to be more patient, but I am 55 years old now and I know what I want to say. I received a grant to study in two NEH summer seminars over the last 25 years, so that was all funded. But the second one was basically one big distraction from what I want to do, even though it was advertised as something I would be interested in.
We are planning to build a case for funding a fourth philosophy position in our department.
We hope to devise a departmental mission statement that will make clearer to the administration what our goals are and what we need to accomplish them. So far, though, that process is in its infancy.
Constant negotiation. Provision of rational assessment of resource allocation across the college. Recognition of the fact that no one really cares about rational allocation.
Our chair does a good job of trying to be noisy without irritating the dean. Other than that, what is a department to do?
There are no resources for my discipline. However, because we are a technical school, we always have access to the latest and greatest software, creative accessories.
We have not had success in increasing our budget, so some unusual expenses (new office furniture, speaker honoraria, etc.) have to be argued for each time. We have had to fight to maintain our above-average offices--often by pleading that our small size requires special efforts not to marginalize us geographically. For hiring, we argued that hiring in ethics would meet many general ed. requirements and other college-wide goals. Finally, we have had success in arguing that a split position with Women's Studies should be housed in philosophy.
I make a lot of noise and am permanently filling other's inboxes with stats and demands.
Wrote a letter to the administration requesting another full-time philosophy line.
Yell every chance I get. Explain the need and clarify the possibilities any time I have a good trustee audience.
Some of our department members have been highly successful in joining interdisciplinary research programs which have brought external research funds to support acquisition of computing facilities, travel, etc., thereby reducing strains on the meager resources provided by the university. Competition for resources within the university is fierce and our 'wins' have often followed our pointing out in various ways that we are so small that surely the tiny requirement we have can be met from someone else's unanticipated surplus. This strategy has not worked well for acquisition of new hires, and the only way we have managed to receive permission to hire is by presentation of evidence that we would be forced to discontinue our major program, which would reflect badly on the university.
Our dept. chair (who is not a philosopher) lobbies on our behalf.
Move into a Computer Science Department!
The biggest problem is two-fold. As the only philosopher, on the one hand, I only have one "vote" (or one voice) in a college of ~70 faculty. So, it can be hard when competing for resources. Every other collection of faculty have more power. On the other hand, any resources one gets are seen as "just for this one person". You have to go out of you way to make anything you request appear to me for "philosophy" in general, and not just for oneself.
We sought external matching funds and private bequests to get our new line.
Trying to carve out a space in a college wide commitment to ethics forms the foundation of our attempts. It makes it easier to articulate the value and therefore the need for continued support perhaps.
Write memos, form good relationships with administrators when possible.
Persistence, nagging, and willingness to tolerate failure!
none successful
none to mention that have worked!
Ask as the need arises.
Applied for outside sabbatical fellowship funding.
Whenever we get funds, we write reports telling the Dean all the good things that have come of those funds. We try our best to show the college what good things come from investments in our department.
Our issue has been getting permission to replace the second full-time member of the department, who retired. I've been persistent -- I raise the issue at every opportunity -- and finding allies in other departments who support our request. (Other faculty have been very supportive.)
Whenever possible, I have advanced the needs of my department with the administration.
We have not addressed this due to the inertia of some faculty.
This is an ongoing thing. Since we are a new minor, I am in constant dialogue with administration regarding needs. Since I have effectively raised awareness of the minor and garnered 16 minors in the first year alone, they are usually quite helpful and generous in granting my requests. We are currently attempting to secure a tenure-track line that I can slip into. I am a Visiting Professor now (non tenure-track). This looks promising and should be made available within the next two years.
Show them how many classes and students have been taught. Use general education requirements to establish a need for more classes.
I have suggested for years that another philosophy instructor would be a good thing for us to have, but so few philosophy courses are required of our students that there is relatively little demand. Fortunately a recent external review recommended that we hire another philosopher and I have insisted that this recommendation be pursued (despite its being given low priority by my department head and our having been told, supposedly, off the record that the school would never hire another philosopher). I made a point of getting myself invited to the relevant meetings so I could make the case for hiring a second full-time philosophy instructor and I was successful. There seems to be more support for philosophy outside my department than in it.
College as a whole is short of resources. All departments face this so it is a matter of balance.
Emphasize that improved full-time/part-time faculty ratios and lighter teaching loads will improve student retention, since students like greater access to their faculty and want to know that their faculty will be around all four years of their undergraduate experience.
The administration supports us as good as they can.
Unsuccessfully.
We beg.
Try to be very outgoing and form strategic alliances with people in other fields.
We successfully got a new line advertised, whereupon it was revoked for budget reasons. ALl we did was make a case: we're teaching this many PHI students, the number is only going up, so we need more.
Again, complaining, and again, to no avail.
Submitting both internal and external grant proposals. In some cases I've been blessed by colleagues outside of my department who have control over money to sustain specialized academic efforts and have benefited from this.
there was no money.
We've been lucky and been strongly supported by a wealthy donor. The administration's priorities are in the sciences.
We had to write to foreign universities soliciting help especially after the war in Sierra Leone--we lost so many materials. We received help in terms of books and computers. We are paid by the government and this makes it very difficult to maintain staff who leave in search of greener pastures or better paid jobs.

Creating a Sense of Community among Majors & Minors

2009-08-13T14:10:00.001-07:00

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of creating a sense of community among majors and minors.

Informal gatherings, parties, facebook communications.
The honor society co-sponsors events with many other organizations. Those who take my classes but do not qualify for the honor society get connected with philosophy in this way.
Please see my reply to the question about recruiting and retaining majors.
In addition to the club/honor society activities already in progress, we have recently added a senior seminar, required of all senior philosophy majors, that brings graduating majors together in one class. This was our first year with the senior seminar, and the seniors seemed to be very glad for it.
We don't do this very well. We need to do more of it. In the past, we have scheduled talks and gatherings, but in our latest administrative posture, we have not done so.
Philosophy Club
We have a philosophy club that is very active. We have weekly meetings, where we have students and faculty both within and without philosophy present papers, we watch and discuss movies, etc.. We also take an annual trip to an undergrad philosophy conference nearby.
We have tried from time to time to establish a philosophy club with regular activities (social events, attending lectures, philosophy film nights), but have been somewhat hampered by our small numbers and by the other college and community service obligations of the professors in our department.
We have a phil. club but we need to do more. We'd like to create more regular events (like informal brown bag lunches, movie nights, afternoon teas, a speaker series) and use the college-wide programming budgets to bring prominent philosophers to the campus. We would also do well to claim space for philosophy students (e.g.. a lounge). Recently we began a tradition of having junior and senior majors welcoming first and second-year majors to the department at an afternoon tea-type of event. There is a measure of formality and ceremony with this, and it helps to introduce students to one another and to have all of the faculty present.
Forming a UG philosophy society with rotating board made up of representatives from every year. The society has no budget, but prioritizes expenditure, which is then ratified by staff. By making sure staff are available, participatory, and enthusiastic. By claiming and demonstrating that philosophy is a way of life.
Small intensive reading groups with good food and wine
Our majors are self-tending to a very large degree, as we are in a small city whose limited amenities help to focus philosophy students on one another, and our retention to date of a department lounge has given them a gathering space which they tend to use throughout the day.
We have an outstanding philosophy club, which includes faculty from other departments, students, former students, current and emeritus philosophy faculty. We also participate in activities such as Ethics Bowl.
Food. Movies.
Philosophy club. Dual campus talks. But it's inconsistent, partly because students are usually here for only two years.
I must say, this seems to do itself, it's easy and I've never thought about how we create it. It just happens quite well all by itself. It's a small, tight-knit school.
We've started a student club that meets every two weeks for dinner and a discussion.
We had a philosophy club, but it fell apart. I tried an online discussion group, but nobody contributed. I gave up.
Philosophy club helped a bit.
We used to have a functioning Philosophy Club, but our students are apparently so hard-pressed these days with juggling jobs and classes that they barely have the leisure to discuss philosophy outside of the classroom. The only thing we have going right now is an occasional film night, at which a film that involves some philosophical issues or ideas will be shown. After the viewing students, guests, and faculty usually discuss the film's philosophical themes for thirty minutes to an hour. This does create a bit of camaraderie, but not nearly enough.
Movie and discussion nights. Student paper nights. Picnics and cook-outs every semester, one with an evening bonfire. Invited speakers.
Organize films, gatherings, etc.
Our Philosophy club has been the best tool we have, but I wonder if we've just been lucky in having good students.
The philosophical society serves this purpose.
It grows naturally out of good class discussion. Philosophical discussion spreads and becomes the context of ongoing shared inquiry and inter-generational friendship.
We have had social events, and we have encouraged the students to form a club.
Have tried to get a more active philosophy group, this largely fails.
We try to provide extensive support for the Philosophy & Religious Studies Club.
The students did a great job of taking ownership of the Philosophy Club activities and planning events that they wanted. I hosted a cookout for majors and minors (and Philosophy Club members, who need not be majors or minors) at my home.
We do well with this.
Holiday and end of semester parties; philosophy club; most of them are in the same classes together since we have such a limited number of courses, so camaraderie flourishes anyway.
Email distribution list (news concerning what our majors have gone on to do, acceptance to graduate school, etc).....
We have a Philosophy Club that meets about once a month, and we have so few philosophy classes that they tend to get to know each other that way too. Most of them are English or Psychology majors, so they often already know each other. And they are like-minded people in a school that is not especially friendly to open-mindedness. Otherwise I don't know that there is much of a sense of community among them.
Special seminar for majors with visits from outside speakers.
Maintaining an undergraduate philosophy club and a philosophy colloquium series, and having "majors only" events.
Post student news on the department web page, photo of the graduating majors, news of recent grads.
Hold parties, watch and discuss 'philosophical movies,' etc.
Through the philosophy club, in the course of directing senior essays, and daily in informal conversation: my colleagues and I spend a great deal of time with the majors, minors and "fellow travelers."
Lots of activity and making sure that majors and minors take courses together seems to do the trick. We need to do more. Our cognitive science program provides a good model of building community, and many of our majors overlap with it.
We have an annual picnic for majors. We have an annual conference, and a weekly discussion series.
Form an undergrad philosophy club.
We get together a LOT, and I do my office hours at the cafe on campus. That amounts to quite a bit of time to talk.
Instituted a departmental retreat (weekend stay at a retreat center out of town) every other year, with mix of planned and unplanned conversations, cooking and eating together, and outdoor exercise.
We have a capstone colloquium course for all seniors that all faculty attend and participate in. We also have a regular philosophy and film series, and a regular ice cream social. Up until recently, there was a faculty/student cover band.
See attracting/retaining major or minors above.
not much of an issue because they tended to hang together and to socialize a lot.
This is something that I have not done very well.
We have a philosophical society and we engage in public discussions, inviting students from other faculties to attend.

How to Deal with Excessive Teaching Responsibilities

2009-08-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of dealing with excessive teaching responsibilities.

Our teaching load is common to our campus, so we just do the best we can within the limits we have.
Suck it up, basically. My load has decreased since I first began and the dean and my colleagues know that for my first five years I worked probably harder than any but three or so of my colleagues. After returning from sabbatical, our core requirements changed and I have established myself as publishing more than almost anyone else so I am given very few committee appointments and now I have small classes, even though I have lots of different preparations. I spent my first five years preparing lesson plans: I spent about 8 hours per hour of class and wrote class plans for 10 classes, at about 50 hours/class. Now I change maybe six lessons each semester and I ask students in the upper-level classes to write research papers, which helps me stay current in some areas.
I have a decent load. Can't complain. But I shall be moving to computerized quizzes/grading, at least on the daily reading assignments.
Our teaching load is reasonable.
Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency
I haven't, though we are in the process of moving from a 4-4 to 3-3 load across the university.
I've begged to be released for academic research. When that failed repeatedly, I watered down my courses so that I could spend less time grading (for students who could care less about this discipline) and more time writing. I also have to take quarters off at my own expense if I want to write which effectively means I lose 25% of my yearly salary to pursue academic work.
We try to have faculty in the first year or two minimize the number of preps they offer. But soon enough, we have to develop 6 or more preps to offer on a rotating basis (our load is 3/2). We take steps to talk with another about enrollment limits, not burdening ourselves with too many time-consuming assignments in our classes, and try to divide the burdens of teaching courses across the different levels as evenly as we can. But we all value teaching very highly.
Principally, by varying class formats and increasing the involvement of the students in framing and working for their own learning. The more they do and we oversee, the more enthusiastic they get. Disadvantage: only available to senior years.
Learning to say no.
Just shoulder through and work harder. No relief
Since our university's enrollment is shrinking, our problems are perhaps unfamiliar to many. As our university and program shrink, we are increasingly convinced that admissions processes (in which we play no role) are bringing us poorly prepared students whose level of preparation forces us to simplify course content and to reduce our expectations of students. Sometimes we add whimpering and desperate job searches to our simplification of core course content.
We've not been effective in this regard. We have a 4-4 teaching load. We've had many discussions with a sympathetic, but unwilling to make changes, administration.
Our professional development process now, at my behest, will include the possibility of applying for limited release time in order to complete large-scale projects like monographs, etc.
I don't have excessive teaching responsibilities.
Grading rubrics help a great amount, especially in decreasing the number of students who come to office hours. Several short essays (3-5 pages) rather than research papers. I don't know; I just work my butt off.
Our best innovation has been to share the senior-thesis load, spreading it evenly while taking students' preferences for mentors into account.
Multiple choice tests. Browsing through final papers in 5 minutes to give them a grade.
Sadly, I barely know how to address this! One thing that has helped a bit is the ability to teach several sections of a course back to back (three sections of intro. from 8:00 - 11:00, for instance), thus freeing up large blocks of time during other parts of the day. Of course, our administration has just curtailed our ability to do this.
This is tightly connected with the problem of securing faculty
not much possible here--administration has higher priorities elsewhere
Using more formative assessments, and on-line tools whereby students can "check" their work with each other and learn from each other's work.
Not a concern.
I have not found any good strategies to deal with this. I would be interested to know what faculty at other, similar institutions have done.
I try my best to reduce my amount of grading -- some assignments I don't grade at all, just check them off. I don't grade final exams -- just check to see if they pass or don't. I use a lot of group work and presentations in class -- effective pedagogy, and takes less prep time for me.
I got better migraine medication
I am new and haven't started discussing these things.
I wish I had more to offer than "I teach too much," but that's all I've got. I teach an overload every year. I make this fun for myself by teaching at least one course abroad every year.
Teach two sections of same course same term where reasonable, steer some courses to partially support my research interests.
There's not much I can do, given that the load is set by the institution.
We have a 3-3 load, and the department head has a lighter load, so I'm not sure if the teaching responsibilities are excessive.
Many Tanqueray & Tonics.
Have to do it for the program. No real way to deal with it. The administration is more interested in science positions than staffing humanities.
Not really a problem
Although I teach 6 courses per year, each semester I teach two sections of one of those courses, so my teaching load is quite heavy. I try not to change courses too much, but I don't teach well if I'm bored, and I get bored when I teach the same thing over and over again (whether by not changing a particular course or by teaching too many sections of the same courses at a time). I avoid teaching summer school. I do little research or even class preparation during the school year. There is no time to read. Basically I feel as though I do everything at no more than 90% of my capacity. Cheerful stoicism gets me through.
Apply for faculty release time. Rarely does it help due to lack of available faculty resulting in full-time faculty teaching overload courses.
Reinforce with the Faculty Council the need to negotiate with the administration for a reduced teaching load from 4/4 eventually to 3/3, and take advantage of course-release opportunities.
Many of the best liberal arts colleges have moved to a model of 32 courses for graduation, rather than a large state university model of about 120 credit hours (~40 courses). This would help reduced the number of courses a department would have to offer.
Got funding to develop a new programme to alleviate some teaching responsibility.
Duck and cover: Announce subjects that would not attract too many students, teach on Monday mornings and Friday afternoon.. Concentrate on majors.
I am not teaching Philosophy at all.
We don't deal with it; we put up with it.
Coffee and good drink. Yoga. Cut corners when I can do so without obviously violating integrity.
caffeine. I have dealt with it poorly, quite honestly. Better luck (and time management) next year.
Complaining to administration...to no avail.
Perhaps little or no way around this for adjunct faculty. We are given classrooms caps of 45 per class (four to five classes per semester, no teaching/student assistants), and have difficulty teaching in the way that we should with the workload. The only way to address this is to discuss concerns with our chair, or our union.
Our college recently shifted to a 3/2 load, and that has helped a lot.
weeping and lamentation
I teach overload to make up for sub-standard salary, but even without overload I still have a 4-4 load (which is pretty substantial). Most of the efforts have been to lobby administrators; I serve on the Faculty Senate and this is one of our goals, and our administration seems somewhat receptive.
did research on weekends.
I tend to repeat lectures and try and find ways to use the same material semester to semester.
I have started co-authoring a piece, and splitting the research work is helpful. But, generally there is no way to cope with onerous teaching duties (expect to shirk your duty).
Minimizing preps as much as possible.

Convincing Undergraduates of the Value of Philosophy

2009-08-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of convincing undergraduates of the value of philosophy.

Every single lecture I give contains that implicitly message and the students know it. They also know the way I live and they know that I am serious about the value of what I do.
When there is a news story that would help to promote philosophy (such as the recent NY Times article about philosophy at Rutgers), we pass it along to our students.
We have a curriculum that in part is designed to address the antecedent interests of philosophically naive students who are then provided with the philosophical resources to address these desires and interests.
Teaching has to approach the students form their own perspective, but there's only so much that can be done.
We try to get them hooked in our intro courses.
We have begun to offer topically focused courses to meet one of the general-education requirements in philosophy; these courses are aimed at the interests of particular student populations (for instance, next year one of the courses will be on the philosophy of science, the other on philosophical anthropology). We also regularly make the argument to bright students who are interested in graduate studies for careers such as clerical ministry and law that the study of philosophy is an excellent preparation.
My undergraduates are non-philosophy majors so I show them the relevance of critical thinking, reasoning and philosophical ideas to life. I emphasize the practical implications of being able to think philosophically and about 25% actually get it.
By claiming that only philosophy satisfies the species-definition supplied by Aristotle, thus fulfilling our evolutionary destiny. By claiming, further, that philosophy is universally useful (who doesn't want employees capable of reasoning, analysis, and communication?) and that as a result, is more use than any other field of study. By involving, finally, 1st person testimony from students to students.
Shown them with good arguments
Those students we do have tend to do a good job of coming to us with a burgeoning love of philosophy. Students 'on the bubble' regarding a major are often given evidence of the merits of the study of philosophy as preparation for professional studies in addition to graduate study in philosophy. Many, for example, are relieved to find that a philosophy degree can serve as a precursor to successful study of law.
This isn't so hard, given that I teach at a Catholic university, and all students have to take two courses. Our challenge has been that other areas appropriate the ethics requirement to discipline-specific ethics courses that, frankly, are easier than the courses offered in the Philosophy Department.
I don't spend any time trying to *directly* convince undergraduates of its value. They can think for themselves. I just reveal my personal passion for the subject in classes, at philosophy club, and in the hallway. My two colleagues have a similar approach. I think the results speak for themselves: 50 majors at a community college.
I try to convince my students that they are already interested in philosophy but that perhaps they just don't realize it yet.
We have held career days on which we bring alums back to talk to our current students about what they do, how they chose their jobs, and how philosophy has (and sometimes hasn't) helped in that choice. There's always a lawyer, ha ha!, plus civil servants, a couple grad students, and the models are instructive to our kids.
We still largely rely on self-selection of the interested.
Put info up on the dept website. Do more applied philosophy.
Talking to students about skills honed in philosophy classes helps, as does a general emphasis on the practical benefits of studying philosophy. Some students are able to make sense of the idea of the inherent value of certain kinds of practices.
There doesn't seem to be a problem here--the course work and classes intrinsically draw student interest
Finding real examples - particularly from this jurisdiction - of ethical issues that police face, particularly accounts of police who wanted to (or expected to) do the right thing, but found themselves in fact doing something wrong. Also, having 'real police' [rather than a mere philosopher!!] tell war stories, indicating how and where ethical issues can occur in police work.
Presenting it as it is, or as I see it.
Make course material relevant
Hm. I think we do this mostly by teaching as well as we can. I figure that if we teach well, we won't have to convince them of the value of philosophy. Our major seems to be growing fairly rapidly under this approach.
For a number of years, my institution has had an active philosophical society. Meetings are held on a regular basis, a student philosophy journal is published annually (or almost annually), speakers from other universities are invited for public presentations, and my colleague and I occasionally take students to philosophy conferences that are close by. Sometimes the students take leadership roles in keeping the philosophical society active, but at other times it falls on the professors to be more active.
The crucial point to get across is that a "practical" major is impractical unless you're very sure what career you want. The good liberal arts majors have the advantage that they leave many doors open (in contrast to "practical" majors like business, education, social work, etc.). With a philosophy major it's easy to get into law school, business school, education programs, and seminary, as well as any business which needs smart people with problem-solving ability whom it intends to train on the job.
By offering myself as an example. By directing course content to issues and concerns that are live to them.
Partially through displaying my own enthusiasm, but also but repeatedly explaining that the skills of philosophy are the skills needed in the world (analysis, research, writing, independent thinking, understanding the larger implications of a theoretical change, etc.)
This semester, I began my Ancient & Medieval Philosophy class, which fulfilled a liberal arts requirement, by posing and answering the questions, (1) Why study philosophy? and (2) Why study ancient and medieval philosophy? In logic class, I discuss the application of what we are learning to graduate entrance exams (LSAT, GMAT, GRE) and to evaluating philosophical arguments.
Making ideas relevant to their lives in the classroom. Using contemporary examples, bringing philosophical disagreements back to the concrete. If you can't communicate why a philosophical difference makes a difference in life, they would care. If philosophical differences don't make a difference, then we probably shouldn't care either. Given that we care (why else would we be in this profession?), we need to articulate why philosophy matters--like it or not, the responsibility for this is on us.
Making Introduction to Philosophy and Introduction to Logic connect to everyday life.
I emphasize the intimate connection between philosophy and things like critical thinking, ethics, and thinking outside the box. I also work to get my students doing philosophy, thinking about their beliefs and intuitions, etc., so that it becomes at least partly about them and not just about Plato, et al.
I explain how the particular skills of philosophy (analysis, clear writing) are useful anywhere.
Undergraduates recognize it more than faculty. Typically addressed in each class.
By explaining and showing in multitudes of ways that ideas have consequences. They make choices every day of their lives based on their beliefs, so they need to know whether such beliefs are true. Also, integrating applied topics into discussions of theories and making connections to contemporary events helps them see how ideas (and philosophical analysis) matter.
Tried to be as enthusiastic as possible!
should we do that?
Writing an introductory text in philosophy that addresses the kind of concerns our typical student has.
See above; the summary would be: by actually doing some philosophy in "other venues" as occasion permits.
We don't really have to do this. Students seem to find their own answers when they take a philosophy class.
We compile date on the importance of philosophy--when we find some time. We emphasize the possibility of the double major rather than the idea of doing a single major in philosophy.
Tell them it will help them get into grad school. Use low-level reverse psychology (e.g., say, "This doesn't apply to most of you in this course, but I want to make you aware of the possibility of adding philosophy as a double major.")
Challenge them. Make them think. Never inflate grades. You end up attracting the kind of student that you would want to have. Mere "numbers" in the department are meaningless.
Attempts are made to make the issues as practical as possible. Movie/television clips help.
Again, happily, utterly not an issue for us. We're a liberal arts college where students generally appreciate the relevance of philosophy to a liberal education.
Primarily emphasizing the important skills philosophy enables students to master, and giving them data from Philosophy majors performance on Graduate exams (as opposed to other majors).
mostly one-on-one conversations.
This task is made easier by the fact that our institution runs a core program which includes a course in the history of ethics and political philosophy. I thus have a ready audience of approximately half the students in the institution and the time to demonstrate to them the importance of philosophy. This doesn't translate into philosophy majors, but our program does not rely on philosophy majors to be viable.
I give lists of famous philosophy majors and speak about the variety of jobs philosophy majors have pursued.
Generally, I have accomplished this only in the classroom. I think that students come to see the value of philosophy by engaging in philosophy. I also try to make sure that I point out the ways in which the question we are addressing is directly relevant to their ordinary, work-a-day concerns. This is not much of a problem for me since I teach value theory courses.
Connection to portable business skills Success of past majors Stress philosophy's role in a meaningful life Started a "for fun" discussion group to stress that, well, philosophy is fun. An indirect approach often works better. We try to make the classes fun and challenging. Fun speaks for itself, and the challenge "markets" philosophy as for an elite group. We are able to attract double majors from less challenging majors. Along those lines, we stress how a philosophy double-major will distinguish a student from every other pre-law, pre-med, or business major.

Finding Time and Resources for Scholarly Work

2009-08-13T13:55:00.000-07:00

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of finding time and resources for scholarly work.

Enlist students as research assistants or make assignments that can be both educational for the students and contribute to my research.
Summers. Begging for money. Paying out of my own pocket (many thousands of dollars each year). Making contacts in hope of getting connected to financial resources. This summer I have a free apartment in Greece for two months because a Greek colleague likes my work and wants me to talk to his colleagues, students, etc.
We try to take advantage of summer professional grant funds, course reductions, and extended sabbaticals whenever possible. We also have a regular philosophy colloquium at which we discuss each others' work, and this motivates us to write papers for these events.
Matching research and scholarly pursuits to teaching assignments.
I haven't.
Purposeful use of the summer vacation period! And regularly applying to the college's professional development fund, which rather generously supports travel to participate in conferences. Also, relying on interested colleagues in other departments to form reading groups, writing circles, etc.
Looking for external funding but very difficult with no critical mass in the department
As noted above, if I want to engage in scholarly work, I have to take a quarter off at my expense. This entails losing my health insurance and 25% of my annual salary. Other than this extreme measure there is absolutely no support for scholarly work although we are encouraged, but not always funded, to attend conferences.
This is the chief battle for all of us at the college. We are looking to create space for us to teach a regular upper-level courses in research-active areas. Some of us have met with our grants officer to find inside and outside support for scholarly work, which might make full-year sabbaticals possible. (I hope you will find a way to publish the variety of answers that others give to this question. I would be very interested to know.)
We simply leave during summer; vary our timetables according to teaching demands.
Don't teach summer courses or overloads.
Sleep less
External research funding in support of limited release from teaching; working in interdisciplinary groups whose administrators take up the 'grunt work' of reporting, filing travel expense claims, etc.; shutting the office door, writing at home, recognizing the difference between students needing guidance vs chatting relatively aimlessly; resisting the temptation to view small-town, mid-sized university life as early retirement.
I never, ever, teach during the summer. And I make sure that people above me are well aware when I publish an article or receive a speaking invitation.
This is the main problem for me. Even at 4 classes per semester I had ample time to work on my own projects. But at 5 classes it's a totally different story. I'm still trying to figure it out. Short projects are doable, but serious articles and books are pretty much out of the question.
This is the hardest question on your survey by far. I have no answer, it's too difficult.
Sigh.
Make final papers due 3 weeks before the end of the semester, and have all grading done well before the end of the semester, apart from presentations or multiple choice tests. Saying NO when people ask you to do things like create outcomes assessment for the major.
Teaching classes in blocks and teaching all classes on either a MWF or T/Th schedule helps create long stretches of time that can be used for other things. Jealously protecting the summer also helps, and that's of course when most writing gets finished.
see earlier comments re formative assessments and getting students to take more responsibility for their own learning. Sometimes, I have had to take annual leave as the only way to get some research done without the impact of teaching responsibilities.
Not a concern.
Summers are the only real time of the year that I can dedicate to research. I did have a sabbatical a few years ago, and that was a wonderful experience! Perhaps in a couple of years, I can apply for another.
Most difficult aspect. Little or no time during the semester. Have to work on scholarship during the summer.
Nothing to offer you here. We beg and borrow, spend our own money - usually thousands of dollars a year of our own funds - and we look for grants wherever we can.
This is taken out of one's hide.
Try to say "No" as often as you can get away with it.
The $64,000 question...
Still working on this. To the extent that I can I try to integrate my current research interests into upper level classes, but this is only incompletely helpful as it normally is the foundational aspects of my current work not the more contemporary discussions around the issue(s).
This is my first year out of graduate school, so I am still learning how to do this. I did better in the fall, when my three classes included only two preps. I began each day by working on research and fit teaching into what time was left over, which meant that I was occasionally underprepared for class, but not significantly so. This spring, I taught three preps that I had never taught before (but expect to teach many times again), and I was going to on-campus interviews since I am on a one-year visiting position here, and I failed miserably at finding time for scholarly work other than during spring break.
Still trying to figure this one out.
I had a sabbatical once, and once attended an NEH summer seminar. I read as much as I can during the summer. Otherwise it's hard. I publish quite a bit (about one paper a year and four books in the last ten years), but I don't have time or the right circumstances (graduate students to teach, knowledgeable colleagues to bounce ideas off) to do really great work.
Apply for funding for time off.
Have adjusted research to topics that are directly related to courses teaching (pedagogical issues, etc.). Focus on writing instead of presentations since presentations are more expensive. Make presentations at local conferences when possible.
Do it mostly in the summer!
Apply for research leave grants.
Be sure to take my chair's reduction (1 course per year) and try to accomplish something during that time!
I try to streamline teaching and administrative duties as much as possible. Also, almost every semester, I teach an upper division honors seminar that keeps me reading in my areas of interest, thereby integrating teaching and research. I'm fortunate to be able to do this. Actually, a properly structured program can foster this well. We aren't yet where I would like to be, but ideally, I would have each of the three of us teaching a small, upper division topics seminar each semester that overlaps with our research interests.
Try to find research projects that dovetail with what I can teach to low-level undergrads. Hope for the best.
again, damn you for asking. Summers are key. Use the summers wisely.
We have a very flexible upper-level seminar listing, and I try to teach seminars on topics that connect with where my research is headed.
much much more weeping and lamentation
Applying for Summer Research Grants. This is about all that's available.
work weekends. interlibrary loan also helped a lot.
Work on weekends, summers, at night.
As for time, I find that I have to simply say no to competing requests. So, I try not to spend too much time working on committees. Really, with such a burdensome teaching load, it is hard to complete quality research. As for resources, my college has above average resources.
We are really overburdened with work and so we have virtually no time to publish any scholarly articles. In fact, we are yet to come up with a scholarly journal where we could publish some of our work.

How to Recruit and Retain Majors

2009-08-13T13:44:00.001-07:00

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of recruiting and retaining majors.

Making teaching effectiveness and ability to relate to students a high priority in hiring philosophy faculty. Informal gatherings with students at my home at least twice a semester.
None: I really advertise the value of a minor. I encourage those who major to double major. I also advertise the major and minor as a good way to prepare for the LSAT and law school or graduate school in Political Science/Philosophy.
We have a local chapter of the Phi Sigma Tau philosophy honor society. This group of students plans events for all our philosophy majors, minors, and other students interested in philosophy. These events include film discussions, discussions of philosophical papers and topics, meetings with student philosophy clubs at other colleges and universities in the area, and social events.
Regular online missives about philosophy in the news.
Offering a greater variety of lower division courses in order to to provide better opportunity for non-majors to take more than one philosophy course, which will hopefully lead some to continue taking philosophy
Often we make the argument to students in other majors that philosophy would be a helpful second major for them, particularly if they are interested in pursuing graduate education in areas such as law, theology, or literature. We also have had some success convincing philosophy minors to "trade up" to the major (added to their other major). Our college has offered us significant scholarship funds to help attract incoming first-year students who declare a philosophy major, but we have found it difficult to give this money away, since most students coming to our college have no experience with philosophy before they arrive here. We have just offered our first such scholarship, to someone who knows about us because his older brother is already a philosophy major here.
Philosophy club.
We put a lot of effort into our 100-level courses and these seem to be successful in recruiting students. We usually have approx. ten majors per year, so in late spring we might have almost 30 majors declared. We are in the enviable position, therefore, of not having to recruit aggressively (and absorb marginal students into the major).
Recruitment: forging links with local high-density 6th form colleges Retention: creating and maintaining philosophy community; extracurricular events (trips, quizzes etc)
Good courses, close personal contact, and ambitious expectations.
We have emphasized our offering seminar courses in which student presentations and participation offer an opportunity for direct engagement with professors that is often impossible in larger programs, and we emphasize personal, face-to-face advising of students who we come to know reasonably well as individuals through the course of their study with us.
Most of the recruiting happens "organically" via exposure to philosophy in our introductory courses. We've made a concerted effort to take advantage of all opportunities to advertise our program (i.e., attending major fests and advising meetings).
Suggesting double majoring; stressing the applicability of the skill set to law school, etc..
I'm in a rather unique situation for a small department. My college operates in a consortium (with about 2 dozen philosophers total). So, students who wish to major in philosophy have many options off-campus. I often advise students who never take a course from me (because their interests are elsewhere). Similarly, I get to work with philosophy students from the other campuses.
I always personally ask students who seem to have an interest in philosophy and/or who do well in the class if they have ever considered becoming a philosophy major/minor.
Opening our intro classes to more students, raising the maximum number in those classes, and putting our best, most charismatic teachers in those general/open intros, has increased recruitment. Retention is pretty easy once we've got them in the door.
We have formed a student philosophy club. This, we hope, will increase a sense of community amongst our majors and minors which in turn hopefully will help recruit and, in particular, retain majors. For recruiting purposes we identify students in our (required) intro class who seem (a) to have an aptitude for philosophy and (b) an interest in philosophical discussions. We then send out a personal (either a letter or through a conversation) invitation/suggestion that the student consider future philosophy courses. We also now offer a number of courses that satisfy various Core requirements (gen ed courses required of all students). Students can now satisfy 1/2 the requirements for the minor by just taking our various Core/Gen Ed offerings. This has had some positive impact on the number of minors.
Changing the major to be more flexible. Introducing more applied philosophy courses. Cross-listing more courses. Creating courses in the pre-law track. Working to make more Philosophy courses count as part of General Education.
I think that the creation of a philosophy club providing opportunities for travel, art, and music has helped keep student interest, both because they have fun, but also because these sorts of activities have helped students encounter philosophy as an entrance to the wider world of ideas and culture. Helping students understand the practical benefits of the major has of course helped, as has some flexibility in faculty teaching schedules, given the fact that most of our majors think of philosophy as their second major. Thus we teach lots of independent studies, for instance.
We have introduced a wide variety of applied philosophy courses that can appeal to students from different fields. On "course introduction day", we then present the course alongside with the students' main courses.
philosophy awards given to top students letters sent to the top 5% of students in introductory classes personal appointments for papers
Present Philosophy as it is (or as I see it).
We do not have an effective way of dealing with this problem. Again and again, we find ourselves having to replace younger faculty who come here for a few years, find the teaching load intolerable, and leave to find employment elsewhere. The drain on our time and energy caused by repeatedly having to launch a national search is extremely taxing. But I see no end in sight.
By creating a good sense of community with out-of-class activities. (takes a lot of time)
We do not have a pre-requisite for 200 level courses, which are often more interesting to students than intro courses.
Chiefly, we do this through our service courses. Most of our courses are considered intro-level courses, and most of these satisfy some portion of our gen ed curriculum. We try to teach them in such a way that students will find philosophy attractive. Most of our majors are double-majors with some other discipline.
My college has a philosophy/religious studies requirement, so a great many students are exposed to philosophy and may "catch the bug". This helps a lot. Some take philosophy late in their program, though, too late to major even if they become very interested. I would like to develop a better sales pitch about the value of reasoning, writing, and other thinking skills developed in philosophy. We try to have regular informal gatherings of majors and minors. This is difficult because we have no natural meeting place or lounge space. In each service or mixed course I give an introduction to what philosophy is, in general, and connect this with some of the central goals of the liberal arts.
Being responsive to their interests, especially by offering independent studies when our limited course offerings don't meet their needs
The crucial strategy is to make philosophy classes deeply exciting. About once a semester I also give lectures on matters of what might be called "public philosophy" in the university lecture series, which gives the philosophy program a bit more visibility.
Offering interesting and compelling courses. Outreach to underrepresented groups of students.
Integrated into general education philosophy courses an explanation of how philosophy degrees are useful, and a fuller explanation of what we do. Have been searching out those who are interested in philosophy but do not major because they are looking for a pre-professional degree. Have also been working a lot on building up the existing majors so that they can get jobs/grad school/law school admissions post-degree.
We're developing a brochure, the purpose of which is to draw students into the major -- it will contain things like mini-portraits of some current majors, a 'Top Ten' list of reasons to major in Philosophy, etc.
We have a Philosophy Club, and those activities promote a sense of belonging among our small cadre of majors and minors. Fortunately, several philosophy classes are options for fulfilling liberal arts requirements, so we can recruit some majors and minors through those classes. I am a visiting assistant professor, and I am speaking only from one year of experience.
We have a majors fair every year, and an open house, as well as philosophy forums every semester. We also have a very active philosophy discussion society, and "luncheon lectures" that attract students with good food and interesting philosophical topics. We are very active in recruiting, and we have increased our majors by 25% in the last 2 years.
I have created several campus-wide interdisciplinary events and invited other faculty from outside departments to present their discipline-specific takes on various philosophical ideas. This has raised awareness of Philosophy across campus and the events have been extremely popular and well attended (any one event garners 30-70 people, with usually a dozen of those being faculty).
Active club and good instruction.
We aim for excellence in teaching that makes clear how the ideas apply to students' lives and the students seem to respond. If students really find classes to be valuable, they seem to keep coming back. We also limited the major to 24 credits (8 semester classes) and the minor to 15 credits (5 classes). Because a lot of our classes also double as general eds, we get a lot of double majors who find they're halfway to a major just from taking gen-eds.
Offering interesting topics courses that appeal to an array of students e.g., "Philosophy and Film"
Suggest to able students that they do the philosophy major. Tell them it's a useful preparation for many careers.
Our administration refuses to even consider a major (what job will they get with philosophy, our student body is not interested, etc.), so any attempts to recruit minors is seem as a worthless activity by the administration and we get no support for this.
There are a few ways we have handled this: (1) making sure that full-time faculty teach intro level courses, since getting students excited by good and dedicated teachers at this stage is a big draw into the major; (2) maintaining a vigorous undergraduate philosophy club and drumming up interest through targeted list-procs as well as general announcements in all of our courses; (3) maintaining a lively philosophy colloquium series at least twice per semester that connects students to the larger philosophical community; (4) holding "majors only" events such as pizza parties, quiz shows, and feedback sessions; and (5) having at least one philosophy faculty member at all recruiting events (such as course fairs, open house, etc.).
Philosophy club seems to have helped. Being involved in the advising of incoming students has helped. Maybe putting information on our department web page has helped. Drawing student attention to being a pre-law philosophy major. Roughly half our majors now plan on applying to law school.
Listen to them - and answer their questions as good as we can.
Very few students enter this institution with the intention of studying philosophy (nor does general college recruiting solicit such interest); the few who do enter for the sake of philosophical study are (nearly all) transfer students. My teaching outside the department is exclusively directed to courses that have potential to suggest philosophical studies to at least some of those enrolled. I, and the department's other members, do a good deal of intramural lecturing, again with the intention of introducing auditors to the idea of philosophical study--major or elective. We invest a good deal of time in an active philosophy club (which publishes an in-house journal; leading members serve as informal recruiters to the department; the club has a reputation for intellectually interesting activities of a somewhat "bohemian" cast).
I am constantly pleading with Secretary Education to allow courses, the upper management in the country is focused on IT education and MBA courses.
Teaching limited enrollment honors seminars in philosophy has attracted honors students to major or minor in philosophy. We have a small but strong program. Of 12 majors about 8 are also in the honors programs. We also push philosophy as a double major, rather than as a single major. 10 of the 12 majors are also majoring in something else.
We have a Weekly Roundtable discussion series on various topics. This sometimes draws attention to the major. We also have a mini-conference once a year for students in philosophy and political science.
I encourage students to add philosophy as a second major. (Our philosophy major is designed to be relatively easy to pick up as a second major, but it is a struggle to get students to think of it as a real option.)
You happen to have asked this in the year in which we made monumental efforts on this front. I think that what you are doing is important, so this will be long. Sorry. 1. We took a logician/decision theorist's eye to the GE core, and noticed a number of things that worked against us, and some for us. Few things were "for" us. But of those is the opportunity to teach very general courses in the Humanities. The two of us run them as mini philosophy courses, and have had great success. We intentionally devote half of our teaching responsibilities to these courses. That may change as we increase enrollment. Several things were against us. One way the way that credit hours were counted, making such that some of the most likely philosophy majors (History and Pre-Law) COULD NOT POSSIBLY become philosophy majors. We made an argument, documented it extensively, and had the rule changed for Philosophy majors (a long, perilous, woeful road, that was). That rule went into effect a week before registration this past spring, and in that week we doubled the size of the department. We expect that this will continue. The other significant problem we faced was that the students who came to love philosophy tended not to do so until their sophomore or junior years. Our curriculum and course offerings made it impossible for such students to declare a major and complete the B.A. in a timely fashion. We therefore scrapped the entire course offerings, and created a new one that could plausibly be done in those cases in which the student only had two years left of college. We are still thinking on this, though. It sure would be nice to make sure that our students tool both LOGIC and INTRO first. We have not found a way to ensure that. 2. We put out a now-popular "hip" newsletter that is mostly wit, but also some wisdom. 3. We have become good friends with the development department (read "grants and donors"). They have led us to make contacts in our community with a variety of high-caliber business people who happen to be former philosophy majors. This process has only begun, so I cannot speak to its effectiveness. Beginning this fall, we will be having them as invited guests to the philosophy club to talk about what they did with their philosophy major. These are CEO's, foundation presidents, local and national politicians, lawyers and judges, and so on. Nota Bene: people LOVE to come to colleges and talk. Invite them. 4. We have students over to our house for cookouts. It's a blast. It doesn't feel like work. 5. We become involved in on-campus activities.
Happily, this isn't much of an issue at our college... we tend to get a pretty steady stream.
1. Offering unique entry-level classes that substitute for a survey course, like Introduction to Philosophy. These classes are often issue-based (e.g. free-will, existence of God, etc.) 2. Developing extracurricular activities (discussion groups, banquets, etc.)
We haven't had any problems in this area.
Well, I am quite new to academia. I am currently trying to revise the major and minor to make it more representative of the field of philosophy, and to make it more interesting for students. Also, I have attempted to recruit students from my own courses. Truth be told, I don't think that a department with only two philosophers should offer a major. Our goal should be to procure more lines so that we can offer a diversity of courses and characters.
Access to first-year students in an interesting class is essential. Public events-- speakers, discussion groups, etc. Stressed GRE, MCAT, LSAT success for philosophy majors. Started to develop "meaningful" courses, that is, courses which explicitly discuss the meaning of life or what make certain activities worthwhile, on the assumption that good candidates for majors are those students who want more than money or a job, though they want those too.
We do go out and address students at various schools about the value of the discipline, its relevance to other disciplines and the like. We do always succeed in getting a good intake every academic year.