Data Analysis: Ways of Recruiting and Retaining Majors

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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.