What It’s Like to be a Philosopher: Michelle Catalano

The APA blog is working with Cliff Sosis of What is it Like to Be a Philosopher? in publishing advance excerpts from Cliff’s long-form interviews with philosophers.

The following is an edited excerpt from the forthcoming interview with Michelle Catalano which will be released in full next week.

What did your parents make of your decision to pursue philosophy?

This is funny to me because I don’t think my parents even realized I was doing philosophy until I got my full-time job. They knew I was continuing along in school for a long time but I’m fairly certain that for a while they thought I was getting a PhD in business. I apparently didn’t do a good job of communicating with them about it at the time!

I ended up continuing with philosophy because I felt like I wasn’t done with it and I guess I felt secure knowing I already had something useful to fall back on just in case. … Over the past couple years I’ve brought my parents up to speed and they know very well to tell people that I ”teach philosophy” when they tell people what I do for a living. My dad pushed practical careers early on but overall my parents were supportive of me and my brother pursuing what we’re passionate about and allowing us to figure out how to reach our potential in our own individual ways.

Where did you get your MA? Who did you work with? What did you work on?

I stayed local and I got my MA in philosophy at the University of Missouri- St. Louis (UMSL). The same year I started they were piloting a brand-new online Business Ethics course for business students and I wonder if maybe my MBA background made me seem like a good fit to be involved with that (as a teaching assistant). It sure worked out perfect for me!!! I previously wrote at length about navigating my path (from UMSL to my current full-time job at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) on the Philosopher’s Cocoon last year.

Why didn’t you share your identity?

At the time, I wrote it anonymously because I didn’t think my identity added any important element to the story. I had also just gotten my full-time job so maybe it crossed my mind that I shouldn’t do anything that could make that awkward in any way. Here and now, I don’t mind connecting the stories since it fills in a lot more of the details of what it’s really like to be a philosopher as a part-time adjunct. More generally, though, I just like doing things anonymously and I think we need more of that and I try to do as much as I can anonymously wherever it is possible. I love the idea of the journals where you can submit articles anonymously- I think taking away the variable of getting credit can be good for sharing and spreading ideas.

Interesting! So, who did you work with at UMSL? What was your thesis on?

At UMSL, Dr. Berit Brogaard (who I remember was the very first person you interviewed on your site!) was one of my professors for at least two classes there. My thesis was “Evaluating Libertarian Paternalism” and it revolved around the debate on discerning the appropriate conditions under which “nudges” are justifiable given what we know about the well-established findings from behavioral economics. I asked Dr. Anna Alexandrova to be my thesis advisor after completing an independent study with her on the philosophy of economics. Before that, she was the professor of my pro-seminar (which was the course for first-year graduate students) on the topic of happiness. My interest in the philosophy of economics intersected with her interest in the more general philosophy of social science so it was a lucky privilege for me to be able to cross paths with her at that time. I have her recent book on my shelf right now and it is at the top of my summer reading list! Since my time at UMSL, I’ve enjoyed reconnecting with fellow students (mostly at conferences) who are now settling into their own jobs. It took me 5 years to complete the MA so I saw lots of students come and go and while I was there I missed out on the opportunity to build friendships since I did not live on campus and I already had family obligations beyond my school obligations.

So does that have something to do with why you didn’t pursue a PhD?

I ultimately did not apply to any PhD programs because, at that time, my spouse and I had already bought a house and had our first child and put roots down in Edwardsville where both of our parents were living nearby. Also, as I was finishing up at UMSL, I immediately started having consistent, part-time adjunct work at a few community colleges and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (which I ended up doing for the next 7 years). Being an adjunct at SIUE was ideal since I had already been living there and I had already gone there as a student for my undergraduate degree and first graduate degree (before going to the MA philosophy program at UMSL). SIUE has been a special part of my life for many, many years and it truly does feel like a home. Over those 7 years, part-time work was a great fit in my life as a married mother. I did always wonder whether I would ever be able to transition into a full-time career and I did have concerns about the instability and unpredictability of being an adjunct. I wondered whether I would be able to “keep my foot in the door” and I never really knew what kind of schedule I would have from semester-to-semester. The entire time I was holding out hope for a full-time teaching “dream job” and SIUE was always my first choice but I thought it would be a “one-in-a-million” opportunity for something to open up that I could apply for… sure enough, it did! SIUE is a beautiful campus with great people and I couldn’t ask for a better department- I am thankful every day to be a part of it! Our department is fairly big and there is a clear need for teaching positions like mine because of the required gen-ed course that we teach. Getting my full-time position as a faculty member at SIUE was most certainly my “biggest break.” I started as a student with them in 2002 and they also gave me my first adjunct position back while I was still in grad school and so I am abundantly loyal to them and they’ve been there for me since the beginning. It’s rare that I work in higher education and that I’ve never had to relocate anywhere for it.

When you started teaching, did you like it?

At first, teaching was not something that came natural or easy to me even though I liked it right away. Some people are lucky enough to be talented teachers right from the beginning, but I had to put a lot of effort into it and looking back now with hindsight, I wasn’t very good. I was still not very good when I went through my “lecture like a robot” phase and only now that I’ve been doing it for well over a decade I can say that I have developed my own style, I am comfortable with teaching brand new material, and I am confident that I’m providing an effective learning experience for most of my students. Someone from another department told me one time that it takes about 3 years to truly “make courses your own.” I think that’s about right for me if you define it as full-time dedicated teaching for 3 years. I have a friend who taught high school English and she said she really found her groove around the 3-year mark. I know I’m drawing upon anecdotes here but anecdotes are sometimes all we have when it comes to sharing teaching wisdom with each other whilst just trying to survive the daily trenches of our teaching demands…

I think another great thing we can do to foster excellence is to observe other teachers throughout our career but especially at the beginning. In other industries, this is called “shadowing” and it’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do in order to learn how to do a job. I recently observed someone else for an entire semester and it was extremely valuable! I don’t like observations of teaching based on just a one-time sit-in because it’s not enough time to see what’s really going on in there. I unfortunately never had my own teaching mentor but about a year ago I heard Dr. David Concepcion say something interesting at an AAPT workshop about how he learned from another teaching guru by deliberately following him around at as many conferences as possible to glean his insights. Dr. Concepcion doesn’t know this yet but my plan is to now just follow him around at the upcoming AAPT conferences by attending his sessions so I can glean HIS insights. Well, if he reads this then he’ll know… but that’s ok! The overall idea, though, is that we can be learning from each other in the same way our students are learning from us.

Any favorite texts to teach?

One specific and recent change that completely reformed the way I teach critical thinking was finding and using the textbook Intellectual Empathy: Critical Thinking for Social Justice by Dr. Maureen Linker. I think it’s worth mentioning in case any other critical thinking teachers out there are currently on the lookout for something fresh and different to use in their course.

It feels like there are hundreds of these books released every year and somehow they end up in my mailbox! What’s so special about the Linker book?

I have an entire shelf of logic textbooks and most of them are very similar to each other. I’ve used several of them in my classes and the Linker book is, by far, the most provocative in the best possible way. So far, I’ve been using her book in conjunction with another “standard” logic textbook and we switch in the middle of the semester so that my students can see and discuss the difference between the two approaches. Her perspective is cooperative argumentation rather than adversarial argumentation. I like her conversational tone and the way she melds together emotion and logic. I’m greatly concerned about the debate we have amongst ourselves in our discipline about the value of logic courses to students and whether our courses actually enhance problem-solving and critical thinking skills over the long-term and for daily life circumstances. I think the prevailing attitude is that “we will let the students figure out how our analytic and formal tools are transferrable to everyday decision-making.” Sadly, I don’t think the majority of students ever figure it out. The Linker book makes the best effort I’ve seen to bridge that gap from learning logical skills to improving our interactions in the real world. I was able to successfully use a backchannel for the first time with this book; my students simultaneously participated in discussions in two different ways- both verbally and/or through a live feed on the projector where they typed input/comments via their mobile device.

As an untenured faculty member, do you feel like you can get involved with controversial projects, or take risks in the classroom?

Yes, absolutely, but only because I’m established and I have that level of protection that is equivalent to a kind of tenure. Actually, the union contract for established instructors at my institution is stronger than some of the tenure systems that professors have (or so I’m told).

But, whatever the contract says, the more important thing is that it gives our teachers a way to earn academic freedom. Community college teachers almost always have a path to tenure but at most of the 4-year institutions, teaching-only positions with real protection and permanence are very rare. I can’t even recall anyone else I’ve met at another 4-year institution who has a position like mine (with actual establishment) and usually people are confused about what I mean by it when I describe it. Academic freedom can make a great deal of difference for teachers- once I earned my establishment, I was surprised at how much of an impetus it was to try new things and pursue other supplementary projects. I strongly support any initiatives that would give instructors/teachers at other 4-year institutions a similar kind of pathway to academic freedom like I have or like the community college teachers have.

How can colleges and universities give teachers, especially the teachers whose careers are not focused on generating publications, the recognition and stability they deserve?

Thank you for asking. We do NOT give teachers the recognition and stability that they deserve. Brace yourself- I have a LOT to say about this! The difficulties of adjuncting (which I did for 7 years before becoming full-time) are real but there is already some awareness and attention on that issue. What else is going on is that even full-time dedicated teachers are often being sidelined but in different ways that are not yet as publicly acknowledged. I worry that others have not felt comfortable speaking up about this because their “full-time” positions (unfair “renewable contracts” and so forth) are too precarious and they don’t want to risk their stability. Given that I have the comfort of permanence, I feel a bit of an obligation to “carry the torch” and do the best I can to help raise awareness about the differences in what we consider “who is a philosopher” and how we regard them, rank them, reward them, and compensate them.

I want to advocate for a solution across higher education (not just philosophy) that involves structures based on equal “teaching tracks” and “tenure tracks.” Let’s explore this question of why aren’t teaching tracks (in sense of being parallel to tenure tracks) more common? A lot of the answer is cost. Consider this.… My base full-time NTT salary (since I’m a state employee it’s publically searchable information) is currently $29,000. When you think about how much education I have and the fact that I work in a very competitive discipline in academia, it’s pretty sad and it’s a darn good thing that I don’t take money too seriously.

Wow!

When I tell family/friends who work in the private sector how much I make they are horrified. They automatically assume that I have some kind of luxurious university job and they are just completely stunned by the fact that my earnings are (quite literally) barely poverty-level. Most of the people I talk to in the private sector have very little idea about the difference between professors/researchers and instructors/teachers which contributes to some of the confusion. Professors (TT) at my institution make MUCH more than instructors (NTT) do. Something else that misconstrues the value of teachers is that instructors in other units (Business, Engineering, etc.) sometimes make over 2x as much as instructors in my unit (Arts & Sciences) even though we are at the same university! I’m not saying anything that’s not public knowledge because, I repeat, our salaries are publically searchable as state employees. But, you know what? It shows exactly what our society puts as a monetary value on those who teach the humanities versus those who teach marketing (or something else like that). I guarantee those teachers in the other disciplines are not 2x better than me… but, whatever. Training the next generation of society the imperative and transferrable skill of critical thinking is just not a big deal, apparently. Another disappointing thing is that students are completely indifferent to the fact that so little of their tuition money goes towards the people who are directly providing their education to them as compared to how much goes towards rock climbing walls, fancy eateries, building expansions, campus-life luxuries, and other overhead. Let’s make the math simple… An adjunct might get paid around $3000 to teach a class and if each student in a class of 40 is paying $1000 tuition then only 3 students are paying towards the person that is actually providing them with knowledge and interacting with them face-to-face in order to enhance their wisdom. The other 37 students are paying towards other stuff (administrative costs, the rock-climbing walls, the eateries, etc.). When you multiply out how many classes there are, it’s basically a truck-load of money that goes towards other expenses beyond direct instruction! And students do have some degree of governance over the way their tuition money is allocated but very, very few of them pay attention and get involved with that process which usually requires approvals through some kind of student senate. The bottom line is that NTT-taught classes tend to have the most quantity of students (intro level classes with large enrollments) and even though NTTs are some of the biggest money-generators for the university, they are some the lowest compensation-earners…

By the way, there is some relevant and recent news on this topic… did you hear that Southern Illinois University Carbondale (a campus two hours away from us) announced plans to recruit “volunteer” adjuncts to teach their classes? I can’t even begin….

So you’re into teaching and learning about teaching, but if you could teach an upper-level class, what would it be on? Don’t you want to stay current?

I’ve wanted to teach Business Ethics again although it’s not always an upper-level number depending on where/how it’s done. If I were to teach it on a regular basis then, yes, I would definitely feel the need to stay abreast on the current literature so that what I’m teaching is reflective. But, still, I guess I don’t really know if I would be compelled to actively participate with my own contributions by submitting publications…haha, you’re doing a really good job of making me feel like I am unusual in this respect!

I don’t think you are actually! Trying to anticipate reader questions. Are you into public philosophy?

Although it doesn’t necessarily have to be an upper-level course, I am on a stubborn mission to teach a new kind of course on ‘Public Philosophy’ and also see if there is broader interest in adding it as a legitimate part of the course offerings in our discipline. I’m serious enough about this idea that I’ve drafted a sample syllabi/proposal/rationale for it and also presented a session on it at the 2018 American Association of Philosophy Teachers biennial conference this summer. As a teacher, my automatic reaction to almost any valuable topic is that we should put it in the classroom and teach it! … There’s already an abundance of materials and readings and resources devoted to public philosophy. Public philosophy activities give our discipline name recognition and it’s an opportunity for members of our community to hear students say “I’m here for my philosophy class to participate in project XYZ.” Students can practice communicating our concepts to the public and can consider non-academic career paths that put their philosophical skills into practice. There’s much more I can say about this but those are some of the over-arching objectives I’m bouncing around.

How do you see the future of philosophy? Do you find any trends disconcerting? Exciting?

Well, I’ve put all my eggs in the baskets of teaching and public initiatives so I can tell you that’s where I selfishly want to see the future of philosophy! It’s disconcerting to me that I have to explain what philosophy is when I meet people and I tell them I’m a “philosophy teacher.” And then, for the people who already know what philosophy is, the most common response I get is “wow, you don’t look like a philosopher!” There is still this vision of a philosopher as an old man with a tweed coat and a pipe getting lost in his thoughts just sitting in an armchair from within the safety and comfort of an ivory tower. I want the public to better understand the significance and value of our discipline- it’s not too much to ask and it’s also in the interest of our own self-preservation. I think better exposure of philosophy through teaching and public initiatives will help. I’ve already talked a lot about teaching but I also like putting my time and effort into public work because it gives us a seat at the table to lay down our contributions and show the world the rad skills that we possess. When I was at the Public Philosophy Network conference this past year to give a co-session on a teaching topic, there were two keynote presentations that struck me as crucial in how we should be proceeding on moving forward with public work… On the one hand, we had Dr. Justin Weinberg give a keynote on the urgency of protecting our expertise as philosophers before we set about bringing philosophy to the public pitched with messages that it is for “everyone” and that “everyone” can do it. I largely agree but if this is the case, then I am curious about the next natural step which is to define with more clarity “what exactly counts as philosophy expertise?” University professionals with a PhD in philosophy? Community college teachers with a Masters in philosophy? What? I am sensitive to this topic because I am almost always the only person in the entire room who doesn’t have a PhD and who operates in an industry geared exclusively towards higher education professionals and audiences. So, as I listened to Dr. Weinberg talk I was intensely wondering where he draws the line because… on the other hand, there was another keynote presentation by a Humanomics panel from Aalborg University who explained their current project of mapping actual “impact” in the social sciences. They developed a program that can trace/track impact for any given person in terms of the actual footprint they are making in the real world. It captures small things like the number of citations of your journal articles, how many students enroll in your classes, appearances at local service engagements and also the bigger things like mainstream news interviews or contributions to government policy proposals. This discussion of impact got me thinking…. who’s having a greater impact in the real world with their work? Is it me (with 200 students each semester and 400 followers on a “Study Philosophy” social media page) or is it a researcher (with maybe 60 students each semester and only a handful of people reading their scholarly research articles)? Impact is complicated when considering all the metrics of measurement but hearing about their project made me much more sympathetic to the idea that we need to be open enough with our definition of philosophy expertise to include researchers with PhD credentials AND teachers with Masters credentials AND people who are making acceptable impacts in different ways.

Thanks Michelle!

[interviewer: Cliff Sosis]

This interview has been edited for length. The full interview will be available at What Is It Like to Be A Philosopher?  

You can get early access to the interview and help support the project here.