What kinds of department initiatives can grad students and faculty easily put on to improve climate, help students develop their skills as philosophers and teachers, and make the community happier and more balanced as a whole? At the Minorities and Philosophy session at the 2019 Eastern APA, four presentations addressed these questions based on experience in their departments. In this blog post, we outline lessons learned from the session, focusing on practical suggestions for how people can implement similar initiatives in their home departments and see changes towards a kinder, more inclusive culture.
Read on to learn about department climate surveys, writing workshops for undergraduates and graduate students, and wellness advising! We hope you find inspiration here to make your department a better place. If you have any questions, e-mail mapforthegap@gmail.com.
MAP will also be hosting a group session at the Pacific APA on “Creating Inclusive Spaces” on April 19 from 7-10PM. You can find more details here. Also check out our website, and follow us on facebook, twitter, and instagram.
Climate Surveying
This mini-workshop was led by Savannah Kincaid and Isaac Wilhelm (Rutgers).
A necessary first step to improve the profession is finding out what is going wrong. That much seems obvious. But how do we find out? Climate surveys are a good way to do so at the departmental level, as Isaac Wilhelm and Savannah Kincaid (Rutgers) explained. At Rutgers, the graduate-student run climate committee runs a survey of all graduate students on their experience in the department every other year. This includes questions on overall happiness, integration in the community, levels of engagement with faculty, negative experiences ranging from aggressiveness to inappropriate romantic interest, and witnessing racism, sexism, or other discriminatory behavior. You can access all questions here.
This survey is fully anonymous, which allows people to share facts about their experience which they might not feel comfortable doing otherwise. This yields an accurate depiction of departmental climate. The data is then analysed by an external statistician who compiles a report of all results, including summaries of write-in boxes and results by gender (if numbers for other minority demographics were larger, there would also be a comparative analysis of results along those dimensions).
This report is shared with all faculty and graduate students, and discussed at a faculty meeting and at a graduate student town hall with an external moderator. The survey therefore allows the department to collect valuable information on what aspects of graduate students’ lives are in need of reform, and scaffolds discussion of means to improve climate. This makes it a central tool in improving the lives of graduate students, and making the department a happier and more equitable place.
Writing for Philosophy Graduate Students
This mini-workshop was led by Darby Vickers (UC Irvine)
As graduate students in philosophy, we are expected to produce a massive amount of professional writing. Yet, graduate programs rarely offer classes on professional philosophical writings (dissertation, journal articles, research papers, etc.), and there is a dearth of detailed writing guides aiming to teach philosophy graduate students how to improve their writing process and productivity. On top of that, academic philosophy commands a writing style distinct from other humanities and social sciences fields, making philosophical writing (understandably) hard to learn for many. This phenomenon disproportionally affects students coming from historically underrepresented groups in philosophy, who might not have incorporated the norms of philosophical writing.
Darby Vickers (UC Irvine) shared her work-in-progress of designing a writing workshop for philosophy graduate students, adapted from a quarter-long writing workshop in the social sciences by Professor Barbara Sarnecka (Psychology, UC Irvine). Here are some main tips and resources that Darby shared on improving the writing process and productivity:
- It is important to identify writing projects and the concrete steps you need to take using plans of different levels. The Individual Development Plan is a plan for the next 1-5 years, which tracks what your individual research projects look like in the future. The Term Plan details general tasks for every week of the current academic term. You can further design a weekly calendar with blocked-out time for writing and keep a daily log.
- Company while writing can make the writing process fun! Here are several things you can do with a group of writing buddies:
- The Rejection Collection is a fun way to encourage each other to write more, apply to more things, and hopefully receive more opportunities. Add to the collection when you receive a rejection letter, and when the rejection letters reach 100, a party!
- Communal Writing Time: 30 minutes to an hour of designated communal writing time per week can be extremely soothing. A roomful of folks silently writing can encourage you to get into the writing mindset.
- Group Troubleshooting Session: members of the writing group share issues they have been having with their writing, research, time management, etc. and the rest of the group provides constructive suggestions (and solidarity). Many heads are better than one.
Wellness Advising in Difficult Spaces
This mini-workshop was led by Lisa Miracchi (University of Pennsylvania)
Graduate students face intense pressure to be academically competitive, especially in a difficult job market. This can lead us to adopt unhealthy work habits and attitudes. These challenges are often particularly pronounced for underrepresented groups in philosophy, who also face issues like stereotype threat and other concerns that add to the emotional size of a task. It’s thus particularly important to challenge prevailing stereotypes of what success looks like, which often focus on external validation and promote self-negligence and thus lead to unhealthy lifestyle and work choices.
To work toward challenging these stereotypes, Professor Lisa Miracchi (University of Pennsylvania) created the role of Wellness Advisor at the University of Pennsylvania. The primary role of a wellness advisor is to support graduate students in the program by providing informal advice and counseling on issues related to well-being. More concretely, this involves visiting the first year proseminar to give a presentation on wellness, one-on-one meetings and periodic wellness check-ins, and working with faculty to help students stay on track. In cases where a student is at risk of falling behind in the program,the wellness advisor often has relevant information regarding the student’s situation that she can discuss with relevant faculty in general terms and explain how the student can be best supported; the student then does not have to navigate the issue on their own or disclose details directly to committee members. Finally, the wellness advisor also serves as a departmental liaison to other university-wide wellness initiatives and works on affirming policies and initiatives, such as gender-neutral bathrooms.
Miracchi has compiled a number of resources that can be used for students interested in promoting an attitude of self-care and cultivating healthy work habits as well as for departments interested in introducing the role of a faculty wellness advisor. We encourage both students and faculty to make use of these wonderful resources!
Undergraduate Mentorship Through Reading and Writing Workshops
This mini-workshop was led by Olivia Branscum, Qian Cao, Yarran Hominh, and Mariana Beatriz Noe
The mission of MAP has always placed a high emphasis on developing networks of allyship between graduate and undergraduate students, with the goal of developing mentorship programs for supporting underrepresented undergraduates in academic philosophy. This is an extremely challenging mission, given that the level of interest in pursuing graduate degrees in the humanities, for various structural reasons, has dwindled in recent years. Philosophy has been no exception.
To address these and similar challenges, the graduate students at the MAP Chapter at Columbia University have recently organized two graduate student run reading and writing workshops, targeted specifically at first-time philosophy undergraduates. During the first workshop, the organizers discussed basic writing skills and shared useful techniques for reading and dissecting philosophical texts. This was followed in the second workshop with a more extensive discussion of how to engage critically with philosophical writing. During this event, undergraduate participants were asked to apply the techniques discussed in the first workshop, as they read the work of their peers in small group settings, and under the supervision and guidance of a graduate facilitator. You may learn more about the structure of the workshops here and review the notes and handouts that the Columbia MAP organizers have compiled here.
Discussion
We recognize that efforts like these, in most cases, demand service contributions beyond what the burdened schedules of members of under-represented groups in the profession can handle. As such, these projects have to be approached on the basis of considerations that vary from context to context. Nonetheless, the value and significance of this work cannot be understated, and we commend the devotion of our allies for facilitating such efforts for undergraduate and graduate students. The mission of MAP is to address issues of underrepresentation in the profession. The project of diversifying philosophy, and developing inclusive spaces for practitioners of all backgrounds, benefits greatly from the work of mentorship that both takes place in individual and one-on-one bases, and also through collectively organized efforts like those discussed above.
The session also sparked an important and timely discussion about the distribution of service work in departments, particularly among underrepresented groups. In light of this discussion, MAP has created a survey for graduate students about whether and how service work is recognized and compensated within their departments. You can fill it out by April 5. We will write up and circulate a report and recommendations by May.
As a reminder, we encourage you to join us at our Pacific APA Group Session on April 19! If you have suggestions for future APA group session themes, please email us at mapforthegap@gmail.com!
Acknowledgement This post benefited greatly from the resources provided by Olivia Branscum, Qian Cao, Yarran Hominh, Savannah Kincaid, Lisa Miracchi, Mariana Beatriz Noe, Isaac Wilhelm, and Darby Vickers.
Carolina Flores
Carolina is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at UC Santa Cruz. She works at the intersection of philosophy of mind, epistemology, and social philosophy.
Keyvan Shafiei
Keyvan Shafiei is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Philosophy Department at Georgetown University. Their interests primarily lie at the intersection of social ontology, social epistemology, philosophy of culture, and political philosophy. Their dissertation project examines the cultural underpinnings of mass incarcerations, and the ways in which cultures and persons epistemically and ontologically interact.
Found this really interesting, thanks for sharing!