We are excited to announce a new series profiling undergraduate philosophy clubs (UPCs) from universities and colleges across North America!
The goal of this series is to provide visibility for current UPCs and the great work they’re doing with the aim of encouraging other colleges and universities to provide more opportunities for undergraduates to get involved in philosophy department life.
UPCs provide space for students to explore philosophical topics of their own that sometimes get neglected in the traditional curriculum canon. They encourage and help cultivate students’ autonomy over their education and academic interests. For example, in the last year, Florida State’s UPC covered topics like social media ethics, experimental philosophy, Zen Buddhism, and Carnapian explication. UPCs also allow students to delve more deeply into topics that may have only been given a superficial treatment in their classes. A few students at Florida State’s UPC were covering evolutionary ethics in their seminars so they asked me to give a more technical talk on evolutionary debunking arguments and the metaphysics of goodness and we had a great time!
To this end, UPC meetings have another benefit in that they allow for more and deeper faculty-student interaction since faculty members, and even graduate students, serve as speakers or facilitators for discussions and meetings. They give students a larger glimpse into the life of the philosophy department. Our faculty members and graduate students regularly give talks and facilitate discussions on their current work. This turns out to be mutually beneficial since it allows students to hear some cutting-edge work and also lets faculty test out some nascent, philosophical ideas.
There are currently hundreds of UPCs listed on the APA Directory from across the US and Canada. If your institution’s UPC is not listed there, then please get in touch and we’ll be happy to add it to the directory.
Additionally, we are featuring a new UPC every month on the APA blog. If you are a UPC faculty advisor, we would love to hear what your club is up to and share your club’s story with the APA community.
Contact: paul.rezkalla (you know what goes here) gmail.com
