TeachingUndergraduate Philosophy Clubs: Kenyon College and Capital University (Re)Create Department Culture and...

Undergraduate Philosophy Clubs: Kenyon College and Capital University (Re)Create Department Culture and Community

This will be an important year for your philosophy department’s culture. 

Current seniors at four-year, undergraduate, residential institutions, have not had a typical college experience. They were sent home after their very first semester; they spent their sophomore year learning virtually; they returned to their junior fall in masks; and they slugged through their junior spring drained and disoriented. For the Class of 2023, college has not lived up to their expectations. They feel cheated, and these feelings have made it hard to perform in class with the usual enthusiasm. They haven’t been “on board,” and how could they be? 

Things are even worse for the current juniors, the high school Class of 2020, who lost their senior proms, athletic seasons, and graduation ceremonies only to lose, on top of all of that, their first year at college. This group of students was especially hard hit by Covid. Where the Class of 2023 might be the class of resentment, the Class of 2024 is the class of despair. We attended to this fact in early 2020, but we often forget it now, two years later, when we face the rising juniors in our classes. 

The professors are not doing much better. Last spring, with university administrations, parents, and governments anxious to get everything back to “normal,” many of us found the term to be the most exhausting one of our careers. Instead of teaching to a uniform class of 25 students, it felt like we were tutoring 25 individuals, each with different challenges and needs. Many of us were expected to maintain the new Covid teaching practices: recording classes, allowing students to choose their preferred forms of assessment, forgiving extended absences, and slowing down our syllabi—all of which came with their own stresses and disruptions. Meanwhile, we were managing our own personal Covid after-effects: kids with catchup work to do for school, aging parents needing attention after two years alone, financial losses, and health scares, due both to Covid and the treatment delays caused by Covid. Finally, those personal challenges were emerging in relief against the low hum of the war in Ukraine, climate change, racial injustice, gun violence, and the continuing political threats to our fragile democracy. 

There was a swell of student feeling out there—the resentment that follows upon promises reneged, the numbness and gloominess that emerge from despair, and the anxiety and exhaustion that accompany precarity—that would be irrational for any professor to ignore.

This fall, everything has been steadily improving. But institutions and faculty are still struggling with the dilemma of whether to jettison Covid-era accommodations in the name of rigor, or whether to retain them in the related (but not identical) spirits of kindness and learning-centered pedagogy. Professors themselves are not yet at the top of their games. Reviews and projects are coming in late. People are backing out of service commitments. It’s becoming more common to ignore one’s email over nights and weekends. We’ve distilled our jobs down to core responsibilities. Few faculty members want to return to the frenzy and inequity of the before-time, when it was simply understood that work should be prioritized over caregiving, health, and wellness.

The Blog of the APA editors asked me to write a post about philosophy clubs, and it struck me how crucial a year it will be for such seemingly trivial, extra efforts. Every campus and every philosophy department has a culture. Department culture is passed down from juniors and seniors to sophomores and first-year students as they take their classes and run their co-curricular activities together. One of the things that makes Kenyon College such a pleasant place to teach, for example, is the way in which the students say, “Thank you, Dr. Bradner,” on the way out of every class, and the way they drift into your office hours to share something exciting unrelated to philosophy. They’re on board. One of the things that makes Capital University such a pleasant place to teach is the way in which the students so freely draw connections between their life experiences and discussion topics, and the way in which they are so willing to forgive their professors for missing a class due to a childcare emergency or medical appointment. They understand. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has interrupted this cultural transfer. Newer philosophy students were not able to witness the upper-level majors in action, either in class or at social events. Department hallways were empty during the pandemic and remained so last spring, despite the fact that everyone had returned. Unless faculty take careful and conscious steps this year to resuscitate and build culture, the pandemic will kill whatever was working for the department before the pandemic. The quiet distance among people last year was a loss, but it might also provide an opportunity. After all, some departments had toxic cultures. There were reasons why some philosophy departments had trouble recruiting non-white and non-male students to the major. For these departments, the Covid lapse offers a chance for cultural shift. Whether your department uses the coming year to revive its culture or change it, faculty engagement with students will play a key role.

I have had more than two years of experience with each of three undergraduate philosophy clubs, and additional experience with three more. Each club was different in its organization. One club involved a 90-minute, free-for-all discussion every other Friday afternoon, in which a triumvirate of majors invented a philosophical topic, and the entire faculty showed up to discuss that topic with 12–18 students and really good, really expensive snacks. Another club met only once a semester in the evening. One faculty member planned an accessible presentation about their work, while the rest of the faculty and 6–8 majors watched and ate a takeout dinner. The third club functioned primarily as a weekly lunch in the cafeteria, where 1–3 faculty members showed up each week to meet socially with 5–8 students–no philosophy required. All three of these clubs were successful, and all three had something in common: faculty buy-in. 

You have to remember back to when you first started philosophy. The professors were scary. They were aloof and weird. What could you possibly say to these people, who read the NYRB and had always seen the latest art film? Why would they ever want to talk to you? There are certainly thriving philosophy clubs out there that are completely student-run and that function as places for students to gather, without the faculty. But I don’t think these are the clubs that are going to save the discipline and solve our recruiting problems. This all sounds self-aggrandizing. But, again, remember back to your first experience with a truly impactful philosophy professor. It was a thrill. The person was a rock star. And when that person took the time to sit with you and talk to you, it made you feel like you had ideas, like you were growing. 

At this moment, during this very delicate post-Covid year, philosophy department faculty should make time for little things, little cultural fixes, like attending philosophy club events and talking to students outside of class. This is going to be taxing. We are emerging from a spring that was one of the worst on record and from a summer that wasn’t really a break. We started the fall term on empty. But we just have to dig deep, for our departments, for our students, and for the discipline. I’m not sure what the productive response is to precarity. But faculty contact is a meaningful response to student despair and resentment, a response that will soften both. Participating in your department’s philosophy club will improve your department’s culture by building community.

Here are a few suggestions for philosophy club organizers, who typically are senior majors, junior faculty, or adjuncts (i.e. people who do not have the power to compel senior faculty), and who struggle to deliver their tenured colleagues to club events:

  • Distribute by the end of the first week of class (at least) the semester schedule for your philosophy club events. Professors’ calendars are often set one year in advance. They have to travel to conferences, invited talks, grant review meetings, et al., and they have families with away soccer games and vacation plans that have to fit within all of these professional obligations. If your philosophy club event is on the department calendar before a senior faculty member receives a Doodle poll about a meeting, for example, there is a good chance the senior faculty member can schedule their professional meeting around your club activity.
  • Set up a meeting with the department chair to ask that they require every faculty member in the department to attend some minimum number of philosophy club events. The department chair can’t really require this, but they have more power than you. An authentic, impassioned plea from the chair at the first faculty meeting of the year (which features your complete and compelling event schedule) can make a real difference. Transforming individual students’ lives gives meaning to the teaching part—the important and socially vital part—of every professor’s job. 
  • Ensure that your first philosophy club event of the year goes well. There’s nothing more irritating to a faculty member than wasted time. If a faculty member shows up to your philosophy club event, and the only people there are the organizers and other faculty, the faculty member is thinking, ‘I see student x all the time. Why do they need me here, especially if faculty member y is here?’ Pack your first event with a mix of majors and new philosophy students. You can convince the majors to attend, because you know them, and you can always get a collection of first-year/intro students to attend, because they’re looking for social and academic connections. Next, once you know you’re going to have critical mass, work on the program. Philosophy club events are usually discussion-based. Make sure there aren’t going to be any boring breaks in the discussion by thinking through your topic (if there is one) ahead of time.
  • Promote your event in person. Email every faculty member to ask if you can visit their class for 5 minutes one week before the first event to introduce the philosophy club, distribute the year’s schedule, and describe the first event. While you are talking, ask the students to use their phones to complete a Google form with their contact info, level of interest, and availability. Do not pass out a sheet of paper and do not have everyone sign up on the same Google doc, because students will feel self-conscious about signing their names if no one else is signing up. Moreover, do not ask the faculty to distribute flyers, emails, or LMS announcements about your events. Visit classes in person. The faculty will not remember to pass along your announcements.
  • After the event, send an email to the faculty members who attended and thank them for coming. Philosophy faculty are generally people who want to make a difference in the world. They wouldn’t teach otherwise. Let them know you appreciate the time they took out of their tight schedules to help build community. It’s important to remember that most faculty members are not incentivized (at all) to perform departmental service. Whatever they are doing for the department they are doing out of the goodness of their hearts. Let them know you see their good works, that their extra effort matters to you.
  • Gather data that demonstrates the impact of your philosophy club. Can you show that your events are generating majors or students who take second courses after intro? Can you show that the number of students who attend philosophy club events is increasing? Can you show that the group of students who attend philosophy club events is the same group that tends to secure summer research awards, win graduation prizes, or earn undergraduate philosophy journal acceptances? This kind of data is impressive to your department and its faculty. Everyone wants to be involved in successful enterprises. The more you can demonstrate your impact, the more faculty will want to be a part of your initiative.
  • Limit your asks. It can’t be emphasized enough that faculty genuinely are busy. Don’t ask the same faculty members to support your philosophy club events again and again. Institutions often take advantage of service-oriented professors, at great cost to them. Be sure that you are contacting different faculty members to present and attend each philosophy club event.

It’s community and attention that makes philosophy departments special: the engaged and extended discussions faculty and students have with one another in classes, lectures, office hours, reading groups, hallways, meals, and philosophy club events. So many schools are anxious for departments to add high-impact practices to their pedagogy. But the teaching of philosophy has always been high-impact: the way we meet with students individually to develop their papers; the way we advise our majors to consider their education in the context of their whole person; the way we teach by asking students what they think. Attending philosophy club events is just another way to signal this care.

If you have additional ideas regarding how philosophy club organizers might encourage depleted faculty to carve out time for department community building, especially during this upcoming year, please add those ideas below in the comment section.

Alexandra Bradner
Visiting Assistant Professor at Kenyon College

Alexandra Bradner is an adjunct philosopher of explanation and understanding, care, and pedagogy who has taught more than 90 sections of 25 courses at institutions including Northwestern University, University of Michigan, Marshall University, Denison University, University of Kentucky, Bluegrass Community and Technical College, the Fayette County Public Schools (k-12), Eastern Kentucky University, Capital University, and Kenyon College. She served on the APA Board of Officers from 2014-18 as the chair of the APA Committee on the Teaching of Philosophy, and she presently serves as the Executive Director of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers.

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