Program name: Philosophy

Report prepared by: Lyle Zynda, Acting Chair

Who is the current Assessment contact for your department? Lyle Zynda

Should assessment information be sent to anyone else in your department? Louise Collins, Chair

1. What are the program’s educational goals?

The Philosophy Department aims to enable and encourage its students:

• To learn how to think clearly, critically, and logically;
• To cultivate reflective inquiry and to deepen insight;
• To learn how to express ideas effectively and clearly both as writers and as speakers;
• To become acquainted with the history of philosophy and to explore general questions about the
nature of existence, the scope of knowledge, the meaning of life, and the bases of morality;
• To understand other fields of inquiry or endeavor by taking courses in areas such as medical
ethics, business ethics, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of art, and the philosophy of
religion;
• To prepare for graduate work in philosophy, religious studies, law, the ministry, social work,
health services, and other areas; and, more generally,
• To prepare for life and career by getting one of the best all-around undergraduate educations
available.

2. What assessment techniques did the program use?

Graduating seniors chose either to complete a proseminar project or to submit a portfolio of papers
written in philosophy classes. The graduating seniors and the philosophy faculty participated in a bilateral
exit interview in April, 2008.

• Proseminar: No student chose to pursue a proseminar project.
• Portfolio: Two BA students each submitted a portfolio consisting of four or five papers written in
philosophy classes and participated in a two-hour exit interview in April, 2008. Both graduated in
May 2008.

All portfolio papers for each student were read by the full-time philosophy faculty to determine how the
student had matured in philosophical understanding, analytical and reflective abilities, and written
expression during the student's undergraduate years at IU South Bend. All full-time faculty participated in
the exit interviews, and discussed them verbally with each other afterward. Lyle Zynda, Acting Chair,
took special responsibility to produce a written evaluative report (see attached Appendix), which was
circulated to all full-time faculty.

The rationale for the Department's procedure for evaluating graduating students as described above is as
follows. Within the discipline, key measures of philosophical competence are how well an individual
argues in written and oral form. A good philosophical argument requires extensive background
knowledge, appropriate use of key concepts and the ability to deploy a repertoire of philosophical skills.

Thus, by careful reading of student portfolios or proseminar paper, and attentive conversation with
graduating students, we were able to evaluate the development of our major's philosophical skills. (These
are the same methods used within the discipline in decisions about whether to hire or promote an
individual philosopher, and whether to publish a philosophical article, or to accept a paper for a juried
conference).

3. What has your program done with assessment information this year?

Assessment information from this year was circulated to all full-time faculty members and will be
discussed in the first departmental meeting of the 2008-2009 academic year. Since the students
interviewed expressed satisfaction with the department's program, and verbal discussions among the
faculty after the exit interviews were highly positive regarding the two students graduating in May and
what they'd achieved (see the Appendix for further details), the Department does not plan significant
revisions in its requirements or course offerings at this time.

4. After reflecting on assessment activities in your unit, as a result of assessment what are two issues
you would like to address?

In recent years, the Philosophy Department has added more requirements to its major (e.g., required
courses in both ancient and modern philosophy), and new general education courses have been added as
well. The ability of the Department to provide both an excellent grounding in philosophy for its majors,
e.g., as preparation for graduate and professional programs, and to serve the broader student population's
general education needs, needs to be considered carefully. In particular, the question has arisen
concerning how T-190 and T-390 courses should relate to the philosophy major and minor. These courses
have broader interdisciplinary focus, and so it is worth considering when and in what manner these
courses ought to count toward the major and minor, since a course that draws on literature related to
metaphysical questions from a variety of fields, and primarily aimed at non-majors, might not have the
rigor or coverage that would adequately prepare a major for graduate school in philosophy, compared to a
traditional metaphysics course. The two graduating majors did not face this issue, since they were under
the older requirements, but the Department anticipates that soon we will have to face this question.

Second, though the two students graduating in May did not mention it, the Department continues to
consider the issue of how to provide a more cohesive experience among our majors, which promotes their
intellectual interactions with one another as a group. We face this issue because even our upper-level
courses sometimes have more non-majors than majors. Some past graduating students (though not this
year's) have remarked that having too many non-majors holds back how detailed discussions can get.