Philosophy Third Year Review Written Report

Evaluation Rubric

Attach 2004, 2005 annual reports

Attach an updated departmental philosophy assessment plan

Assessment contact person & author of report: Louise Collins

2005-06 Annual Report will be submitted in May, 2006, following exit interviews.

Summative Comments on Philosophy Department Educational Goals & Assessment:

Our educational goals for our majors have not changed since our last Third Year Review. Nor have the techniques used to measure our success in attaining those goals. We believe that the goals of education in philosophy are perennially relevant, and that our current assessment methods effectively capture our students' progress in learning through an appropriately dialogical and reflective method.

The data we have collected are included in the two attached annual reports, which also describe methods used, educational goals and conclusions drawn. Careful narrative analysis of each student's written portfolio and oral contributions in the exit interview continues to be the most useful way of evaluating our students' learning. Since we currently graduate only two or three majors each year, it is not excessively time-consuming to sample 100% of our seniors. Moreover, it also provides us with a helpful archival basis for writing letters of recommendation for students, some of whom make such requests a couple of years after graduation.

The principal conclusion we have drawn on the basis of our assessment work is that the philosophy department provides a sound education in philosophy for our students, and that our students appreciate our attention to their individual development.

However, a recurrent theme among graduating seniors' comments is that they wish we could offer more (or indeed, any) "majors-only" classes, since they somewhat resent having to spend class time filling in the non-philosophers on basics. Our majors are pleased by the faculty's generosity in providing one-to-one supervision of individual projects (using our PHIL P495 and P490 course numbers) as unpaid overloads. However, they would like the opportunity to pursue higher-level study in a class with other advanced majors (at present, we can schedule only 100, 200 and 300-level classes). The department encourages students to get involved with the philosophy club, as a way to meet this need for peer identification and feedback on students' "works-in-progress." Given existing resource levels, however, we cannot offer any majors-only classes. The department chair has also begun to hear some mild discontent about the number even of 300-level courses offered in each semester, as scheduling demands for service courses are increasing.

Philosophy Assessment Practices in a Changing Context.

There have been a great many changes in the way the philosophy department operates since the last Third Year Assessment Report, submitted in Summer of 2003, many of them the result of external changes. Below, I focus on three major changes with implications for student outcomes.

Curricular Changes
IU South Bend adopted new General Education requirements in 2003, effective for students joining the campus in fall 2005. In light of these changes, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences developed a new set of requirements for BA degrees, effective May 2006. These curricular changes are radically changing the context in which the philosophy department schedules classes, to serve both majors and non-majors. The philosophy department has already developed new courses, or revised existing courses in: Critical Thinking (PHIL P105, P110), Diversity in American Culture (REL R160), World Culture (PHIL P283), Literary & Intellectual Traditions (PHIL T-190, T-390) to meet the new Gen Ed requirements. We have also revised our minor in philosophy to complement the new CLAS BA requirements.

Meanwhile, there has been an explosion of interest in interdisciplinary studies, such as the minors in Religious Studies, Cognitive Science, and European Studies, and the Women's Studies Major, as well as the new T-190 Core Courses, for each of which the philosophy department offers some courses. There has also been an increasing demand for classes with a strong ethics component, such as P393 Nursing Ethics, which is required for Nursing students, (now offered three times a year) and the new course in Information and Computer Ethics that Computer Science asked us to develop (now offered every year). We are also expected to begin offering more courses at the Elkhart campus, to meet the General Education needs of beginning students there, particularly in Critical Thinking courses.

These curricular changes are, for the most part, welcome to us. They afford us many opportunities to engage with students who might not otherwise consider taking classes in philosophy. However, the philosophy department is very concerned that we continue to be able to serve our majors, as well as contributing service courses to campus and college needs. It is extremely difficult to find adequately-qualified, adjunct philosophy instructors during the regular academic year. To continue to deliver a sound philosophical education to our majors, we must at least retain all five existing tenure lines, and, when possible, add another position to offset the increased demand for service courses.

Advising Changes
Meanwhile, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty have been called upon to advise students newly-admitted to IU South Bend, with the abolition of University Division. Thus, faculty find themselves learning about the mysteries of the math placement exam, transfer agreements with other schools, new advising software, and so forth, while coping with the three different sets of requirements for the BA currently in play. Some philosophy faculty advise both students who are entirely new to the campus, and unsure of which BA they will pursue (the so-called "Undecided CLAS" students), as well as new and returning philosophy majors. Thus, we are now advising students earlier in their academic careers at IU South Bend, on all aspects of their degree progress, not just their major field. CLAS has also developed additional tracking systems to ensure that faculty advisors know when their advisees have difficulties in any classes, or fail to re-enrol each semester, and take steps to contact students. All these factors have increased the amount of faculty time spent on advising students. We hope that this increased faculty effort will strengthen students' academic success and their identification with the department: It will take some time before this is manifest in assessment. The impact on faculty time and energies for other obligations is already clear.

With the able assistance of Suzanne Meyer of the CLAS Advising Center, the philosophy department is updating its advising tools to reflect the new BA and Gen Ed requirements. Also, since our newest students typically regard the internet as a primary reference tool, we have become more assiduous in keeping departmental information for students online up to date. We also now e-mail, rather than send, the letter reminding each major to come in and be advised each semester, and include a newsletter, to build student identification with the department.

Personnel Changes
The philosophy department has undergone some major changes in personnel. We are fortunate to have hired Drs. Fleming (Fall 2003) and Shrader (Fall 2004), to replace retiring senior faculty Drs. Robbins and Naylor, and we hope to be allowed to hire a replacement when Mike Washburn leaves in May 2007. In a small department such as ours, recruiting a tenure-track faculty member becomes the major task of any year in which one is hiring and it does not leave a great deal of time for other departmental projects. Thus, we look forward to a period two years hence, when our core faculty has again stabilized, and we can direct more energy to assessment and related projects.

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