In 2017, I was teaching as an instructor of philosophy at Greenville University. As a small, liberal arts college, GU had a philosophy curriculum that had served it well over the years but had not been changed in any substantial way since the 1990s. This meant that the program as a whole was constantly trying to find ways to take older courses that were designed for very different students and make them work for the students we had in the program and at the university.
I gathered some initial informal data from students, asking majors and non-majors alike about the courses they were taking and about the topics they were interested in learning about. I also looked at both the student learning outcomes, program outcomes, and assessment work our department had done over the past few years. This allowed me to get a clear picture of what our needs were along with the limitations we would have to work within. Finally, I took a meeting with the Provost to get a vision for what he wanted from a philosophy program that would fit into the larger, educational mission of the university. With these tools in mind, I got to work.
The first task was determining what our program objectives would be going forward. We needed to update these to match what our vision for the curriculum would be rather than merely keep up with what had gone before. After crafting new program objectives to align with our school-wide student learning objectives, I started to map out the skills and content areas that would allow students to achieve these objectives upon completion of the course.
I also knew that our department needed to be mindful of the ways that philosophy had actively excluded non-Anglo/European voices and needed to understand philosophy from a more global perspective. As a result, the new courses I proposed - Global Philosophy, Philosophy of Gender Studies, and Philosophy of Art - all served that globalizing and inclusive purpose. Older courses that were necessary components such as History of Philosophy 2 were completely redesigned to fit into this larger programmatic goal.
I worked closely with my department chair who made the final pitch to the governing body for course or program changes and we were able to get just about everything approved. We were able to keep our major at a manageable size for our department and that allowed us to deliver courses in a way that was sustainable.
The result of the project was quite successful. Students taking the new courses or new versions of older courses said they appreciated the new approach and really enjoyed the new vision for the department. One student said that they were finally able to see themselves as a philosopher and appreciated the more global approach to the discipline.
If you would like further details on the project, I've included some PDFs of important documents in the process below. Some of the documents that would help tell the story I, unfortunately, don't have access to but these should provide a good overview of what we were aiming for with the program redesign.
I gathered some initial informal data from students, asking majors and non-majors alike about the courses they were taking and about the topics they were interested in learning about. I also looked at both the student learning outcomes, program outcomes, and assessment work our department had done over the past few years. This allowed me to get a clear picture of what our needs were along with the limitations we would have to work within. Finally, I took a meeting with the Provost to get a vision for what he wanted from a philosophy program that would fit into the larger, educational mission of the university. With these tools in mind, I got to work.
The first task was determining what our program objectives would be going forward. We needed to update these to match what our vision for the curriculum would be rather than merely keep up with what had gone before. After crafting new program objectives to align with our school-wide student learning objectives, I started to map out the skills and content areas that would allow students to achieve these objectives upon completion of the course.
I also knew that our department needed to be mindful of the ways that philosophy had actively excluded non-Anglo/European voices and needed to understand philosophy from a more global perspective. As a result, the new courses I proposed - Global Philosophy, Philosophy of Gender Studies, and Philosophy of Art - all served that globalizing and inclusive purpose. Older courses that were necessary components such as History of Philosophy 2 were completely redesigned to fit into this larger programmatic goal.
I worked closely with my department chair who made the final pitch to the governing body for course or program changes and we were able to get just about everything approved. We were able to keep our major at a manageable size for our department and that allowed us to deliver courses in a way that was sustainable.
The result of the project was quite successful. Students taking the new courses or new versions of older courses said they appreciated the new approach and really enjoyed the new vision for the department. One student said that they were finally able to see themselves as a philosopher and appreciated the more global approach to the discipline.
If you would like further details on the project, I've included some PDFs of important documents in the process below. Some of the documents that would help tell the story I, unfortunately, don't have access to but these should provide a good overview of what we were aiming for with the program redesign.
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