ASSESSMENT OF THE PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT AND ITS PROGRAMS           

i)                    The Undergraduate Major in Philosophy 

Department Mission Statement 

The Philosophy Department—as is true of the University as a whole—is dedicated to the mission of enabling students to develop intellectually, spiritually, ethically, and socially.  The Department attempts to familiarize students with the best of the philosophical tradition, with particular focus on Western philosophy.  The Department also encourages students to apply that tradition to current issues relevant to their lives and culture. 

In a recent North Central Self-Study the Department committed itself to the following goals: 

We hope to enhance the student’s knowledge of and respect for the freedom and dignity of the human person, to develop a strong concern for social issues, and to prepare the student to make a significant contribution toward a just and free society.  

The Department is also committed to helping students improve in areas such as the following: writing and thinking clearly, solving complex problems, dealing effectively with value questions, and learning to work cooperatively and effectively with others. 

ii) Department Assessment Statement

1. Assessment Summary: The Department is committed to the continuous assessment of our major program.  We want to be able to specify what we do well and what we want to improve in our major program.

In carrying out this assessment, we need to state the goals and objectives that our program achieves and then use sensible assessment methods that will enable us to check our success in achieving these goals and objectives. 

2.        Department Goals: We believe that our Department should do the following for our majors: 

a.       Our majors should be encouraged and assisted to read primary philosophical texts. 

b.       Our majors should be required to write thorough, cogent explanations of difficult philosophical texts. 

c.       Our majors should be required to write insightful, critical assessments of difficult philosophical texts. 

d.       On the basis of working with primary and secondary philosophical texts, our majors should become familiar with the more important figures and positions in the history of philosophy. 

e.       On the basis of working with primary and secondary philosophical texts, our majors should know some of the more important approaches to ethics and should be able to relate their own value systems to those approaches to ethics. 

f.        On the basis of their familiarity with the history of philosophical thought, our majors should become reflective individuals and should value the idea of living a “reflective” life.  To assist in this goal, the chair will counsel majors as soon as they identify themselves and will ask them to begin to assemble a “Philosophy Portfolio”, including course papers and other written work.  Majors will be encouraged to spend time reviewing their portfolio materials with their advisors. 

3.        Methods of Assessment   

a.       The Department, through the Chair, will annually monitor the syllabi of courses—especially the History of Philosophy courses—to establish that students are being required to read and then write about primary philosophical texts. 

b.       The Department, as delegated by the Chair, will annually collect samples of student writing from 100-, 200-, and 300-level courses.  This writing will be reviewed to determine whether or not the level of analysis is more sophisticated at the upper levels. 

c.       The Department, as delegated by the Chair, will annually check the writing done by majors in the Senior Seminar class.  This writing will be reviewed to check its sophistication in comparison to the writing done in other philosophy classes. 

d.       All writing assignments done by students in the Senior Seminar class are subject to review by all members of the Department.  They will be assessed annually by the faculty member teaching the senior seminar.  

e.       The Chair will monitor the transcripts of all graduating seniors who have earned either a minor, a second major, or a first major in philosophy.  This review of transcripts will enable the department to establish enrollment patterns, shifts in student interests, and strengths and weaknesses in student performance in various philosophy classes.  

f.        Every three to five years the Department will survey graduates who majored or minored in philosophy during the previous 10 years to determine their satisfaction with their undergraduate major/minor.  Results of the survey will form the basis of a discussion in the Department of the enduring effects of the major and minor for recent graduates.  

NOTE: Although each of the above items is directed at the assessment of our majors and our major program, the information gathered will, in many instances, also be helpful in determining the quality of our service to our minors and to the students who are neither majoring nor minoring in philosophy. 

NOTE: Meetings of the Department can be called through the chair at the request of any member. 

4.        Assessment of the Assessment Methods 

In preparation for the present program review, the Department reviewed our experience with the assessment plan we developed in 1998 (methods a-f above) to determine its effectiveness and its success.   

Our review indicated that we need to be more attentive to accomplishing the tasks associated with items a. and b.  One possibility discussed is that we should meet as a department for the presentation of the student senior seminar papers and engage in some discussion of the papers with the students as well.  

We also believe that we need to more regularly use the statement of major form to have students formally declare the philosophy major or second major as soon as they make the decision.  This will help assure that new majors (and perhaps minors too) receive the advice they need to complete their requirements in a timely manner and receive advice on course selection and sequencing.  This is especially important since most of our majors do not decide to major in philosophy until they are in sophomore or even junior year. 

We will continue to be attentive to collecting and reading examples of writing assignments done in the senior seminar.  Formalizing the process of collecting and reading them will help accomplish the goal of assessment method d, above.  

                Monitoring transcripts of majors and minors has not been used very much recently and needs to be regularized to see what might be learned from this strategy.  If we determine that such monitoring is not helpful we will eliminate it.   

                Method f, surveying recent graduates, was tried this past fall (2003).   The number of student returns was disappointing.  We plan to duplicate the survey again when we can do it in a more relaxed and thorough way, including follow-ups.  The few returns we did receive indicated a general satisfaction with the program and the faculty, although the numbers were so small that not much could be confidently concluded.  (See below for a copy of the survey instrument and an analysis of the results that we received.) 

iii) General Education  

As can be seen in the forms accompanying the Department’s Program Review each, the Department faculty takes seriously the specific skills, understandings, and attitudes identified for inclusion in each course.  A concerted effort is made to accomplish many of the general education goals by using a variety of specific pedagogical methods in our courses.  The various classroom methodologies and techniques (16 in all) are listed at the top of each General Education Compliance Grid.  They range from the more passive (from the student’s perspective), e.g., lecturing, listening to tapes or films to the more active, e.g., role playing, discussion, oral and written reports.   

Because so many of our offerings are listed as general education courses, the Department has been historically sensitive to the issue of general education goals and their accomplishment, as noted on the general education compliance grids submitted for each course (below) and observed in the syllabi for the more than 20 philosophy courses offered by the Department.  

The members of the Department believe that we are accomplishing important general education goals in many of our courses.  Referring to the Philosophy Department Comprehensive Summary of methodologies and techniques in general education, one can see the various ways we believe students in our classes are achieving the University-wide goals of general education.  This is especially true for: critical thinking (131 mentions), oral and written communication (77 and 65), understanding content in discipline areas other than philosophy (almost 150 total), encouraging freedom of inquiry and dissent (130), and self-responsibility (108). 

iv)

GENERAL EDUCATION COMPLIANCE GRID 

Grid Key:  Classroom methodologies and techniques used in each course as a way of meeting the general education requirements.

1.  Lecture                                       6.  Primary Text Analysis:  Written        11.  Discussion:  Small Group

2.  Written Reports:  Topics           7.  Secondary Text Analysis:  Written     12.  Role Playing

3.  Oral Reports:  Topics                 8.  Primary Text Analysis:  Oral              13.  Internet

4.  “Objective” Examinations          9.  Secondary Text Analysis:  Oral           14.  Video/Audio Tapes

5.  “Subjective” Examinations       10.  Discussion:  Overall                              15.  Films

                                                                                                                          16.  Group Projects

PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT COMPREHENSIVE SUMMARY 

Numbers refer to the number of times each general education goal was mentioned on the General Education Compliance Grids for the courses in the Philosophy Department in the 2004 Department Program Review.  Higher numbers refer to greater emphasis given to that goal in the philosophy program as a whole.  These self-reported numbers are offered not so much to demonstrate an accurate picture of Department activities but to show emphases and trends.

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