San Francisco State University ACADEMIC PROGRAM REVIEW SELF-STUDY. Philosophy Department. September 26, 2013

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1 San Francisco State University ACADEMIC PROGRAM REVIEW SELF-STUDY Philosophy Department PROGRAMS: M.A. in Philosophy September 26, 2013 The enclosed self-study report has been reviewed by the faculty of the instructional unit and is now submitted for external review. Drafts have been read and deemed ready for external review by: CollegeDeati Signature 1ft.7/(3 ~Date Associate Vice President Academic Planning and Educational Effectiveness Signature Date Dean of Graduate Studies Signature Date

2 PHILOSOPHY SELF-STUDY, AY '07/'08- '12/'13 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 The Executive Summary page SFSU Standards Met! Table 1: Summary of Standards Met 1.2 Summary of Implementation offifth Cycle Recommendations 1.21 Graduate Program Recommendations from MOU 1.22 Graduate Program Recommendations from External Consultants 1.23 General Recommendations from MOU 1.24 Undergraduate Program Recommendations 1.3 Executive Summary of Sixth Cycle Recommendations 1.31 CmTicular Planning Recommendations 1.32 Faculty Recommendations 1.33 Student Support and Enhanced Opportunities Recommendations 1.34 Program Administration Recommendations 2 Profile of the Program page 22 a 2.1 History of the Philosophy M.A. Program 2.2 Mission and Character of the Philosophy M.A. Program Table 2: Most Heavily Enrolled MA. Programs (APA data, 2012) Table 3: Enrollments in the Five CSU MA. Programs (APA data, 2012) 2.21 SFSU M.A. Program: Mission and Admission 2.22 Admissions Data Table 4: Philosophy Admissions Data Table 5: Comparison of Philosophy and History Admissions Data Table 6: Graph Comparing Philosophy and History Admissions Data 1

3 2.3 The M.A. Program in the Context of the Academic Unit 2.31 Symbiosis: A Solution for the Challenge of Growth during Economic Adversity 2.32 Resource Allocation among the Department's Instructional Programs 2.33 Enrollment Data Table 7: Philosophy FTES, FTEFs, SFRs, Fall '07 through Spring ' Lecturer's Graduate Level Participation 2.35 Course Distribution 2.36 Graduate Program Course Distribution 2.37 Graduate Student Enrollment: Is There an Ideal Number? 2.38 Non-Ideal Enrollment Planning 3 Admission Requirements page Evidence of Prior Academic Success 3.2 Evidence of Competent Writing 3.21 Scoring Criteria for Level One (Admissions Stage) 3.22 How Writing Sample Assessment Affects Admission 3.3 English Preparation of Non-Native Speakers 3.4 Overview of Program Admissions Policy 4 Program Requirements page 47 Table 8: Course Rotation Schedule 4.1 Number of Course Offerings 4.2 Frequency of Course Offerings 4.3 Path to Graduation 4.4 Course Distribution 2

4 4.5 Class Size Table 9: Enrollment in Graduate Seminars: '07- '08 through ' Number of Graduates Table 10: Number of Graduates 4.7 Overview of Program Quality and Sustainability Indicators 5 Faculty Requirements page Number offaculty in Graduate Program Table 11: Graduate contact hour class teaching, by Graduate Faculty member and by semester, F' 07 -S ' Graduate Coordinators 6 Program Planning and Quality Improvement Process page Quality Improvement 6.2 Compliance with University Requirements 6.3 Assessment 6.4 Collegiality 7 The Student Experience page Philosophy Department Graduate Student Diversity Table 12.a. Department of Philosophy MA. Students: Gender by Ethnicity Table 12.b. SFSU Total Graduate Programs: Gender by Ethnicity Table 12. c. SFSU Total Gender by Ethnicity Table 13: Student Population Diversity, Philosophy, SFSU Graduate, and SFSU Total Table 14: Top-Ten Philosophy MA. Program Demographic Data Assessment of Student Learning Table 15: Philosophy MA. Program Student Learning Outcomes 7.22 The Basic Structure of the Philosophy M.A. Program 3

5 7.23 Assessment Data Table 16: Overall Phil 896 Exam Results Table 17: Individual Phil 896 Exam Results Table 18: No. Students Completing Thesis and Oral Defense 7. 3 Advising 7.31 Prospective Students Incoming Students 7.33 PHIL 715 Students 7.34 Thesis Students 7.35 Evaluation 7.4 Writing Proficiency Table 19: PHIL 715 Course Schedule Table 20: Successful PCE Submission by Semester 7.5 The Culminating Experience 7.51 Level Two Written English Proficiency 7.52 Faculty Reflection on Culminating Experience 7.6 Overview of Program Quality Indicators 7.61 PhD Admissions 7.62 Teaching Positions 7.63 Fellowships and Awards 8 The Program and the Community page Professional Engagement of Students and Alumni 8.2 Civic Engagement 8.3 Equity and Social Justice 8.31 Courses 8.32 Faculty 8.33 Curricular Expansion 4

6 8.4 Internationalization Courses Faculty 8.43 Students 8.44 Study Abroad 9 The Faculty Experience page Graduate Faculty Statistics 9.11 Graduate Faculty Diversity Table 21: SFSU Graduate Faculty Distribution, Rank and Sex Table 22: SFSU Graduate Faculty Distribution, Ethnic and Under Represented Groups 9.12 Graduate Faculty Homogeneity Table 23: SFSU Graduate Faculty Age Distribution 9.2 Professional Achievement 9.21 Competitive Recognition of Philosophy Graduate Faculty by Year 9.22 Student Involvement in Professional Activity 9.3 Faculty Workload, Supervision of Culminating Experience, and other Supervision Table 24: Supervision of Thesis and Independent Study 9.4 Discipline Specific Standards for Teaching Graduate Courses 9.5 Interdisciplinarity 9.6 Overview of Faculty Quality Indicators Table 25: Summary of Faculty Quality Indicators 10 Resources page Internal Resources Support for Research Supplies/Equipment Speakers and other Scholarly Events Library Resources Non-Faculty Staffing 10.2 External Funding 5

7 APPENDICES Appendix A: Department Admissions Application page 109 Appendix B: Seminar Schedule, Topics and Instructors page 113 Appendix C: Graduate Student Roadmap/Timelines A Y page 121 Appendix D: Assessment Report, Including Rubrics page 138 Appendix E: Letters from a Sample of the Diverse Philosophy Graduate Student Population page 171 Gary Bengier (M.A. '11/' 12, former CFO, EBay; Chairman, Bengier Family Foundation) Jonathan Chen (M.A. '12/'13, full-time lecturer, CSU Sacramento) Matt Heeney (M.A. '11/' 12, entering Columbia University philosophy doctoral program*) Sylvia Koceida (M.A. '11/' 12, second-year doctoral student, Chapel Hill, Ford Foundation Fellowship winner) John McBlair ( current student, high school teacher) Andy Peterson (M.A. '10/' 11, third-year doctoral student; Vanier Fellowship winner) Leborah Spence ( current student, sharecropper's granddaughter, drug rehabilitation counselor) Jen White ( current student, applying to doctoral programs) * Almost all our students hold full or part-time jobs to pay for their M.A. studies. A common pattern, which Matt Heeney exemplifies, is to front-load completing coursework, including the thesis, so as to keep fees to a minimum, then, in the Fall following award of the degree, to work full-time to afford doctoral program application costs and to focus on creating a writing sample. Our faculty remain committed to guiding out M.A. holders when they apply to graduate programs; doing so increases student career success, but increases faculty workload as well. Appendix F: Graduate Faculty CVs Full Professors Mohammad Azadpur Anita Silvers Bas van Fraassen Associate Professors Pamela Hood Isabelle Peschard Alice Sowaal Asta Sveinsdottir Justin Tiwald Kevin Toh Shelley Wilcox Assistant Professors David Landy Carlos Montemayor page 189 Lecturers Abrol Fairweather Michael Sudduth 6

8 1.0 THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1.1 SFSU Standards Met! The Philosophy M.A. program meets all university quality standards, except the size standard for courses classified as seminars. This standard was breached for part of the Sixth Cycle. The explanation contains a lesson about the limitations of planning, or at least a caution about the role of resilience in response to uncontrollable change. Our difficulty in keeping seminar size to 15 students is traceable to the Spring '10 CSU system-wide embargo on admissions. The erstwhile Spring '10 entering class therefore was delayed in entering till the next Fall, along with the regular Fall '10 class, and as a result the Philosophy graduate faculty found itself with a Fall' 10 entering M.A. class that was 40% larger than any previous one. As this unusually large cohort moved through the program, average seminar size peaked to seats, but subsequently has been moving steadily back down toward the desired 15 seat cap. Of course, no philosophy graduate level class has ever reached, let alone breached, the SFSU standard that graduate level classes must not exceed 30 seats. Table 1 -Summary of standards met Indicator Standard How standard is met Page where this is discussed University-wide standards 3.0 ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS 3.1 Evidence of Prior 3.00 GPA and Higher 100% meet standard. Academic Success No exceptions. 7

9 Promising GPA deficient pp students may take undergrad courses through OPEN UNIVERSITY on advisement to repair GPA 3.2 Evidence of Other: Writing Sample, 100% meet standard pp Competent Writing philosophy paper or other theoretical paper 3.3 English Preparation of TEOFL 100%meet standard p.46 Non-Native Speakers 4.0 PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS 4.1 Number of course 2 graduate courses/semester 100% met. Av. over 5 offerings yrs, is 5.5 contact hour graduate courses per semester, Av. over last 2 years is 7 contact hour graduate courses each semester p Frequency of course At least once /2 yrs All required courses offerings offered every semester, New electives introduced regularly so as to keep up with new developments in the field. pp Path to graduation Published map leading to Yes pp graduation in 5 ½ time attendance 4.4 Course distribution on Proper distribution of grad, Yes. For 33 unit degree p. 52 GAP paired and undergrad program, students courses graduating SP '13 averaged 30 graduate units; modal number of graduate units= 27. No paired courses. 4.5 Class size Enroll 8-30 and 5-15 for In past 6 years, average pp seminars class size was 18.57, modal class size was 19, average class size peaked at in F '11, down to 17 in F '12 and SP '13. No class reaches 30 students, 4.6 Number of graduates Average of 5 graduates per Average of 18.4 graduates pp year per year over last 5 years 8

10 5.0 FACULTY REQUIREMENTS 5.1 Number of Faculty in Minimumof2 12 Graduate Faculty pp. 55 Graduate Program(s) 5.2 Number of Faculty per Minimum of I n/a Concentration Program-Specific Indicators and Standards Indicator Standard met? Page where discussed 6.0 PROGRAM PLANNING PROCESS Yes pp THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE Yes pp THE PROGRAM AND THE COMMUNITY Yes pp THE FACULTY EXPERIENCE Yes pp I 0.0 RESOURCE SUPPORT FOR THE PROGRAM See narrative pp Summary of Implementation of Fifth Cycle Recommendations MOU and External Consultants' Report The 2008 MOU that followed the 2007 Fifth Cycle program review focused mainly on undergraduate programs, both baccalaureate degree and general education service programs. In this section of the 2013 self-study, we begin with MOU items that directly address the M.A. program. We add two important recommendations about the graduate program from the external consultants' report. Then we continue with MOU items that address the department's programs generally, and end with MOU items that affect only the undergraduate programs Graduate Program Recommendations from MOU The recommendation of the External Consultants, endorsed by the Department, that a graduate seminar/workshop on professional-level writing in Philosophy should be acted on at the earliest possible date. 9

11 Done! We designed and implemented a required professional-level writing seminar, which has been added to the curriculum. This requirement has been a great success. We have seen an upsurge in students who have papers accepted for conferences and publications while they are in our program, and a reduction in time to degree for students who have been subject to this new requirement. Academic Affairs appreciates the creative and forward-thinking proposal that the Department is considering with regard to interdisciplinary work in comparative political and legal thought. We urge the Department to move forward cautiously given the additional workload that such a program may incur. Moving Slowly. The state budget crisis that began soon after we completed the 2007 program review, the dis1uptions caused by university reorganization, and the demands of preparing General Education approval submissions (many of which were 30+ pp. long) for forty undergraduate courses all have delayed our preparing a program change proposal for a new concentration in comparative political thought and law in the M.A. program. Nevertheless, we have followed through on our strategic planning in preparation for advancing a formal request to establish such a concentration. We now have internationally recognized tenured/tenure track faculty who are expert in global justice and global human rights conceptualizations, in classical Chinese political philosophy, in immigration theory, and in the foundations of law. We also have executed an MOU with the Legal Research Institute of the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City to collaborate on a series of workshops on philosophical issues related to constitutional law and have instituted an internship program for students interested in various aspects of legal studies. Our improved faculty expertise and other opportunities to study political and legal thought currently support high demand student learning at both the undergraduate and graduate level, including electives for the Criminal Justice program and for Sexuality Studies, and required courses for Global Peace Studies. We now are much better able to facilitate our own undergraduate majors' interests in careers in the law and their applications to law schools. For a variety of reasons, including the advisability for the department's future of building a more economically diverse group of alumni, we would like to move ahead carefully to gain formal recognition of a graduate level concentration in political and legal thought, so as to better 10

12 serve post-baccalaureate students headed for law school and/or public service careers. See detailed recommendation in Chapter X. The Department is encouraged to work with University Advancement in continuing to develop strong ties with its alumni. Done! We worked with University Advancement to execute one annual fund type mailing to alumni. It takes a while for such efforts to bear fruit, but in A Y '12/' 13 the department chair was contacted by attorneys in Colorado about an alumni' s bequest. After initial discussions with the relevant executor, she turned the matter over to University Advancement. Recently, Dean Sherwin was notified that the bequest will be about $300,000, to be used for graduate student tuition scholarships. We also include successes of alumni as well as current students and faculty on our webpage. We would like to expand this method for strengthening ties with alumni. In the last few years, changes throughout the university have created needs to comply with many new internal university procedures, generated by different administrative units, just to keep the instructional programs operating. External fundraising has had to be given a low priority. A proposal to restart fundraising is included in the Resources section Graduate Program Recommendations from External Consultants The Department should consider adding a second semester of logic. This topic also arose in discussion with the majors. A more advanced logic course, including modal and intensional logics, as well as more metatheory than they would get in an introductory course, would serve them well if they go on to grad school. Done, and more! We have added two advanced logic courses - Advanced Logic Workshop and Philosophical Logic Workshop - which are well enrolled. They are taught by Prof. van Fraassen, former editor of Journal of Symbolic Logic, and their availability is one of the reasons our applications from students with B.A.s from top philosophy departments have increased. No other CSU approaches offering such excellent opportunity to study logic. The new graduate teaching assistant training program should be supported and expanded to include components aimed at introductory 11

13 philosophy courses. This recommendation constitutes a major 'cultural' change, made possible by the Department's turnover. A department in which full-time lecturers played perhaps too great a role is trying to become one in which lecturers play the proper role of 'adjunct' faculty, valued members of the department who can provide particular expertise; and in which introductory courses can be given to graduate students, who thus receive valuable teaching experience. We strongly support this recommendation. Done! Prior to the time of our last self-study, we did not have a proper GTA program. There was no instruction in teaching and no supervision. The few GTAs sank or swam in isolation. We now have a formal, rigorous, well-supervised GTA training program. In the year of the exte1nal consultants' visit, Professor Wilcox joined the department and brought the initial format for such a program with her from her previous tenure-track position; she supervises the GT As. During the six years covered by the Sixth Cycle self-study, eighty-five graduate students have participated in the GTA program. GT As must enroll in PHIL 718, which provides regular teaching workshops in which the GT As learn about different aspects of teaching philosophy. Every semester we run the GTA Teaching Effectiveness Evaluation Forms (TEEFs) separately and are pleased to report that the scores compare favorably with those of long-time lecturers. The teaching portfolios graduate students compile during their education as GT As have proven to be invaluable career assets for them General Recommendations from MOU The Department should consider developing a formal formative mentorship plan for new faculty. Done! Our faculty considered this recommendation and concluded that flexible, informal mentoring is preferable to formal assignment of mentors, especially as for almost all of the post-2007 review period the only full professors in the department were Professor Silvers and Professor van Fraassen. Both provide guidance freely to younger faculty. Professor Azadpur, who was promoted to Associate Professor early in the current review period and has just been promoted to Full Professor, chairs the RTP Committee and guides colleagues through their personnel processes. Professor Silvers guided Professor Azadpur in regard to promotion to full 12

14 professor, and now he in turn is guiding the colleague who will come up for promotion to full professor this coming year. We urge each faculty member to reach out to those who are at earlier stages of professional development. In cases in which a new faculty member seems perplexed by SFSU student expectations and demeanor, Professors van Fraassen, Tiwald, and Wilcox have been especially helpful, with the result that any problem any first year probationary faculty member has experienced with teaching in the SFSU context has been effectively fixed. That our broad-based mentoring approach works very well is further evidenced by the successes our younger faculty have had, both in winning Presidential Awards and other competitively granted support, and in gaining tenure and promotion. Several, indeed, have been granted early tenure, based on extraordinarily strong performances across all three categories. The external reviewers noted that some required courses in the Department have not been offered with sufficient frequency in several years. Academic Affairs notes with appreciation that this matter was addressed by the Department in and will continue to be addressed in in conjunction with the arrival of additional stellar new f acuity. Done! The courses at issue were undergraduate courses required for the major and as pre-requisites for the graduate program. The problem is fixed. Courses satisfying every requirement and every pre-requisite for every degree program offered by the department are available every semester. We want conditionally classified graduate students to be able to complete the pre-requisites very quickly, and this means ensuring that every undergraduate pre-requisite is available every semester, and that sufficient sections, offered at a variety of days/times, are available. We are able to meet this goal with a combination of standard and innovative ideas. An example of the latter is our approach to assisting students (both undergraduate transfer students and entering graduate students) in making up the lower division Symbolic Logic B.A. requirement/m.a. prerequisite. Many community colleges cannot find a qualified instructor for Symbolic Logic, even though students enjoy this subject when it is taught well. To illustrate this last point, our own M.A. Nancy Brown (Dean of Instruction Emeritus at Cabrillo College) regularly teaches symbolic logic to classes 13

15 with 50 or more, as we do, despite the course's being classified for no more than 25. Professor Peschard, a gifted teacher of logic, teaches our symbolic logic class, but we have no one else who can do this well, and graduate students who work during the day often cannot take a course scheduled mainly for the convenience of undergraduates. Consequently, we now offer a special challenge exam in symbolic logic, for transfer undergraduates ( especially those whose community colleges offer only an Introduction to Logic course that covers just the first part of Symbolic Logic) and graduate students needing to make up this prerequisite. We make tutoring by qualified graduate students available for the challenge exam months before the exam is offered; thus students can enroll in Symbolic Logic, challenge it, and pass it before their first semester has begun, leaving them with more time to make other progress to the degree. We note nevertheless that, in regard to expertise sufficient to teach some B.A. required/m.a. prerequisite courses, we are only one faculty member deep in almost every required area of specialization. Although we've constructed a faculty that has sufficient areas of competence to back each other up, we usually can't move another faculty member in to cover illnesses or leaves without abandoning the equally necessary courses they usually teach. Further, it is increasingly difficult to recruit advanced doctoral students from UCB or Stanford to teach as contingent or as substitute faculty, as the gap between salaries they can command at their own institutions and those we can pay has widened precipitously. In conjunction with the implementation of its hiring plan, the Department, in concert with the dean, should be intent on preparing the way for a change in leadership no later than a year in advance of Professor Silvers' retirement. Done! The current assistant chair is being informed in a systematic progression of the various components of the chair's work and is being provided with copies of documents that otherwise would be hard to find. He is practicing how to operate the department in the challenging and sometimes unnerving university curricular climate by serving as the College of Liberal & Creative Arts representative on the Baccalaureate Requirements Committee. Three other associate professors have been prepared to become chair; one served as Interim Chair when the current chair was on sabbatical and the 14

16 other two served as assistant chair. The puzzle that remains, however, is about who can take on whatever department work the faculty member who succeeds Professor Silvers as chair is executing right now. The new chair, who will be at an earlier career stage and life stage, may be unable to take on the 24/7 responsibilities the chair position now requires and certainly won't be able to add this work to her or his current department duties. Tenured/tenure track faculty are already heavily loaded with the administrative responsibilities that accrue to managing different parts of the program. So, when all the work the chair now does shifts to another department member, the necessity of distributing that individual's current departmental work to the remainder of the tenured/tenure track faculty may be intolerably burdensome. The Department is encouraged to develop a formal strategic plan for all aspects of department life as a part of succession planning. Done! Particular strategies are subject to flexible rather than formal planning as university imposed circumstances can change precipitously. In regard to objectives, the Department's strategic plan remains in place; we have executed the recommendations that emerged from our Fifth Cycle review. And we have reached or exceeded many of our goals more quickly than expected. In regard to means to those goals, we often have had to be flexible and rethink our strategies due to the state's economic problems, and to instability in the university's own academic planning, procedures and organization. Flexibility to think one's way around unexpected barriers and undependable expectations, to move persistently toward the goals despite precipitous changes of climate and conditions, is a crucial planning strategy at SFSU. See Chapter 6 for further discussion of our planning process. The Department should work with the dean to implement its plan for hiring four new faculty members between 2008 and 2013 in order to ensure the quality of its academic programs. Done! We deeply appreciate having received continuing support from Dean Sherwin, Provost Gemello, and Provost Rosser to carry out this recommendation. Academic Affairs acknowledges that the Department has finally secured a qualified, full-time AOC for the Department since the conclusion of the 15

17 program review. We expect that this change will alleviate the staffing and administrative issues noted during the review. Done, then Undone! We have twice lost AOCs to the combination of better weather, less expensive housing, and higher salaries available in the East Bay, a situation exacerbated by SFSU's no raises, no appreciation university practice We now are in the process of training another AOC. The chaotic office situation the current faculty inherited after a decade in which fulltime philosophy office staff only infrequently came in to work has been repaired. We have an office manual. We have achieved some continuity. Nevertheless, the problem of staff training is exacerbated for us because we have so many programs and activities going on, and in every area university procedures seem to be continuously changing. Further, over the past five years there has been a deterioration of facilitation at the HR level for hiring staff, and at various levels beyond the department for training staff, making it much more time-consuming to bring a new staff member aboard. Further, philosophy programs have grown in many ways - especially in enrollments and in the professional activities of students and faculty. Although we have some student assistance to support some of the ensuing work, the tasks they can assist with are limited by turnover and retraining requirements, as well as university confidentiality rules. A solution is recommended in Chapter Undergraduate Program Recommendations The Department should begin an assessment of the major in the Academic Year This assessment process should be preceded by an assessment plan, which will be finalized and approved by the Office of Academic Planning and Educational Effectiveness in Spring Some or all of the student learning outcomes should be measured in Fall 2009, and a report of the results should be submitted in Spring Department faculty should meet with their College Assessment Coordinator during Fall 2008 to begin work. Done! There is no College Assessment Coordinator, so we have complied with this mandate on our own. We now have an approved and effective 16

18 assessment plan that is being implemented. To graduate (the requirement is phased in by Bulletin date), students must present a portfolio containing early and very recent papers and a reflective essay on their philosophical development. These are assessed according to an approved rubric. In AY 11/12, our first fully operational year, we had 29 portfolios; in A Y 12/13 we had 57 portfolios. A two year report was filed with the Office of Assessment and Planning in June '13. We are following up with planning discussions. We do a separate assessment of our GWAR (university-wide junior level composition requirement) course, which is also the upper division gateway to the major. Our GW AR assessment received a commendation and was presented to WASC. See Chapters 6 and 7, and Appendix D, for presentation of various aspects of the Philosophy Department Graduate Program Assessment plan and its results. The Department appears to have selected an ideal course through which undergraduates can satisfy the University's new upper-division writing requirement. Department faculty should soon consult with the recently appointed WACIWID Director, Mary Soliday, regarding effective ways to design and deliver a writing-intensive course, and should be prepared to begin regularly offering two sections of PHIL 320 by at latest (contingent on the provision of sufficient resources to do so). Done! But this seems to be a case of a bad result for doing well. We noticed, during our first year of undergraduate assessment, an increase in transfer students not taking the junior gateway course until their senior year. This disruption of sequence defeats the purpose of a first semester gateway course and is especially harmful to transfer students not used to the challenging level of philosophical instruction we practice. Investigation revealed that it is the gateway course's new status as a GWAR course that is the source of the problem. Some community colleges do not provide or encourage a sophomore composition course, so some of our students begin their junior year unable to meet the university prerequisite for this course simply because it is a GWAR course. Consequently, they can't take the gateway philosophy course until they have taken sophomore composition and must begin their philosophy major with more advanced courses. 17

19 We have tried to resolve this problem in several ways. The only option we've been able to find is to request that a challenge exam be made available for sophomore composition, such as that we make available for Symbolic Logic. To solve this problem for ourselves, and for other departments in the same position, will take an enormous persuasive effort which we hope eventually to achieve. Academic Affairs agrees with the Department, the External Consultants, and the APRC that Philosophy should assume a leadership role in those portions of the University's anticipated new general education program devoted to critical thinking and ethics. On the department's part, Done! On Academic Affairs' part, not so much! The department has executed its share of the responsibility for implementing this recommendation. A department member sits on the BRC, and five other members have served on certification committees. Our department began submitting courses early and thus suffered through the early stages of every procedural problem that had to be solved. More philosophy courses have been written up to the new specifications, and approved, than those of any other department. To offer these courses will require yet another enormous effort, as some have had to be designed in ways we know to be dysfunctional for effective philosophical instruction in order to survive approval committees ignorant of our discipline. The Philosophy Department also has provided leadership in General Education assessment, arranging for all the freshmen subjects for three administrations of the Collegiate Leaming Assessment instrument ( and thus saving the university the cost ofhonoraria for such subjects) and even initiating the assessment effort for the second administration. We still await, however, demonstration of Academic Affairs acknowledgement of our expertise; despite the agreement expressed in the MOU, we have not experienced practical acknowledgement from the relevant university-wide managers of the expertise in the specified areas that our discipline bestows. The recommendation of the External Consultants, endorsed by the Department, that specially tailored Philosophy minors be developed to attract majors in such fields as mathematics, economics, and political 18

20 science should be acted on at the earliest possible date. For its part, Academic Affairs will do its utmost to facilitate timely University approval of any extensive programmatic changes emanating from the Department. Obsolete. This recommendation has been superseded by the Complementary Studies provision of the new Baccalaureate Requirements, which mandate that B.A. students take 12 units of courses degree program faculties think of as complementing their major. We have been trying to gain an understanding of how we can develop complementary studies packages along the lines proposed above. 1.3 Executive Summary of Sixth Cycle Recommendations 1.31 Curricular Planning Recommendations RECOMMENDATION p. 41: Institute planning mechanisms that enable predictive monitoring of enrollment trends and responsive adjustment of faculty and TA assignments on short notice. RECOMMENDATION p. 49: Make an arrangement with Academic Affairs that enables submission and approval of new graduate seminars on a more flexible basis responsive to the faculty research that provides the subject matter for advanced instruction. RECOMMENDATIONp. 60: Work with Registrar's staff to arrange to enable equitable access to graduate seminar enrollment for entering and continuing students alike. The Philosophy Graduate Faculty should consider, but not necessarily adopt, a program of rationing access to graduate seminars so that all graduate students have equal opportunity for a fair share. RECOMMENDATION p. 54: Work with Academic Affairs to establish a classroom housing pattern for 600 senior level philosophy courses that enables offering different discussion group sections for undergraduate and graduate students. RECOMMENDATION p. 91: As proposed in the Fifth Cycle MOU, begin serious planning for an interdisciplinary undergraduate concentration in comparative political and legal thought, together with a graduate level concentration or certificate in the same subject area. 19

21 RECOMMENDATION p. 60: Converse with the external consultants about the adequacy of coverage of various philosophical areas in the graduate curriculum, obtain their advice for leveraging department curricular and research strengths, and then follow through with any needed curricular changes. RECOMMENDATION p. 106: Request external consultants to identify journal subscriptions necessary to support graduate student research for theses, conference and journal paper submissions, and doctoral application writing samples. Obtain priority in library subscription purchasing consistent with urgency of need for restoration of library support for philosophy journals. RECOMMENDATION p. 101: To prevent a bottleneck in progress to the degree, increase number of faculty qualified for thesis supervision, paying attention to areas of specialization where student demand currently is seriously underserved Faculty Recommendations RECOMMENDATION pp. 51: Develop a detailed emergency plan to maintain instruction, for both contact hour and supervisory courses, to address lengthy sick leave, family and medical leave, and bereavement leave absences. The plan should include provision for access to instructional records and materials and for acquiring qualified substitute instructors. RECOMMENDATION p. 96: Seek External Consultants' advice on developing a program of support and reinvigoration for mid-career, mid-life stage faculty. RECOMMENDATION p. 102: Increase number of faculty qualified to teach Philosophical Writing and ensure that currently qualified faculty maintain their qualification by continuing to publish their research Student Support and Enhanced Opportunities Recommendations RECOMMENDATION p. 30: While acknowledging that some participating departments need more time to identify their candidates for Provost Scholars, request that departments able to make recommendations in February be afforded an early decision procedure so as to comply with the usual schedule of fellowship offers in their discipline. 20

22 RECOMMENDATIONp. 59: Obtain advice of program review external consultants about best approach for writing recommendations when several excellent students all are applying to the same doctoral program. RECOMMENDATION p. 93: To facilitate internationalization and offer our students affordable access to areas of philosophical specializaiton not available here, move ahead with arrangement for student and faculty exchanges or visits with the students and faculty of University of Southampton in the UK. RECOMMENDATION p. 100: Secure support for graduate student research assistantships, similar to the graduate student teaching on which the Philosophy Department now relies in order to serve undergraduate student demand. 3.4 Program Administration Recommendations RECOMMENDATION p. 107: Allocate a new half-time staff position to support (a) the Philosophy Graduate Program, including the Graduate Teaching Associate Program and the Critical Thinking Computer Lab, (b) to support SFSU's part in publication of the eminent feminist Philosophy journal Hypatia (including support for the graduate students who work on Hypatia book reviews as part of the Advanced Philosophy Publishing coursework), and (c) to support systematic operations to increase securing external funding including funded research proposals and projects, communication with and organization of alumni, and development fundraising for scholarships and other projects. RECOMMENDATION p. 81: As the administration of the graduate program is year-round, with some actions such as new graduate student orientation and probation condition warnings/declassifications/disqualifications necessarily having to occur after the instructional year ends, make provision for year-round Graduate Coordinator services. 21

23 2.0 PROFILE OF THE PROGRAM 2.1 History of the Philosophy M.A. Program The last three Philosophy self-studies contain a chronology of the degree programs of the Department, derived from earlier Bulletins, and we will continue the tradition here so as to preserve this chronological record B.A. in Psychology/Philosophy 1936 B.A. in the Science and Art of Living added 1957 B.A. in Philosophy - Psychology/Philosophy deleted 1957 Pre-professional B.A. Pre-Ministerial - Science and Art of Living deleted 1958 M.A. in Humanities with a major or emphasis in Philosophy 1960 B.A. in Philosophy and Religion and Pre-ministerial - replaces Pre-ministerial 1961 B.A. in Philosophy (Religion) - replaces Philosophy and Religion and Pre-ministerial 1962 M.A. in Philosophy - replaces M.A. in Humanities with a major or emphasis in Philosophy 1966 B.A. in Philosophy and Religion - replaces Philosophy (Religion) 1976 Special mention of"pre-ministerial" in B.A. in Philosophy and Religion deleted This history of the creation of philosophy degree programs reveals much about the history of San Francisco State University itself. Established as a normal school, and evolved into a baccalaureate granting teacher's college in 1921, in the mid s the college responded to the Depression-driven decline in opportunities for teachers by adding other career focused programs. Hence the creation of the SFSU baccalaureate degree in Psychology/Philosophy in 1934, a recombination of two disciplines whose professional associations had split apart three decades earlier. In 1945 a Stanford professor (J. Paul Leonard), newly appointed as SFSC president, once again revised the college's mission. San Francisco State College henceforth would aim at making first-rate higher education available to much more diverse populations and would build a new campus to accommodate them. The key, however, was to be a basic humanities and sciences general education program that all students would have in common whatever specialized studies they also pursued. The general education program would reconstitute students homogeneously, making them into thoughtful, responsible, and cultured citizens. Such an approach to the role of higher education was not unusual in the early post-war period. For the first decade and a half of post-world-war expansion, philosophy faculty were hired with teaching assignments mainly in the generalized great books type courses that made up the humanities component of the famous SFSC general education program. Meanwhile, however, the College was responding to citizens' demands for a more contemporary university 22

24 curriculum, one that did not homogenize but instead cultivated diversities of different kinds, including much more emphasis on the different disciplinary specializations. San Francisco State College's mission quickly was altered again, aiming now primarily to bring Bay Area working class and ethnically diverse students nationally competitive educational opportunity in a full range of liberal arts and sciences specializations, and in both traditional and newly emerging creative arts. Toward this end, in 1949 the College's leadership won, for the first time in California, the right for state colleges to offer post-graduate degrees, both independent Master's level degrees and joint doctorates with the University of California. Subsequently, in 1957, philosophy faculty received approval to offer an independent philosophy baccalaureate, in 1958 a Humanities M.A. program with a concentration (to use a modem term) in philosophy was created, and in 1962 an independent M.A. in Philosophy was established. In the early days of the 1960s both the Philosophy Department's faculty and its enrollments were growing. To teach the recently approved philosophy degree programs (Philosophy BA, Philosophy and Religion BA, Philosophy MA) ten tenure track faculty were added to the four who remained from the previous decade. During most of this time, at least until the onset of campus-wide disruptions prompted by protests about war, racial injustice, and cultural hegemony with which the decade closed, the Philosophy faculty was focused on professional excellence. There even was talk of developing a joint doctorate program with one of the newer UC campuses, UCSD, which had begun a Philosophy BA only in 1963; for a few years there were exchanges of faculty between the two departments, mainly of UCSD faculty coming to teach at SFSU. Ten years later, in 1976, department aspirations and vigor had dissipated and tenure-track hiring virtually came to a stop. A minority of the tenured/tenure-track faculty engaged in research and publication. The majority of the tenured faculty were disaffected because university administration had rejected their recommendation that tenure be awarded to a colleague who had not completed his Ph.D.; they felt this rejection of their judgment to be a professional affront. In this climate, several of the most productive faculty preferred to insulate themselves as much as possible from department governance, concentrating on writing books and articles, on 23

25 campus and statewide academic governance, and on leadership in the professional associations of the overall discipline and some of its subfields. As might have been expected, during the embattled period throughout the 1970s, philosophy enrollments fell. Faced with being placed in receivership due to low enrollments, and thanks to less politicized ( albeit still polarized) leadership, in the 1980s faculty teaching assignments increasingly focused on building general education offerings to engage more students in philosophy. During this decade, two more tenure-track faculty were added to replace retirees, one of whom being the former tenure-track member who had been denied tenure a decade earlier. Finally, in the decade that ended the twentieth century, one more tenure track faculty member was added, also as a replacement. In the years around the turn into the twenty-first century, changes in the form of faculty retirements picked up speed. Retirements being more numerous than replacements, the tenured/tenure-track faculty was reduced to ten. Finally, by the time the Fifth Cycle self-study was completed in 2007, the tenured/tenure-track faculty consisted of one full professor, one associate professor, and four assistant professors. The current tenured/tenure track faculty includes one full professor - the chair - who came to the Department in 1967, one associate professor who joined in 1998, and nine other department members (one full professor, six associate professors, and two assistant professors) who each has ten years or less experience at SFSU. We are fortunate also to include Distinguished Professor Bas Van Fraassen, the internationally acclaimed philosopher of science, on our graduate faculty. And Professor Emeritus Jacob Needleman, the renowned religious studies scholar, whose appointment to the faculty pre-dates the chair's, teaches one class a year to help enrich the Department's philosophy and religion offerings. Further, with our encouragement our students make good use of Bay Area Consortium arrangements to take courses alongside graduate students in the UCB Philosophy Department; before we approve their doing so, we work carefully to prepare them to participate at this level. There also are two lecturers who publish regularly and therefore qualify as members of the graduate faculty. The lecturers do not ordinarily offer graduate seminars ( although one offered a Virtue Epistemology seminar in F' 2012 because various kinds of leaves had temporarily depleted the 24

26 availability of tenured/tenure track faculty, see discussion at 2.34, p. 38), but they can serve as second or third readers for M.A. theses. Further, twice during the period covered by the self-study, a professor who is retired from a doctoral institution and lives locally has become instructor for a graduate seminar in one of her areas of specialization because the tenured faculty member teaching that crucial area has gone on sick leave. The self-study we wrote six years ago compared our M.A. requirements with those of the (then) top ten ranked stand-alone MA programs in the country. ("Stand-alone" means that the institution offers only an M.A. and not a Ph.D. in philosophy, although some stand-alone Philosophy MA departments are at institutions with many docotral programs.) Despite all but one ofthetop ten departments' graduate students enjoying tuition waivers and/or other generous financial support, and despite almost all of those institutions' faculty carrying a 2/2 teaching load, the requirements for our SFSU degree were, and still are, as or more rigorous than those of the departments ranked in the top ten at that time. (The top ten list now has been modified in a way we explain in the next paragraph.) In addition to coursework, award of the SFSU Philosophy M.A. degree requires students to pass a comprehensive exam and write an M.A. thesis and succeed in an oral defense of thesis. Despite the comparatively heavy SFSU teaching load, and the sadly inadequate SFSU provision for graduate student financial support, we are happy to report that our SFSU M.A. program now is itself ranked as one of the top ten M.A. programs nationally. There is no doubt that our departmental ranking greatly benefits students in applying to doctoral programs. This success, achieved years before our formal academic plan predicted we could accomplish it, testifies to the growing professional reputation of the faculty, as well as to faculty members' hard work and the tenacity to maintain aspirations while getting through hard times. To complete this history, we note that AY , the last year covered by this Sixth Cycle self-study, was the fiftieth birthday of our Philosophy M.A. degree. Although we held no formal celebration, the anniversary was appropriately marked by our most successful placement year yet, both for current students applying to doctoral programs and law schools and for current students going directly to teaching positions. (See section 7.6 for details.) There was good news as well about past years' graduates winning 25

27 highly competitive national fellowships that will support the remainder of their doctoral programs. And as a fitting future-oriented birthday present, A Y ended with notification from University Development of a $300,000 bequest from one of our M.A. recipients from an earlier period, to be used for tuition scholarships for future graduate students. 2.2 Mission and Character of the Philosophy M.A. Program Our SFSU M.A. program draws the impetus for its mission from the midcentury era of its birth. We aim to bring opportunity for excellent advanced philosophical study to very diverse populations. And by attracting students from under-represented groups and preparing them for careers in our field, we also aim to contribute to diversifying professional philosophy. To pursue this aspiration, we have adopted twin values often identified by the CSU Chancellor'.s Office as the reasons why CSU deserves public support: the values of access and quality. Our admissions practices are shaped by the value of providing access, while our programmatic standards and the special professional opportunities with which we enrich the program focus on increasing quality. Deep commitment to maintaining access, and persistence in finding innovative but realistic ways of improving quality, characterize the recent development of our graduate program. We are fulfilling our goal of access. We have more graduate students than any other MA program listed by the American Philosophical Association (2012 data). In number of women students we are tied with the next largest program, The New School's, which is a private university and, unlike SFSU's, is not ranked in the ten top programs in regard to quality. We have more students in each of the other IPEDS minority group categories - African American, Asian/ Asian American, Native American, Latino/Hispanic and MultiEthnic/Minority - than any other stand-alone M.A. program listed by the AP A. 26

28 TABLE 2: most heavily enrolled M.A. programs (APA data, 2012) NAME SFSU* New Georgia CSU- Loyola u. School** State* L.A. Chicago** Missouri St. Louis* # of M.A. students *Ranked in top ten (highest quality) stand-alone M.A. programs on Philosophical Gourmet **Private university, also offers Ph.D. in Philosophy. TABLE 3: enrollments in the five CSU M.A. programs (APA data, 2012) NAME SFSU CSU-L.A. CSU-L.B. SDSU SJSU # ofm.a students Further, and most important, we have become successful both in sending off members of these under-represented groups (as well as our other students) to good doctoral programs, and also in placing those who prefer to start work with our degree in positions in two-year and four-year institutions. (See section 7.6) We are placing women and students of color in excellent doctoral programs and directly into teaching jobs as well. As an example of the first career path, a M.A. ( one of several graduates from underrepresented categories) who now is finishing her first year at UNC Chapel Hill just won a prestigious Ford Fellowship that will pay for the rest of her doctoral education. (See section 7.61 for our doctoral program placement data.) As an example of the second career path, a M.A. from one of the ethnic minorities, also one of several such graduating this year, started teaching lower division at CSU-Sacramento in SP' 12 (having competed against holders of Ph.Ds and ABDs for the job). For SP '12, the CSU-Sacramento Philosophy Department hired three new lower division lecturers, all of whom are SFSU MAs, two of whom are women philosophers with the third being a male philosopher who is a member of an underrepresented ethic minority. 27

29 Other career paths are pursued as well. Some of our M.A. graduates go on to law school. Some teach at the secondary level. Some of our graduates go into community service, such as one who works for Project Rebound ( assisting individuals with prison records to attain college degrees), and several holders of our Philosophy M.A. are active in the foundation world SFSU M.A. Program: Mission and Admission Applications to, and enrollments in, our M.A. program have been growing, bucking the trend in the opposite direction of U.S. graduate enrollments, and especially of enrollments in the humanities. (http :// _r= 1 & ) (Note that the humanities enrollment trend line direction is disputed, as is to be expected given the lack of agreement about the year the line should start; nevertheless, our M.A. graduate program's enrollment by far exceeds any previous point, even adjusted for the growth in the university's size.) We believe this to be because our way( s) of fulfilling our mission are responsive to the realities of philosophy education in the United States today. In the U.S. young people almost never have the opportunity to acquire the skills and lmowledge, and the pleasures, that the study of philosophy offers until provided with a post-secondary education. Moreover, in California, many students do not even encounter a stimulating philosophy course until they are well along in their study of different major subject, if then. The causes are two-fold, although they reinforce each other. First, philosophy as a subject of study is unfamiliar to many entering college students and their families - especially where the student is a first generation college goer - because it is not found in the secondary school curriculum. So students entering college are drawn to familiar subjects like English literature or history rather than to philosophy. Second, most two-year and some four-year colleges offer comparatively impoverished philosophy curricula, if they offer any philosophy degree program at all. Consequently, it often is not till late in their baccalaureate study, or sometimes even later, that students are introduced to philosophy and find it to be a valuable kind of study for themselves. The problem of students having inadequate opportunity for a full philosophical education when they are undergraduates occurs less frequently for native students from selective universities and colleges than for students 28

30 who transfer from two-year colleges to baccalaureate institutions and for students from less selective four-year institutions (these two categories often intersect). We judge applicants on their intellectual promise and past academic success, not on their having had the good fortune to be educated in an estimable undergraduate philosophy program. Were we to attempt to reduce the number of our graduate students by adopting more selective admissions criteria focuesed on prepartion, we would disparately reduce admissions of students from other CSUs and similar state colleges, and also reduce admissions of students from groups under-represented in our professions. Concomitantly, we would increase the proportion of students who had been able to spend their entire undergraduate careers at University of California campuses or at public flagships in other states or at private selective institutions. These latter students are deserving as well. So they should not be disadvantaged to make room for less privileged individuals; we have to be inclusive and find ways of making enough room for all promising, diligent applicants. In sum, while students from these latter sorts of backgrounds are likely to be more broadly and deeply prepared in philosophy and more current in the field, adding admissions criteria such as quality of preparation in the discipline that are traditional in our field would shift the demographics of our M.A. student population in a direction inconsistent with our mission. Moreover, we have compelling evidence that our emphasis on access works: some of our most successful students who now are flourishing in doctoral programs came to us with impoverished philosophy backgrounds, or with no formal philosophy education at all. We are able to provide even seriously under-prepared students whose applications show their intellectual talent with a high quality philosophical education, and such students are able to benefit from our program. For these reasons, the general SFSU admissions criteria, which emphasize evidence of past academic success, have seemed the most appropriate for our program. We adhere to these general SFSU admissions criteria rigorously. We would be reluctant to undercut our mission, and that of the CSU, by reducing access Admissions Data Here are the data on applications, acceptances, and students who enroll. Note that a very high percentage of those admitted for Spring enroll; a lower percentage of those who apply for Fall enroll. That is because many 29

31 applicants for Fall apply to multiple programs, almost all of which offer generous financial support to graduate students (whereas SFSU does not even have tuition waivers); programs that offer such financial support usually do not have Spring admissions. Further, we have a higher percentage of non-resident and international students, for whom fees are much higher, applying for Fall than for Spring admissions. To illustrate, 20% of our applicants for Spring' 12 (the most recent round of Spring admissions) were non-resident or international, whereas 37% of Fall' 12 applicants fell into these categories. 4 7% of our applicants, almost half, were non-resident or international students. These students are more likely to have competitive offers with much prompter, more generous offers of financial support, or else be unable to obtain funding to accept our admissions offer. Our non-resident nominees have been awarded very competitive universitywide Provost's Scholar out-of-state tuition waivers (but of course with unabated in-state fees) for the past four years, but in only one case - that of an applicant who had been employed as a public interest attorney for the preceding year - was the applicant able to accept the SFSU admission offer. The other three individuals, all newly minted B.A.s, had more generous financial support offers from non-california programs and were required to make commitments to them earlier than decisions about Provost's Scholar awards were made. They could not afford to pass the competitive offer up while waiting to hear about the outcome of our Provost's Scholar competition. JIBCOMMENDATION: While acknowledging that some participating departments need more time to identify their candidates for Provost Scholars, request that departments able to make recommendations in February be afforded an early decision procedure so as to comply with the usual schedule of fellowship offers in their discipline. 30

32 No Spring Admissions No Spring Admissions To understand what our yield indicates about the reputation of our program, we benchmarked our last five years of admissions "yield," which coincides to the period in which our program has been ranked as a "top ten" standalone Philosophy M.A. program against the yield of the SFSU History Department's M.A. admissions. The History graduate program is known for its excellent quality both at SFSU and nationally. As shown in the next table, the number of applications for the Philosophy M.A. has grown to be considerably greater than for History, and yields for the History and Philosophy programs are very similar. These data suggest that during the Sixth Cycle the Philosophy M.A. program has joined History as an SFSU Center of Excellence. 31

33 TABLE 5: Comparison of Philosophy and History Admissions Data Semester/Year No. of Philosophy No. of History Phil. Yield Hist. Yield Apps. Apps. F' % 67 65% S' F' % % S ' % % F ' % 51 50% S' % % F' % % S' To put the above chart in context in regard to selectivity of admissions, see the chart directly below comparing the percentages of applicants accepted by each program for Fall' 11, a representative year. As can be readily seen from this Fall '11 chart, rigor of acceptance is very similar between the History and the Philosophy M.A. programs, despite the disparity in number of applications, with Philosophy attracting around twice as many applications as History from Fall 10 through Fall 13. (Fall '13 applications are PHIL= 98 to HIST= 47.) TABLE 6: Graph Comparing Philosophy and History Admissions Data 32

34 Fall 2011 Admissions 140.,.-,_,_,,,,,,,,,,-,,--, Not Admitted Admitted 0 Philosopy History 2.3 The M.A. Program in the Context of the Academic Unit 2.31 Symbiosis: A Solution for the Challenge of Growth during Economic Adversity The last Philosophy self-study, in 2007, was executed during the first year of the current chair's first successive term in the twenty-first century (she also served as chair in the 1980s when it became necessary to rebuild enrollments for the depaiiment). That Fifth Cycle self-study had to cover F' SP '2007 because the two individuals who previously held the chair position ignored the obligation to prepare for program review. To summarize the 2007 finding, the Philosophy M.A. program performed acceptably during the years covered by the Fifth Cycle self-study. The SFSU Philosophy Department met the required average of five M.A. degrees a year and, over the period covered by that review, awarded about 25% more M.A. degrees than its nearest CSU rival (four other CSU campuses offer the Philosophy M.A.). Data from the Fifth Cycle self-study serve to bench-mark changes during the review period covered by the Six Cycle. In F' 06, the latest Fall semester covered by the Fifth-Cycle self-study, Philosophy Department overall enrollment was FTES, or only 65% of the F' 12 enrollment of FTES. Graduate enrollment in F '06 was 108 FTES, just about a third of the 33

35 331 FTES in F' 12. In F '06 there were 41 graduate students attending, just about a third of the 133 graduate students attending in F '12. To give a different sense of our program's recent growth, we note that we now award about the same number of graduate degrees each year as the entire total awarded in the last five years of the twentieth century. Another way of representing growth is that, despite the increase in overall enrolment as well as graduate enrollment, in F'06 graduate FTE was about 17% of total FTE while in F' 12 it was about 33%. In F'06 we offered 68 contact hour classes, of which 7% were graduate level, while in F' 12 we offered 109 contact hour classes, of which 9% were graduate level. This last datum may appear to suggest that faculty resources sufficient to the growth of the graduate program have been withheld, but such an interpretation would be flawed. That is because, to provide access to high quality education that accommodates growth in an era of sharply constrained resources, we have developed a symbiotic relation between the graduate and undergraduate programs. Each offers the others components that enhance the quality of education for all, thus making use of opportunities each offers to serve as a resource for the other. In this way, we can maintain the traditional broad access for students at each level of education and achieve more educational benefit for each group than would be possible if we relied only on the customary SFSU sources of resources. We have developed an educational apprenticeship program that enables our graduate students to teach lower division baccalaureate level courses, with careful supervision by our faculty, while pursuing the M.A. and that qualifies them subsequently to teach independently at this level in community colleges and in the CSU. The program includes workshops, course development materials, and class visitations for graduate student participants; by no means is participation in our GTA program a mere sinkor-swim experiential event. And we carefully monitor student evaluations to ensure maintenance of quality of instruction in GTA taught classes; TEEFs are administered in these sections before the last part of the semester to catch any individual problems and to be sure teaching in the sections taught through the GTA program compare well (with either similar or more favorable ratings) to those taught by the regular instructors who have long experience in doing so. 34

36 For now, we note that if we subtract lower division contact hour classes that we are able to offer thanks to the GTA program from the total for F' 12, 14% of contact hour classes taught by regular instrictors (tenured, tenure track, and lecturers) are graduate level, more than twice the 6% for a comparable calculation in F'06, before our current GTA program was put in place. Thus, the GTA program has allowed us to increase the number of classes in the service program (benfitting undergraduate students) while at the same time enabling an increase of the proportion of graduate level classes on the schedule (benefitting graduate students) and also offering graduate students an important educational component to prepare them for successful philosophy careers ( another benefit for graduate students). For the most part, beyond their teaching on the graduate level, the remainder of our graduate faculty's instructional time is deployed to the 600 level courses for senior majors and graduate students, or for other courses required for the major. We would be thrilled to be able to offer even more graduate level courses ifwe had more qualified graduate faculty, and we clearly have justification in regard to the demand for seats in our graduate courses. Graduate students also contribute to our undergraduate degree programs through a formal mentoring program that was brought to us by a one whose undergraduate work was at Colorado University, which has such a program. This is a one-on-one arrangement, which is supported by the department in the form of pizza provision for mentor-mentee meetings. We cannot underline strongly enough the benefits to the undergraduate programs bestowed by such a vigorous and readily available tutoring system. For example, mid-semester now is marked each term by groups of undergraduates gathering in the Philosophy Student Lounge to prepare for the formidable mid-term in PHIL 303 Modem Philosophy with special tutoring sessions given by graduate students. Graduate students also lead the Philosophy Club and organize several events a year, thereby enhancing the department's intellectual climate Resource allocation among the department's instructional programs Non-Instructional Faculty Time: There is, however, a downside to our department's offering a graduate and two undergraduate degree programs, and a very strong general education service program as well ( as well as 35

37 service courses for the Criminal Justice and Sexuality Studies programs). From an educational perspective, and from an enrollment management point of view also, the three kinds of philosophy programming are necessary to each other: they flourish together or fail together. In an era of enormously increasing focus on the university's internal approval and accountability processes, these programs compete with each other not so much for instructional time, but for the faculty's administrative attention and time. To illustrate, during the past two years much of the time of the tenured/tenure track faculty has been consumed by the necessity to gain approval of undergraduate courses for the new general education program. In allocating our non-educational services in this way, we have been adhering to our agreement with Academic Affairs as expressed in the 2008 MOU ( and the advice of our Fifth Cycle External Reviewers). This heavy consumption of non-teaching time will go on during 2013/14, as we must work with our lecturers to revise their teaching plans, and also revise our workshops for the GTAs accordingly. Unfortunately, our capacity to enhance our graduate program and our two undergraduate degree progrms has been compromised by the extensive call on faculty non-educational time by the procedures required to maintain approval of this important service program Enrollment Data Below is a table of enrollment data - FTEs, FTEFs, and SFRs. After the table we highlight what we think these data show about Philosophy Department productivity: 36

38 TABLE 7 PHILOSOPHY FTES, FTEFs, SFRs, Fall '07 through Spring '13 FALL '07 SPRING '08 FALL '08 SPRING '09 FTES FTEF SFR FTES FTEF SFR FTES FTEF SFR FTES FTEF FSR LD UD UG G All FALL '09 SPRING '10 FALL '10 SPRING '11 FTES FTEF SFR FTES FTEF SFR FTES FTEF SFR FTES FTEF SFR LD UD UG G All FALL '11 SPRING '12 FALL '12 SPRING '13 FTES FTEF SFR FTES FTEF SFR FTES FTEF SFR FTES FTEF FSR LD * * * UD * * * UG * * * G * * * All * * *Not yet available in early Fall '13. 37

39 The Philosophy FTES has grown by about a third over this period. Philosophy FTES often is second largest in the College in Fall semesters, after English. In Spring semesters, Philosophy FTES typically moves to third largest in College, after English and Communications Studies. Lower division enrollment has grown by about a third over the period. FTEF also has grown by about a third, keeping SFR steady. Growth offtef at lower division is largely due to the GT A program, described above. Upper division enrollment has grown by about a third. SFR has been maintained with comparative stability by shifting lecturers from lower division service courses to upper division service courses, and occasionally assigning qualified lecturers to upper division majors courses. Graduate enrollment has more than doubled during this period, from to FTEF at the graduate level has almost doubled. SFR is edging toward being about a third higher, and occasionally has doubled during the period F'07 to F' 12. The reason for the higher SFR in some semesters is that we cannot replace graduate faculty who have sabbaticals, are on sick leave or bereavement leave. or family leave, or have grants or awards, due to the level of qualification for teaching at the graduate level. Thus remaining graduate faculty must accept higher graduate student loads. In contrast, in emergencies we can replace faculty for undergraduate teaching with less qualified lecturers. We try to plan for the first-mentioned of these contingencies (leaves), but the second and third ( emergency leaves, awards and grants) always require last minute - and therefore not optimal - shifts or over-loading of personnel Lecturers' graduate level participation Using F '12 figures, which are representative of our current use of resources, 29% of lower division and 10% of upper division courses are taught by lecturers. Roughly, 03% of our graduate teaching in the past six years has been conducted by lecturers, 03% by faculty on the Faculty Early Retirement Plan, and 01 % by a retired faculty member from a doctoral institution acting as a substitute during a tenured faculty member's illness. During the entire review period, there have been exactly two instances in which a lecturer has taught a graduate course. One of these was in Fall' 12 when Professor Sveinsdottir was on sabbatical and we were short of Metaphysics and Epistemology (M&E) seminars. Dr. Abrol Fairweather, a lecturer with extensive current published research in M&E, gave a graduate seminar on Virtue Epistemology, an M&E topic on which he is about to publish a book; the external consultants' report made specific reference to obtaining such a curricular contribution from Dr. Fairweather. (Parenthetically, Dr. Fairweather and Dr. Sudduth, both lecturers with considerable current success in publishing research, both generously volunteer to serve as extra members of thesis committees.) 38

40 The other instance was in Spring '12, when we had a post-doc in Philosophy of Science, with an LSE doctorate, who was attached to Professor Peschard's NSF grant. We saw this as an opportunity to add an extra graduate seminar on a current topic, giving our graduate students another point of view. Both these "one off' arrangements served our purposes very well. In each of the two cases, the program's quality was enriched by the use of a qualified lecturer Course distribution Of all our lower division courses, only PHIL Symbolic Logic - is a majors course and is taught by a tenured faculty member. Of our upper division courses, PHIL 320-Philosophical Analysis and PHIL 321 -Being and Knowing are gateway courses for the major. These are taught by tenured/tenure track faculty and two qualified lecturers. The 600 series, with two exceptions, are majors M&E courses and taught by tenured/tenure track faculty and the same two lecturers. Phil Philosophical Logic Workshop and Phil 695 -Advanced Logic Workshop are listed as undergraduate classes although taught at an M.A. level. The reason for assigning these courses undergraduate status is that we have some undergraduate majors who are talented logicians and flourish in these courses, and other undergraduate majors who are competent logicians well able to succeed in these courses. It's less of a bureaucratic hassle for graduate students to enroll in an undergraduate class than for undergraduates to enroll in a graduate class, so to serve both graduate and undergraduate populations we numbered these courses at the top of our undergraduate chart. These courses are taught by Professor van Fraassen, former editor of The Journal of Symbolic Logic. We are pleased that, when our last program reviewers urged the addition of one advanced logic course, we have been able to add two well-enrolled advanced logic courses that are quite different from one another. Our upper division courses below the 600 level are core majors courses such as the three history courses - Ancient, Medieval, and Modem philosophy - or are service courses that also are useful to our philosophy student populations. Courses in various aspects of ethics, political philosophy, and legal theory, and courses in various systems of religious thought, are heavily represented among our services offerings. Graduate students may include such courses on their Advancement to Candidacy (ATC) forms when they have a programmatic reason to do so. The reason usually is that the course covers subject matter not offered on the graduate level and that the graduate student has a professional interest for studying the subject. Our various foundations of law and legal theory, human rights, and applied ethics courses are examples of such upper division courses. However, an upper division course below the 600 level may not be included on the ATC unless the student has earned an A or A Graduate program course distribution 39

41 We have no paired courses. We eliminated these after a departmental full-day planning session that revealed insurmountable difficulties in maintaining two different standards for performance in the same class. M.A. students graduate with an average of 3 0 graduate units out of a graduate program of 33 units, and a modal number of 27 graduate units, based on a study of SP '13 graduates Graduate Student Enrollment: Is There An Ideal Number? Given our mission, as discussed above, we cannot approach our number of graduate students within the conceptual frame the remaining Sixth Cycle questions for this section presuppose. Our commitment to our mission yields no "ideal" number of graduate students, other than whatever number of individuals both desire a M.A. in Philosophy and deserve the opportunity to earn this degree. It is the job of the department faculty, with cooperation by university academic management, to plan how to maintain access to a high quality graduate education in philosophy for these qualified deserving students, while being careful to maintain quality for students in our service and our two baccalaureate programs. Earlier we showed how our plan to add a high quality instruction in teaching component to the graduate program resulted in the undergraduate service program and the undergraduate degree programs being supported by, and also supporting, the graduate program. We have been able to provide service courses, and maintain comparatively small critical thinking sections, while enabling graduate students to gain well-supervised teaching experience and compile persuasive teaching portfolios. And we discussed as well how our welcoming and supporting a proposal from our graduate students to create a mentoring program for undergraduate majors has improved the level of philosophical education and the intellectual climate in the department. To some extent, enrollments at these three levels of educational programming therefore should track each other's rises and dips Non-ideal Enrollment Planning Candidly, our main planning challenge has to do not with ideal, or lack of ideal, graduate enrollment numbers but instead with precipitous rises and falls of graduate enrollment due to circumstances we do not control. Twice in the period covered by this review, CSU management banned spring admissions across the system. Emergency planning to respond to the unusual graduate enrollment patterns that ensued had to, and did, occur. There was an enormous impact on our graduate enrollment in Fall ' 10 because of the Spring '10 admissions ban, which illustrates why those responsible for departmental planning must be both constantly vigilant and flexible. In Fall '10 70 M.A. students accepted our admission invitation, an anomalously large number that included the deferred SP '10 students as well as the Fall '10 students. To handle this large group we had to implement unusual efforts to enroll graduate students in seminars - 40

42 rationing access so all students had some good opportunities to enroll. To move the anomalously large Fall '10 cohort through to the degree with good speed, we also have had to permit graduate seminars to grow beyond ideal numbers of enrolled students. The average size of graduate seminars is now coming back down from 20.6 toward the 15 seat enrollment cap we endorse. This is because, we are pleased to rep01i, many of these students from the Fall '10 cohort have now graduated; a gratifying number have completed the first year of their doctoral programs or will begin their doctoral study this fall. Of course, the anomalously large size of this cohort has challenged our faculty's capacity, but we now have brought many of them through all steps of the program, including grading many comprehensive exams, supervising many M.A. theses, and scheduling many oral defenses of thesis exams. To combat bottlenecks that might delay progress toward the degree, we immediately initiated offering one graduate seminar each summer, and these have been quite well enrolled. But offering a seminar in summer session is not as straight-forward as it looks. To obtain financial aid that pays summer session fees, students must enroll in four units, not three. We have tried various approaches to providing the extra unit, but doing so within the current articulation of summer session with the course classification system has required enormous negotiation, so it may be prohibitive to keep up this service to students. To illustrate another one of our tools for rising to this challenge, we countered students' natural inclination to wait till the last minute to hold their defenses, in order to have more time to perfect their products and presentations, by bribing those who agreed to schedule earlier than usual in the spring with pizza deliveries for all participants and the entire audience. Doing so was necessary as each oral defense takes several hours and requires the entire thesis committee's presence. It is unlikely that the university will soon emerge into an era of stable funding and reasonably enduring aims. Our department therefore should build some practices into our planning process to alert us to the prospects of, and enable us to address, future admissions anomalies, as well as other sharp turns in the university's procedures and goals. RECOMMENDATION: Institute planning mechanisms that enable predictive monitoring of enrollment trends and responsive adjustment of faculty and TA assignments on short notice. In the course of our bench-marking, we noticed that in its self-study of 2008 our SFSU model department, History, stated its ideal number of graduate students as 100, which our colleagues in History pointed out approximated the 109 History graduate students attending in F' Yet in F' 2012, there were only 77 History graduate students attending. We do not know whether the History graduate enrollment decrease was planned because our colleagues revised their ideal, or whether departmental, university or societal contingencies caused the decline. 41

43 This planning mystery suggests that the focus on enrollment caps as an absolute value in academic planning, which seems to prompt the questions put to us in this section, may not be especially helpful given the unsettled landscape of higher education today. We urge, instead, a focus on aspirations pursued by a practice of continuous quality improvement, with swift responses as problems crop up and alert advantage taken when opportunities arise. We hope this Sixth Cycle process will be as inspiring to our programmatic improvement as, in most aspects, the Fifth Cycle proved to be. 42

44 3.0 Admission Requirements 3.1 Evidence of Prior Academic Success To be considered eligible for admission to the Philosophy M.A. program, applicants must have a GP A of at least 3.0 for both: the last 60 undergraduate units, and all philosophy courses. There are no exceptions. An applicant who does not meet this standard is advised to take philosophy courses through Open University until the GP As meet the university graduate admissions standard. This practice has proven beneficial: students who will do well in the program can make up pre-requisites or test their interests in various philosophical fields while raising their GP As, while students who will not become convinced that philosophy graduate study is not for them. To enter this program with classified graduate status, students must have completed the following five undergraduate courses (or their equivalents) with a grade ofb or better: PHIL 205, (Formal Logic I); PHIL 301 (Ancient Philosophy); PHIL 303 (Modern Philosophy); one upper-division course in ethics; one course in a core area of metaphysics and epistemology: PHIL 321 (Being and Knowing), PHIL 350 (Philosophy of Science), PHIL 605 (Metaphysics), PHIL 610 (Theory of Knowledge), PHIL 611 (Philosophy of Perception), PHIL 620 (Philosophy of Mind), PHIL 630 (Philosophy of Language), PHIL 694 (Philosophical Logic Workshop), PHIL 695 (Advanced Logic Workshop) While it is pleasurable to teach students who have had an excellent undergraduate education in philosophy - especially now that we are attracting graduate students who have studied in some of the best programs - we also are mindful of our mission to provide opportunity to individuals who have not previously had such fortunate access. Moreover, it is not unusual for philosophers to have come to the discipline.only after having pursued another field; this is true of several of our faculty. And such individuals sometimes bring invaluable insights prompted by knowledge of other disciplines to their philosophical work. Thus promising students who satisfy the GP A requirement but have not completed the prerequisites may begin the program with conditionally classified status with the approval of the Graduate Coordinator in philosophy, but are required to make up any deficiencies by receiving a grade of 3.0 or better in each prerequisite class. Of course, prerequisite classes cannot be applied to the graduate degree. A student's promise is revealed in the various components of the Department Application. (See APPENDIX A for a copy of the Department Admissions Form.) 43

45 Along with their official transcripts, students are required to indicate their objectives in seeking an M.A. in Philosophy, discuss their philosophical interests, and submit a writing sample that demonstrates their "best undergraduate writing in any discipline". Students also may choose to submit two letters of recommendation, concerning which we offer the following advice. "Ideally, these letters should be written by professors who are familiar with your academic skills and potentials." Thus, in addition to overall GP A, we also use last-60-credit GP A, philosophy GP A, and fulfillment of prerequisites, and the writing sample as evidence of prior academic success. We also use letters of recommendation from former teachers when these are available. 3.2 Evidence of Competent Writing Level One writing proficiency is evaluated based on an applicant's writing sample, which is part of the application to the MA program in philosophy. The sample should be 7-10 pages of writing in a specific academic discipline. The writing sample is evaluated with respect to the following: Content: the presentation of a thesis and defense of that thesis; Organization: the presentation of ideas in an organized and cohesive fashion; Language: the employment of the English language, including vocabulary and diction; Mechanics: the employment of conventions of Standard Written English (grammar, syntax, effective expression) and standard citation practices (footnotes, bibliography, etc.) Scoring Criteria for Level One {Admissions Stage) Outstanding: The author presents and defends a challenging thesis by presenting strong and innovative arguments in an organized and cohesive fashion. The author employs sophisticated English vocabulary and diction, as well as correct grammar, syntax, and effective expression. The author uses standard citation practices, including footnotes and a bibliography. ESL Outstanding: The author, who has been schooled in a non-english-speaking university, presents and defends a challenging thesis by presenting strong and innovative arguments in an organized and cohesive fashion. The author employs some non-standard English vocabulary and diction, and the paper may contain errors in grammar, syntax, and effective expression that are common to ESL writers. 44

46 The author uses standard citation practices, including footnotes and a bibliography. Adequate: The author presents and defends a thesis by presenting arguments in an organized and cohesive fashion. The author employs standard English vocabulary and diction, as well as (mostly) correct grammar, syntax, and effective expression. ESL Adequate: The author, who has been schooled in a non-english-speaking university, presents and defends a thesis by presenting arguments in an organized and cohesive fashion. The author employs some non-standard English vocabulary and diction, and the paper may contain errors in grammar, syntax, and effective expression that are common to ESL writers. Fundamentally Deficient: The author presents a collection of claims that are grouped around a vague theme. The author makes egregious errors in English vocabulary, diction, grammar, and/or effective expression How Writing Sample Assessment Affects Admission Outstanding: Applications with these writing samples may be accepted if other aspects of the application are adequate or better. ESL Outstanding: Applications with these writing samples may be accepted if other aspects of the application are adequate or better. However, applicants will be admitted as conditionally classified. Adequate: Applications with these writing samples may be accepted if other aspects of the application are strong. ESL Adequate: Applications with these writing samples may be accepted if other aspects of the application are strong. However, applicants will be admitted as conditionally classified. 45

47 Fundamentally Deficient: Applications with these writing samples are denied. Remediation Students whose writing samples are evaluated as ESL Outstanding or ESL Adequate must demonstrate written English proficiency by the end of their second semester. They can do this by having an instructor provide to the Graduate Advisor verification that their writing is Outstanding or Adequate for a Graduate Student. However, students may ask for an extension to this deadline in special circumstances. Permission will be granted or denied by the Graduate Coordinator or Chair. Students must meet Level One written English proficiency prior to advancing to Level Two. 3.3 English Preparation of Non-Native Speakers The procedures for assessing level one writing proficiency and placing students accordingly for non-native speakers is included in the previous section. 3.4 Overview of Program Admissions Policy As described above (section 1.1, 2.3, 3.1, 3.2) the philosophy department meets the university standards for graduate admission ( described in section 3.1 above), and in line with our mission to provide a high-quality education to anyone who desires it and is qualified to pursue it, we do not discriminate between applicants who meet this standard. We review the cases of students who have been on probation for two successive semesters and therefore are disqualified from the program, but have not found correlations with properties of their admissions documents that would be useful in predicting success of applicants in the future. Nevertheless, on occasion the information provided by a qualified applicant suggests that the individual has objectives to which our program cannot adequately respond. Two years ago, for example, we had an applicant - an attorney - who planned to use the M.A. as a stepping stone to a proprietary doctorate program in Switzerland. Although meeting university and department standards, he was intent on.studying only certain contemporary French cultural theorists whose scholarship is less philosophical than sociological. He could not do so in our program, but we were able to make a match for him in the Political Science program, where a faculty member shares some of his interests. This was a good resolution for an individual who would not have flourished in our more traditional program. 46

48 4.0 Program Requirements This section begins with a table showing our Course Rotation Schedule for graduate level courses. The M.A. program requirements and how we meet them are discussed in the following sections. The Philosophy Department M.A. program greatly exceeds minimum university standards regarding the number of courses offered and the frequency of course offerings (3) (20) (11) (17) (20) (15) (22) (28) (30) (8) (4) (4) (8) (5) (10) (9) (16) (10) (14) 2 2 (25) (18) (9) (21) (3) (4) (1) (6) (16) (11) (11) (17) (14) (22) (11) (7) (13) (7) (9) (10) (19) (23) (12) (8) (3) (2) (3) (3) (2) (1) (3) (11) (9) (7) (12) (10) (19) (3) (6) (2) (1) (14) (7) (19) (24) (33) (17) 2 1 (32) (13) 1 1 (18) (19) (46) (14) (47) (53) (55) (19) (28) (16) (22) (20) 1 (11) 1 (15) 1 (17) 3 (58) 47

49 1 (15) (17) (22) (20) 1 1 (9) (27) 1 1 (21) (18) 1 (18) 1 1 (21) (13) 1 (26) 1 (18) 1 (16) (13) (13) (24) (41) (44) (26) (19) (53) (25) (59) (66) (61) (74) (96) (100) (125) (124) (135) (129) (129) 8 (106) 8 (127) 9 (170) 11 (225) 14 (259) 15 (258) (1272) average size To see the topics of these seminars, and their instructors, go to Appendix B. It has been the very successful practice in our program to encourage faculty to give seminars that are enriched by their current research projects, so that students can model how active scholars approach and execute their work. This has stimulated our students to strive to satisfy professional standards in their work. Inviting faculty to develop new seminars also allows students to develop their mastery of an approach through several applications of it to different philosophical problems. We prefer this strategy to repeating the same topics every two or three years, and our Fifth Cycle external consultants praised our program for the diversity of courses students are able to take. 48

50 Our preferred strategy is good for students and is cost-effective as long as the cost of new seminars lies mainly in applying the gains that faculty achieve in their scholarly development to instruction. Barriers to obtaining approval of new seminars, such as the repeated shortening of deadlines and consequent shrinking window for university approval, have raised the cost, however. Barriers in approving seminars that result in repetition of a small number of topics adversely affect both students and the cost of their instruction. Students who are preparing for a particular area of specialization have only one place to go after completing the few in that area; and that is to the Independent Study category. But there are at least two defects with having to take this route: Independent Study costs the university much more than seminar enrollment and therefore depletes the faculty time the department can make available to students; and the topic the student studies is not inscribed on the transcript. Our strategy has been, therefore, to offer a reasonably replete menu of graduate seminars. Unfortunately, gaining approval for new courses - even seminars - recently has become prohibitively costly in regard to faculty time. And as a consequence our seminar offerings may be in danger of lacking sufficient variety. It seems likely that the original reason for the current burdensome course approval system - preventing departments from duplicating course offerings that properly reside in another discipline's domain - is not a pressing problem at the graduate level. Consequently, the following remedy is advanced. KECOMMENDATION: Make an arrangement with Academic Affairs that enables submission and approval of new graduate seminars on a more flexible basis responsive to the faculty research that provides the subject matter for advanced instruction. 4.1 Number of course offerings The Department of Philosophy far exceeds the standard of offering two graduatelevel non-supervisory, non-independent study courses per year. Indeed, the numbers of graduate-level (non-supervisory) courses offered in our department has been steadily on the rise from eight in A Y 07 /08 ( with 106 occupied seminar seats) to fifteen in AY 12/13 (with 258 occupied seminar seats). As our national reputation grows, we have more highly qualified students apply each year, accept more students, (while maintaining a high standard of admission), and thus have an increasing demand for seminar courses. We have met this demand as it has grown by offering an increasing number of seminars each semester, while keeping the enrollment in each seminar as low as possible to maintain a high quality learning environment. We also have begun to offer a graduate seminar every summer. In addition, the university's consortia! arrangement with the University of California Berkeley is an invaluable asset. With the UCB faculty member's permission, and that of our Graduate Coordinator, our students can take ( a limited number) of UCB graduate courses, as well as UCB undergraduate courses that count for the doctorate at UCB. (During the past few years we have tightened our criteria for approving 49

51 students' participation in this arrangement.) An SFSU student's doing so not only provides more advanced educational opportunities, but also gives our M.A. students the chance to compare abilities with first-rate doctoral students and sometimes to add a letter of recommendation from a UCB faculty member when they apply for doctoral program admission. We very much appreciate the generosity of the UCB Philosophy faculty who have taught our students. 4.2 Frequency of course offerings The Department of Philosophy far exceeds the requirement of offering courses required for graduation at least once every two years. From Fall 2007 to Spring 2010, the Department of Philosophy had two courses that are required courses: Phil 896 (the qualifying exam) and Phil 898 (the thesis). Phil 896 was offered twice a year in this time, and Phil 898 was offered many times a year, as every tenured/tenure-track faculty member has a section of this course every semester. In Fall 2010, the Department added the required gateway course Phil 715, Philosophical Writing; this changed the number of required courses from two------phil 896 and Phil 898-to three. We now offer four sections of Phil 896 per year (two each semester); Phil 898 continues to be offered many times a year; and Phil 715 has been offered at least once per semester since Fall 2010 (usually two sections in Fall and one in Spring, responsive to the needs of the particular students who make up each entering class). 4.3 Path to graduation The Department of Philosophy publishes (both as a hard paper copy and online) a timeline each semester that advises students regarding when they should take which courses and explains important timelines regarding paperwork that students should keep in mind as they move through the program. (See Appendix C for the actual document.) Despite the detailed instructions about necessary paperwork this document contains, we have not been able to eliminate graduate student errors in filing paperwork. Let us underline here that the errors are not in the actual courses taken, but in the paperwork that must be filed at various points in the program to approve students' planned coursework before they undertake it. We understand the value of such procedures; they are not, however, responsive to courses of study where, as the student's research direction unfolds, warranted changes in courses selected or in thesis committee personnel recommend themselves. Our Graduate Coordinators already carry a full load of administrative work and are unable to find even more hours to guiding students through needed revisions of paperwork. Moreover, graduate administrative work is unrelenting for twelve months a year, despite faculty members being on ten month appointments so that they execute some of this work as volunteers. Moreover, only student assistant help - in place only during instruction and not year round - is available to support graduate 50

52 administrative work. Further, student assistants are transient and so can learn little more than filing; they are unable to help students get paperwork right. Faculty time now spent fixing out-dated paperwork would be used more much more productively, and delays in students who have completed all requirements being awarded degrees would cease, if trained staff support were available to assist graduate students, as well as to support the Graduate Coordinators, with the administrative paperwork of the Graduate Program. (See Chapter 10 on Resources for a proposal.) Up till now, the Graduate Faculty has managed to address and temporarily detour around looming curricular bottlenecks. For example, when a faculty member is scheduled to go on sabbatical, the students s/he is supervising are alerted and schedules for draft submission are arranged. We are not, however, sufficiently well prepared when emergency leaves occur. This has happened twice during the Sixth Cycle, both instances involving the same individual but different areas of philosophy. In the case of one thesis, the faculty member was supervising outside of that individual's specializations, and we were able to substitute the requisite expertise of other graduate faculty members, albeit at considerable cost to them. In regard to the other theses, however, we were enormously fortunate to have the services as substitute of an emeritus faculty member from a doctoral institution who also was substituting for some of the contact hour classes. Our own tenured/tenure track faculty became the official thesis directors but an external expert on the theses' topics did the detailed supervisory work. We cannot rely on having such expertise available for every specialization, however, and with the current faculty size we surely can't restrict thesis topics to those which more than one member has a specialization sufficient to supervise, so we need an additional emergency plan. RECOMMENDATION: Develop a detailed emergency plan to maintain instruction, for both contact hour and supervisory courses, to address lengthy sick leave, family and medical leave, and bereavement leave absences. The plan should include provision for access to instructional records and materials and for acquiring qualified substitute instruction. 4.4 Course distribution To reach the 70% mark given the 33 units required for the Philosophy M.A., a student must have taken 23 units at the graduate level. We did a transcript study of all our Spring 2013 graduates and found that the average graduate units taken was 30 and that the modal number of graduate units taken was 27. There were no paired courses listed. We have no reason to think the pattern differs in other semesters. 4.5 Class size Table 9: Enrollment in Graduate Seminars: '07-'08 through' 12-' 13 51

53 25 i.. ~ C: ' 20 CJ Vl I.. 15 CJ 0.. l 10 c:: CJ "C B Vl 5 0 z 0 Enrollment in Graduate Seminars ~ < B 200B Academic Year Table 9 shows that during the six years of the self study 100% of the classes offered met the minimum enrollment standard of having five students or more. Table 5 shows that 100% of the classes offered were under the maximum enrollment standard of having no more than 30 students. As the above graph makes clear, enrollment in philosophy graduate seminars is up significantly from where it was just six years ago. Over the course of the six years covered by the self-study, there were 65 seminars offered and 1272 occupied seats in these seminars. The average class size was During this time, 41 of the 65 seminars were enrolled over their caps of 15 students per seminar. We have already discussed (in section 2.3) the impact that the ban on admissions for the Spring 2010 semester had on our program. The overages noted here in the number of students in some graduate seminars are mostly due to that impact. Having taken measures to move the Fall 2010 class through the program as efficiently as possible while maintaining our high standard of education, the average enrollment in our graduate seminars was down to 17.2 for the academic year from its peak of in Barring further unforeseen constraints on admissions, we expect this to be down further soon, as the number of currently-enrolled graduate students continues to recover. 4.6 Number of Graduates Table 10 below presents the data concerning the number of students graduating from the philosophy MA program. For purposes of calculating degrees granted annually, an academic year begins in Summer and ends in Spring. For example, AY 2007/08 is Summer 07, Fall 07, Spring

54 * , *26 students defended successfully in A Y 2012/13 but one was late paying graduation fees and decided it was less expensive to pay regular fees to graduate in SU '13 than to pay late fees to graduate in SP '13. University policy states: "The average number of students graduating from a degree program or going on to a doctoral program in a related field per year over a five-year period shall be at least five." Table 6 demonstrates that the Department of Philosophy has met this standard: we have graduated 8 MA students in the year with the fewest graduates, 26 in the year with the largest number, and on average over the last five years we have awarded 18.4 M.A. degrees a year Overview of Program Quality and Sustainability Indicators The SFSU philosophy department MA program has been listed as one of the top ten terminal MA programs in philosophy by the Philosophical Gourmet Report ( a highly influential website for information on post-graduate study in philosophy). So, we enjoy an excellent reputation among similar programs nationwide. In fact, our national reputation has continued to grow over the period covered by the cun-ent selfstudy. Both highly qualified applicants and students who are enrolled have increased. So has the number of our graduates. While maintaining, and even increasing, rigor in the program, we have been able to preserve, and even speed up, students' progress to graduation so that the number of degrees awarded annually has tripled during the Sixth Cycle. 53

55 5.0 FACULTY REQUIREMENTS 5.1 Number of Faculty in Graduate Program There are 12 full-time faculty - 11 tenured/tenure-track and 1 additional member who is a distinguished professor - who constitute the Graduate Faculty and teach graduate students regularly. The table that follows on the next page shows which faculty have taught contact hour courses to graduate student populations, which courses they have taught, and when these courses have been taught. By reading left to right on a row, all the contact hour courses aimed at the graduate student population in a particular semester can be viewed. In addition, two lecturers who publish regularly assist on thesis committees. The far right hand column of the table shows the rare instances (total of 5) since F '07 when a faculty member in the FERP program (twice), one of the lecturers (once), an emeritus professor from another institution substituting for an ill faculty member (once), or a VAP (visiting assistant professor) (once) has taught a graduate class. Graduate students do take senior level courses and other upper division courses. Graduate students who do not have much background in M&E broadly construed like to take some senior M&E courses to prepare themselves for relevant graduate seminars; thus, for example, some graduate students will enroll in Professor Peschard's Fall' level course in Philosophy of Perception and then move on in S' 14 to her graduate seminar on Embodied Cognition. When a significant graduate population appears in a 600 level course, we like to split the class, during some of the contact hours, into separate discussion groups for undergraduates and graduates, with advanced T As leading the undergraduates and the faculty member leading the graduates. Doing so works very well indeed, but it is extremely difficult to find an extra classroom at the assigned class time to hold a second discussion group. RECOMMENDATION: Work with Academic Affairs to establish a classroom housing pattern for 600 level senior courses that enables offering different discussion group sections for undergraduate and graduate students. Table 11: Graduate contact hour class teaching, by Graduate Faculty member and by semester, F' 07 - S '13 Azad Fraasse Hoo Lan Monte Peschar Silv Sowaa Sv'ns Tiwal To Wilcox ot pur n d dy mayor d ers* I dottir d h( (07) her (03)** (08) (98) (09) (09) (08) **(6 (05) (05) (06) 11 ** ** 7) ) F' Plato Early Theor Issues and Moder y of in Aris! n Knowl Pol/Soc otle 896- edge Fund. Phil Texts 54

56 S' Heide Fund. Virtue 0- gger Phil Ethics He Being Texts gel & Ant Time on Hu me Ro yse F' 850-Phil 850-Phil of of Fund. Realis Justice 0- Science* Science* Phil m& for All? Ka Texts Natur nt, alism Ro yse S' Adv Fouc Logic Plato Descar Moral ault Wkshp & tes Psych Care Plato 896- ology of nism Fund. Self Phil Texts F' 890- Phil 890- Phil of of Cartesi Social Environ Experime Experim anism Ontol mental ntation* entation 896- ogy Ethics * Fund. Phil Texts S' Adv Analy Logic Plato - Phil Fund. Confu tic Wkshp & Kan of Mind Phil c/ Hegel Aris! t Texts Buddh ians otle ism F' Science = Space Science Early Virtue Issues & Self* Phil &Time & Self* Moder Ethics in Writ n Pol/Soc ing 896- Fund. Phil Texts 55

57 8' Fund Heidegg Adv. Plato & Hegel Phil Texts Social Phil er Logic Platonis Ontolog Writin Being & Wksh m y g Time p Sum 715-Phil '11 Writinq F' Phil 715-Phil 851- Phil Theory Evidenc Descartes Writing Writing Fem. Logic of e& 896-Fund. Ethics Wksh Knowled Reliabiit Phil Texts I p ge y Politic al 8' Phil Phil Plato & Kant of Confuc/ 20th Phil & Prophec & Langua Buddhis Cent. Writin Aris, y Sellar ge m Metaethi g Rorty s cs Phil of Fund. Science Phil di Texts Buchianni co Sum' Phil 2 Phil 890- Writin Moral q Psvch F' Phil 890-Phil Phil Adv. Phil of Mindi of Cartesiani Found. Phil Virtue Logic Writin Experi sm of Law Writin Episteolo Wksh g mentati 896-Fund. g gy, p 896- on Phil Texts 890- Fairweath Fund. Enviro er Phil n Texts Menta I Ethics 8' Fund Myth of Phil Plato & Hume Phil Texts Culture Virtue Phil of the Logic Platonis 896- Langua Ethics Action Given Wksh m Fund. ge p Phil Society Texts Sum' Adv. Well Phil. Being Pub. Fall '13 Adv. Phil Space Descartes Phil of Confuc/ Phil Logic Writin &Time 896-Fund. Langua Buddhis Writin Wksh g Phil Texts ge m g p Fund. Issues Phil in Texts Pol/S 770- oc Kant * Team-Taught **Non-tenure Track Faculty teaching graduate seminars Anton and Royse were retired and still on Faculty Early Retirement Plan Rorty became instructor of record when Hood took sick leave partway early in the semester 56

58 Di Buchiannico, an LSE Ph.D., was a post-doc through an NSF grant Fairweather, a lecturer, publishes regularly and was completing a volume on Virtue Epistemology, so he taught this course to maintain sufficient M&E seminars while Prof. Sveinsdottir was on sabbatical *** Professor Silvers is the only one of the full-time graduate faculty who did not teach seminars in the graduate program during the review period..40 of her timebase is in administrative time to cover some of her department chair work. Each semester she also teaches PHIL 383 Ethics in Medicine, with enrolments between 121 and 132 and Phil 680 Fieldwork Community Service Learning with enrollments from 22 to 39. She participates on thesis committees and is an adjudicator in cases where there are differences of judgment among the members of the semester's Graduate Comprehensive Exam Committee. ****Tenure track appointment began in year marked in parentheses 5.2 Graduate Coordinator(s) For most of the review period, Professor Alice Sowaal has been the sole graduate coordinator. During this period, Professor Sowaal was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor. Professor Sowaal introduced many of the practices that facilitate management of the graduate program, with a special emphasis on advising. She prepared the detailed published materials that lead students through our requirements and the various forms they must file on the way to the degree. She initiated the orientation meetings for entering students that we hold in late June to prepare for new students' first crack at priority enrollment, and at the start of instruction for fall and spring semesters. She also introduced our annual advising sessions that guide students in applying for doctoral programs ( and now law schools as well). To prepare for Professor Sowaal's SP' 12 sabbatical, Assistant Professor David Landy trained to serve as Graduate Coordinator. Professor Landy had already taken a lead role in the M.A. program by developing, in coordination with Professors Tiwald and Wilcox, the instructional design for the new required gateway Philosophical Writing course. Professor Landy served as Graduate Coordinator during SP '12; starting F' 12 both Landy and Sowaal are Graduate Coordinators, each with designated components of the administrative work to execute. The large number of students whose paperwork must be processed cannot be handled with dispatch by a single individual. Professors Landy and Sowaal are compensated by being assigned more graduate classes than other members of the graduate faculty, thereby reducing the number of students they teach, albeit not the number of hours they must expend on their work. In addition to the Graduate Coordinators, who guide students through university paperwork, graduate students have assigned advisors to guide them through their intellectual work. The Department Chair and the Graduate Coordinator advise students between the time they are accepted into the program and their enrollment in the required gateway Philosophical Writing course. The instructor of the Philosophical Writing course in which they enroll picks up advising and guides them through coursework until they are ready to present their thesis proposal. Finally, the thesis supervisor takes the student through the thesis and oral defense, and usually is the primary adviser in regard to doctoral program and teaching position applications. It is not unusual, however, for a graduate student in the second year to be mentored by more than one faculty member, especially if, in addition to working on the thesis, the student is preparing and submitting papers to conferences and for publication. 57

59 6.0 PROGRAM PLANNING AND QUALITY IMPROVEMENT PROCESS As a graduate faculty, we are collaborative. Our philosophical educations were sufficiently similar to give us compatible, although not identical, views about what constitutes a valuable philosophy postbaccalaureate degree. So we benefit from mutual understanding of what a philosophy department ought to aim for so that its graduate degree is viewed as valuable in the philosophy world. We also resemble each other in having fairly broad philosophical interests, and we are not disrespectful of philosophical approaches that are different from our own. We all enjoy doing philosophy. Each ofus wants to continue savoring the special pleasures that drew us to select this field, and all of us are generous enough - or at least consistent enough - to want our colleagues, and our students, to do so as well. All ofus therefore are committed to promoting a robust intellectual climate and a reputation for high achievement for our program. As part of our process for doing so, the twelve faculty members who are responsible for the Philosophy M.A. program try to hold two full day planning sessions annually, usually just before the start of each semester's instruction. Planning for us is not a matter of contending with each other about competing departmental goals, but is instead a time for conversing in order to craft practical ways of realizing commonly accepted values. Efforts we consider "practical" are informed by strategies responsive to the university's circumstances, both fiscal and political. A practical plan for us is also one we can carry out with our existing person power, that is, our current faculty and staff, sometimes assisted by our wonderful graduate students. During the years covered by the current review, resources have decreased while organizational instability has magnified. Nevertheless, we have been able to secure enough selfimprovement in our programmatic practices, and enough evidence of our students' consequent successes, to shield our planning process against hopelessness - at least until now. To command consent and commitment in the face of hardships, planning strategies also have to be fair. So in organizing for improvement we try to be mindful of workload equity, and especially of the additional effort required to institute new educational opportunities for our students. Of high importance as well is preserving equitable opportunity for professional development for all our tenured-track faculty, and this means that work needed to maintain or improve student advantage should not impact disparately on some colleagues more than on others. Within this framework for pursuing our mission, we have created an effective (and enjoyable) format for our all-day planning meetings. The meetings have a three-fold purpose and therefore often are organized with a tripartite agenda. In one part of the meeting all members are invited to contribute ideas for improving our programs. During a second part, information about newly emerging requirements for university administrative work are disseminated and we determine how the work will be done. During a third part, the graduate coordinators familiarize all our members with the progress ( or not) of each of our graduate students. As we proceed along the list of students, other faculty add to the reports and chime in with ideas about how best to encourage, enjoin, challenge, or otherwise guide each individual. 58

60 6.1 Quality Improvement To effect the first purpose, our tradition is to go around the room inviting each member to identify improvements in programs or practices that s/he thinks should and can be made. The ground rule is that, as long as a proposal is workable and beneficial, we welcome it. In this way, all of our faculty can contribute their ideas, and follow up with energetic action, to institute changes that bear fruit in more successful, and thereby happier, students. Some such proposals tighten standards. To illustrate, a faculty member who joined our department when we still had paired courses for several core M&E topics brought her concerns about quality to one of our planning meetings. After discussing ways in which we could reorganize our faculty resources so as to offer independent graduate and undergraduate courses on the shared subject matter, our faculty decided to abandon paired courses. This was several years before a similar suspicion of paired courses prompted the current university policy that seems to be phasing them out. Other proposals improve educational resources. For example, another faculty member introduced the subject of improving our students' skills in applying to doctoral programs, as a result of which we now hold an annual event for students during which faculty members take them through the steps for assembling a successful doctoral program application. As another example, we recently leveraged the imminent arrival of Hypatia's book review function, which Professor Wilcox now will execute, by adding to the curriculum a course in "Advanced Philosophical Publishing". Advanced graduate students can work with Professor Wilcox, or with one of several other faculty who are engaged in editing collections of essays or special journal issues, to learn philosophical book editing and publishing skills. Yet other proposals for improvement are aimed at decreasing time to degree. For example, the arrangement that enables entering graduate students who have no symbolic logic course on their transcripts to pass a challenge exam was brainstormed at such a planning meeting. Not all our planning work issues smoothly in beneficial results. At a planning meeting this year, we began a discussion about the most propitious way to approach writing recommendations in cases where many of our graduate students are applying to the same doctoral program. This year's placement experience shows that more than one of our students can be accepted to the same very good program. And we are reluctant to go to a ranking system, as it is unclear how such a ranking can be thoroughly fair. Nevertheless, we understand that some doctoral admissions committees expect such rankings. We have yet to conclude this discussion satisfactorily and hope our external consultants will offer some advice. RECOMMENDATION: Obtain advice of program review external consultants about best approach for writing recommendations when several excellent students all are applying to the same doctoral program. Another, more long-standing instance in which maintaining or improving quality cost-effectively has been stymied has to do with reserving room in graduate seminars for first semester students. At present, by the time new graduate students are permitted to enroll in courses, continuing students have filled our seminars and their waiting lists. We have worked diligently with the Registrar's Office to find a solution to give entering students fair opportunity to enroll. No approach to direct enrollment 59

61 that university policy permits has been effective, and implementing each attempt has made burdensome calls on Associate University Registrar time. And during each attempt an unexpected provision in enrollment processing ended up breeching the seminar enrollment caps. At present, we have fallen back on a system through which well prepared entering graduate students can, in addition to enrolling directly in the Philosophical Writing Seminar, be placed by permit in a graduate seminar central to the student's research interests by the Department Chair. These additional enrollments are distributed evenly across the semester's graduate classes. But while this laborious process dissolves a bottleneck and shortens time to degree for about 20 entering students each year, it cannot avoid pushing class size above the seminar enrollment cap. RECOMMENDATION: Work with Registrar's staff to arrange to enable equitable access to graduate seminar enrollment for entering and continuing students alike. The Graduate Faculty shall consider, but not necessarily adopt, a program of rationing access to graduate seminars so that all students have equal opportunity for a fair share. Recently, we have initiated a conversation about the balance of the subject matter we cover in our graduate curriculum. During our last program review, our external consultants praised our openness to different philosophical approaches. Our respective research interests, and as a result the graduate courses we teach and the topics our students pursue in their theses, reflect our diverse interests. In our planning, we want to be sure that we are providing sufficient coverage of current research in core work in the history of philosophy, in metaphysics and epistemology broadly construed (including philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and philosophy of perception), and in ethics and aesthetics. Further, we should be planning to leverage special departmental strengths in scholarship that addresses the intersections of philosophy with science and with various areas of political and social policy. RECOMMENDATION: Converse with the external consultants about the adequacy of coverage of various philosophical areas in the curriculum, obtaining their advice for leveraging department curricular and research strengths, and then follow through with any needed curricular changes. 6.2 Compliance with university requirements The chair, the graduate coordinators, and other department faculty who may understand the university's ever changing regulations lead the discussions that serve the second purpose of our planning meetings. Thus, for example, the detailed proposal that implements the 2008 MOU agreement to add a required Philosophical Writing Seminar to the program was brought to a planning meeting and refined there. So was the detailed proposal for the graduate assessment plan. 6.3 Assessment A component of the Graduate Coordinators' discussion of individual graduate students' progress is a report on the most recent findings from graduate assessment. Graduate assessment occurs at the end of every semester, when the c~mprehensive exam is given and oral defenses of theses are held. These reports not only enable us to determine objectively whether our students have achieved the program's learning outcomes. They also invite conversations among faculty about the students' demonstrations of learning, as groups of faculty put questions to students and then assess their responses in both the written comprehensive and the oral defense of thesis. 60

62 General conclusions about the effectiveness of our instructional program are reached based on assessment reports. We have, for example, eliminated the practice of passing a student conditional on writing a remedial paper or executing some other remedial work. Serious weaknesses are evidence of failure to achieve one of the relevant learning outcomes, and a student who has not risen to any one of our standards should not be passed. 6.4 Collegiality Planning meetings also offer occasions to enjoy our colleagues' society. That is best done with proper food and drink. So traditionally part of a philosophy planning meeting is sustained by a pleasant meal. At various times we've sampled the cuisine of various restaurants by ordering through a delivery service, used a restaurant's private room, and even taken over a restaurant entirely. Thoughtful planning of planning meetings facilitates thoughtful planning of programs. 61

63 7.0 THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE In this chapter we comply with the Sixth Cycle template for the self-study by presenting various kinds of data that describe our graduate student population, including data indicative of levels of student success. Our analyses of these data expand the picture of cumulative or collective student outcomes. But absent from this chapter is a sense of the texture of the student experience in our program - the personal encounters that enable student intellectual and professional growth. Therefore, to help readers get a sense not only of what about our program is memorable for students, but also of who our students are, we have included narratives provided by a sample drawn from our diverse graduate student population. We invite readers to supplement this chapter's contents by looking through these reports from recent graduates and current students, to be found in Appendix E. 7.1 Philosophy Department Graduate Student Diversity Below are several charts and graphs presenting demographic data about our student population % #% #% # % # % # %

64 Unknown... 3 Non--R~.siclentAlieil 0 :.... >;. '' :.:.. ' 1:otalFeinaleEnrgllme.nt._ Male # % Native A.n:ierican/Alaskan # % # % # % # % # % :plad<;;africa.h.american Cbjcapo,}yiexigan- Afuericari ; -. '. Othe(Latiho (.. dm:vr. ' - \._... Filipino....,... Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. - :; Two:or.Morel~.aces.. Other Responses-.... '...: --_... - < '._. : -... ; ; Subtot~I; '.' ; Unknown < ''. N"ori:-Re8:!clentAlien _ 0 ; -.. '. :... ;....: Trarishory TotalMale Enrollment , ; - '; Total # %.. :_ \.. Native'Anierlcan/ Alaskan NatiVe)'.' # % # % # % # % # %

65 Bfack, African American _--_-- \ '."Sh! ~n.q~!vfexfoan- - :J\rnericanC ,,,, -,''" \. _\-> OtherJ..,atirio '. _\ Asian -; -- \ _- Filipino '' : ' NatiyeHawaiian/Pacifi Islander ,.\ ,. White,.NQn-Latino >,, :- - - Two;br More R~ces Qtll~r Respo11se~ ,,; '",,,,,, ' subtotal Unknown ' No11~Resident Alien ~--.,' ~11:~i.. tgrjr _- - \ - TofaLEnrollment ; \ -- _ Table 1_2.~. SF:~U To_ fal G r a_ eluate Programs: by Gender by Ethnicity -',', i"'i ',, /,',,,,'' '"'' ',, ' ' ',' \ " 2012 % # % # % # % # % # % Black/ African_ American Chfoano, Mexican.,. American 64

66 Other Latino....: : I Ct >..... Filipino '.\ :. : Ji.. Native\ <> Hawaiian/Pacific.. IslartdJf.. : White Non..;... ; ' Latino <. : :. :. ; : :.. Two ormore Races, Qtli~rRespon~is O : < :.. Subtotal :.. : :... Alien 320 Non-Resident 302 ; "'.2 ~ </.;... :. Tfansitdrf ') : :. Total Female EnroHlll~ri({ :.....:... Mate ;' ; ;.. :.: Native 10 Americari/ Alaska nnative ~Jfl~~' frican 57 Americii:n./ Qh.ican.~,? 71 Mexican- American # % # % # % # % # % 0.5 OtherLatino' 69 Asian :

67 >. ; 'Filipirio ' < ;.- :.. :. l'jatft~\.; ; ~awaiiapl,pa9ific Islander... White, :Non--.. : Latinp.. Twc{orMore Races ' ;.. ; ' btherresp{nises Sutitotal ' Unknown-..;.. C: N onll{esident ; A.lietf;'. : -' >. ; ~... ; 'Transitory Total Male Enr()lhneilt \.. e,: ;,... : /.....,. "' Tofal'.;' # % # % # % # % # % ; <.. ;t,.. < Native \ Ameri~an/ Alaska nnatiye/.. Black/African Anie~i9~n. <., : >.. chica110, Mexican,. 'America.ff,. ;.... Other Latino ;. Asian I....:.. Filipino "

68 Native IIai,iiian/Pacific Islander :<,>,\,,-::/ :,:_-,".::' ';'{,.. ;:..!i... \\r.. Whit~,:ijpn"" :... 1, I.,atirio <-. :... Two or rvidre Races -... \ Oth~.r 'R,esponses , <'>'. ",, Subtotal... 3, : '.. i?.urikriowri..'. : ,, -,.-,.'-2, - -No11-Resident : Alien "!,'" ' '.. : - -,--. :,.. :... '-- _:- Traµsitory{,,',,, -.. : : -- Total Enrollment ' <T~t,J~l2r~~SF l.itot~j:.. bygende5~yet~picity < < \ : -... : ::..:... ::... :::,.:\ :,).,:-... ::,. -:. :..,.. :... Female : -.. : ,...! # % # % # % # % # % # %.. :... - Native'.<. >< A111erican/Alask - : annaih,{< J.3lack; African Alnerican - - Chicano; Mexican-.American ---- :' th er Latino : - - { Asian Filipino Native

69 Hawaiian/Padfi cl slander ',, '-, \' -.-._ White, Nori~ Lati \ -- Two.. otmore> Rac~;r ;c.other Responses ;. Subtot~I ,<c \;ci";,.-- '. -_ - --' ;... Unknown, Non~Reside11t -- 1,Alien Trarn;,Itory '(' - TotaiFemale. _ 1' Entollffient / _ > \ ; - Male # % # % # % # % # % # % Native > America_n/Alask an Native ' Black, ½.frican ,', '.,,,',;-ic"':: American. Ch,ic~o, Mexican:. -- '' American QthefLatfuo ; Asian - - -, ; ~ ' Filipino ; Native' Hawaiian/Pacifi cislander

70 1 White; Non Latino r~iprrn8t~.>-.. ~other Responses.,... /.. Subfotal ' Unkn.own/ N ob:::re.sid~nt Alie~ ; Transitory > Total Male > -'.-'< --/ >. " +:.' _-- - -_. Enrollment <~,.., J/,, Total- - # % # % # % # % # % # % _._: - N.ative, <., American/ Al ask annative -... :...: -..,.., Black,Afri2an ;Races<, -,Amei-ioa11>~ ~--.- -~---- -_,,,... }.. Chic~~o,.. >< Mexican American...- : Oth~rLatino, ;... A...,.. ::... srnn {..._.. i;.. Filipino ,.~ ,---,---'-,----;--"- Natiy~ \ /.:._... _ Hawaiian/Pacifi clsland~i... I. White,~Non Latino 69

71 Two.or Mor.e R.~ces< \ Other' Responses... > L...., >.::. Subtotal ' -unknown,: :.. Non-Resident Alien.. Transitory< f Total Enrollment Table 13: Student Population Diversity, Philosophy, SFSU Graduate, and SFSU Total 70

72 SFSU Demographic Data as a Percentage of the Total Student Population 11 Philosophy Department C 0 u 0 V) 11 Graduate Programs rd C (Ci C CJ 'iii :& a a u rd All University < ro ::::: p......:i ~ t:i.... I C :... C ~ ro <l.l "O z ~ ;:;;. ~ :... 0 ~ vi 0 ::c:- ~ <I) E- > o rd z What the above charts and graph show is that the SFSU Philosophy MA program has a higher percentage of Native American/ Alaskan Native, Chicano Mexican American, and other Latino students, than SFSU graduate programs as a whole do, as well as of students of two or more races. Again as a percentage of the total student population, we have fewer African American, Asian, and Filipino students. In regard to Asian students, however, university wide data appear to result from extremely high Asian populations in the Colleges of Science and Engineering and of Business; the Philosophy Department's proportion of students in this category aligns with that of the College of Liberal & Creative Arts. Given the well-known lack of diversity at the graduate level in our discipline (see table below), our program's lead position in fulfilling our mission to bring members of underrepresented groups into philosophy seems evident. See also the letter from graduate Sylvia Koceida, now in her second year of doctoral study at Chapel Hill, in Appendix E

73 What this final chart shows is that the philosophy MA program at SFSU has a diverse student population compared to its peer programs. 7.2 Assessment of Student Learning Here is a list of our M.A. program's learning outcomes. Following is a table showing where in the program progress of different sorts toward these outcomes is made. Demonstrate advanced knowledge of the history and current state of the discipline of philosophy Demonstrate a sophisticated grasp of representative philosophical issues and ways of dealing with them Demonstrate a mature capacity to apply philosophical methods to intellectual problems and to engage in philosophical discussions meeting the standards of the discipline Apply advanced analytic skills Apply advanced interpretive skills Demonstrate mastery of the imaginative development of abstract formulations and their concrete applications Demonstrate mastery of the imaginative development of abstract formulations and their concrete applications Ph.D. level Develop the philosophical skills and knowledge necessary to teach philosophy at the community college (lower-division) level Demonstrate the capacity to study philosophy beyond the undergraduate level for the purposes of self-enrichment or to acquire additional expertise related to their professions TABLE 15:iPHILOSOPHY MA PROGRAM.STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES 72

74 * 9 Apply Apply Demon. Demon Develo Demon ;ttate.a advan adyanc strate strate pthe strate :~bphisti. 111ature ced ed rnastery m8:stery philoso the pated... capacjty analyt interpre ofthe ofthe phical capacit '>grasp.of t()apply tive imagin imagin skills yto -philoso skills ative- - ative and study phicar- develop develop knowle philoso methods mentof mentof dge phy - abstract_ abstract necessac -beyond formula-- formula ryto the ual- tions - tions teach undergr problerii: and and philoso aduate s andto their their phy at level concret - - concret the forthe in e e cofnmu purpose philosq applicaf -applicat nity s of - phical ions ions college- self- - discussi Ph.D. (lower- enrich level divisio mentor n) level -_to_- _.acqmre additio nal expertis e _ related to their professi ons I, D I,D I, D I, D I, D I, D I, D M M M M M M M M M M M I= Introduced, D= Developed and Practiced with Feedback, M = Demonstrated at the Mastery Level Appropriate for Graduate Students *The Leaming Outcome referenced here is the mastery of requisite knowledge for teaching the usual Introduction to Philosophy classes and the skill to present the knowledge clearly enough, and without notes, to beginning students. For general teaching skills and strategies, students participate in the Graduate Teaching Associate program. 73

75 7.21 The Basic Structure of the Philosophy M.A. Program In addition to the graduate seminars and other regular coursework that our students take, there are three required courses that form the backbone of the philosophy department's MA program, and provide the occasions for the introduction, practice, and demonstration of mastery of the program's learning outcomes: Phil 715: Seminar on Philosophical Writing (first semester of graduate work) introduces student learning outcomes and provides a first opportunity to develop and practice the requisite skills. Phil 896: Directed Readings in Philosophy (second or third semester of graduate work) is the first point at which outcomes 1, 2, 7, and 8 are assessed. This leads up to a mid-course of study comprehensive exam. The Graduate Coordinators make up and administer the exam, which also is graded by four of the Graduate Faculty (who alternate), with the Chair breaking ties. Thus, each year the entire Graduate faculty participates in making the assessment. Phil 898: Culminating Experience, which includes a written thesis and oral defense, is the point at which outcomes 1 through 6 are both assessed twice, and outcome 9 is also assessed. Students' mastery of these program objectives is assessed in three ways that all work in concert with one another and have significant overlap. The instruments used are the exam at the conclusion of Phil 896, which occurs about mid-way during the student's course of study, and rubrics we apply to the thesis portion and the oral defense portion of Phil 898, which assesses student learning outcomes as manifested in the Culminating Experience. In Phil 715, the required gateway course, students are introduced to and practice each of the learning outcomes through a program consisting of weekly assignments that familiarize students with professional-level philosophical research, writing, and presentation skills, all of which contribute to the students' semester-long construction of an extended philosophical interpretation and argument. Here learning outcomes are introduced, but not assessed. Assessment occurs first as part of Phil 896, a course in which students practice presentational skills, including the ability to recall and present philosophers' views and their arguments for those views without recourse to notes or texts. The students then sit for a 3-hour closed-book written exam in which they write three essays in response to prompts given by the faculty requiring them to organize their knowledge of topics in the history and current state of philosophy and apply it in response to questions within a short time frame. The 896 exam also serves as a means of ensuring that students ought to proceed to the culminating experience, which is a standard use of comprehensive exams in post-baccalaureate education in philosophy. Therefore, additional bench-mark criteria beyond the specified program learning outcomes are applied to determine passing and failing grades on the exam. Assessment continues with the culminating experience, for which graduate students research and write a professional-level philosophical essay, which includes an extended philosophical interpretation and argument, give an oral presentation of the material from this essay to the faculty and students who attend their defense, and then respond to questions from those attendees on the written work and oral presentation. 74

76 Below we detail how each student learning outcome is introduced, developed and practiced with feedback, and demonstrated at the mastery level appropriate for graduate students Assessment data The following tables include data about the three ways in which assessment takes place: the exam at the conclusion of Phil 896, the written thesis portion of Phil 898, and the oral defense portion of 898. ~TABLE16: 0V.ERALLPHIL y,,r; ){ >Ev""M RE,,.. S.,, u lrrs \>',..,'1.:-J v',v v,v '' V VV ;'<\,::<:~>'\y:'.;".~"v'",'"vv v V-,

77 . PA'.$SEil Fall student failed for the second time and therefore was not permitted to continue in the program Spring Fall students took exam again after this and passed. 1 student left program 1 student falied for the first time and transferred to Hum Dept 1 student failed for the first time here, took exam again later, failed again student took exam again later and failed. See below student retook exam and passed. 1 student took exam again later, failed, and moved to Humanities Dept 1 student failed for the second time and therefore was not permitted to continue in the program student failed for the second time, and therefore was not permitted to continue in the program. 1 student took the exam later and passed 76

78 1 student failed for the second time and moved to Humanities Dept student took the exam later and passed 1 student took exam again later, failed, and therefore was not permitted to continue in the program student will take the exam again with DPRC. 2 students took the exam later and passed 1 student had enrolled against advisement 1 student failed for the second time, and therefore was not permitted to continue in the program student took exam again later, failed, and therefore was not permitted to continue in the program. 2 students took the exam later and passed student failed for the second time, and therefore was not permitted to continue in the program During the period covered in the Sixth Cycle Review, 17 4 students have passed the exam, demonstrating mastery of the skills and knowledge stated in program objectives 1, 2, 7 and of these did not pass on their first try, demonstrating that they had not yet mastered the requisite skills and knowledge, but then took the exam and passed on a second try after spending more time in the program in order to acquire the requisite skills and knowledge, or after receiving a reasonable accommodation to a disability that had not been requested for the first attempt. The Graduate Coordinators and Department Chair, and the Graduate Faculty as a whole, discuss cases of failure to 77

79 determine causes. These discussions have been extremely helpful in guiding advisors in being better able to judge, based on the student's record in our program, when the student has mastered, and therefore is ready to demonstrate, the expected mid-course of study skills. During this 6-year period, however, six students failed twice and were dropped from the program. We have analyzed these students' records and found that their records in graduate level philosophy courses prior to taking, and to retaking, the exam were not consistent with their having mastered the requisite skills and lmowledge. One of these students subsequently transferred to the Humanities M.A. after attempting and failing the exam twice; he had taken only two graduate level courses before the second attempt. Another came from one of the least rigorous CSU undergraduate philosophy programs (which did not even offer symbolic logic), took comparatively few graduate level courses, started taking courses related to her job in another department alongside her philosophy courses, had a baby, and sat for the exam the second time without having attended any of the workshops and study groups during either semester in which she attempted it. Another subsequently transfe1red to the Political Science MA but has not earned that degree. One had enrolled in 8 graduate seminars prior to taking the exam twice, but received credit for only 2 of them. One had been on and off and on probation and might have been dropped from the program for poor performance had he not failed the exam twice. As for the sixth, at his request his physician discussed the matter with the department chair; if an effective accommodation for his particular disability can be found (the accommodation he requested on his second try worsened rather than improved his performance) he may be permitted to reapply to the program. The 896 exam is one of three ways in which our student learning outcomes are assessed. This exam is a means of mid-course of study assessment. It enables us to be sure the individual student is well prepared to cut free of seminar-directed research and organize a major project on her/his own. And the collective results provide important data on the effectiveness of our seminar instruction and advising during students' initial semesters in the program. The other two assessment inst1uments are the two parts of the culminating experience: the written thesis and oral defense. Below are quantitative data on the completion of the culminating experience. TABLEl8: NO~ STUDENTS COMPLETINGTHESIS i.an!l'6ratnifi?.ens1t

80 * 'Sii}Yr~' j~~~ti~ ~?(.' *Includes one student who completed and defended in F '11 but paid fees to graduate in SP '13, and one student who completed and defended in SP '13 but could not afford to pay graduation fee until SU' 13. During the period covered by this review, no student has attempted to submit or defend a thesis and failed. That is because we do not permit a thesis to be submitted until the thesis committee members agree independently from each other to accept it. During the course of supervising and advising on the thesis, committee members subject authors to sufficient queries and critiques to prepare them for the oral defense. Parenthetically, we have increased the number of degrees we are awarding every year ( as shown in the charts above) while simultaneously increasing the standards for academic performance for our graduate students. (We now require a grade of A or A- in all classes below the 600-level for all of our graduate students.) Appendix D contains our full assessment report. The report includes a detailed account for each learning outcome, of where in our program students are introduced to the knowledge, skills, and practice thereof needed to command the relevant skills and/or knowledge specified by the outcome; where mid-program progress toward the outcome is to be found, and the rubric we apply through the assessment instrument(s) for each outcome to ensure no student graduates without the nine outcomes our graduate course of study should produce. Assessment results have led to several important changes in the program. For example, applying the assessment rubrics as guides while theses are under development enabled us to identify some common areas of under-preparedness. As a result, we built better instruction for thesis writing into the new gateway course on Philosophical Writing. Consequently, students have been able to focus on the need to formulate a thesis proposal from the beginning of their graduate studies, and to write the thesis taking fewer wrong turns. By this means, we are reducing time to degree. As another example, the large number of failures in Fall '08 provided the Graduate Coordinator with a much better sense of how to determine when a student is ready to demonstrate mid-program mastery, and thus greater accuracy in advising students when to do so. As a third example, three students overtly exhibited vast over-confidence about the Fall '11 administration and did not practice the relevant skills and knowledge presentations; their failures were heuristic not only to themselves, but also to other students. 7.3 Advising The Department of Philosophy's standards for high quality advising involve advising students at all stages of their academic life. We divide these stages as follows, and assign an appropriate advisor to 79

81 each group of students. Prospective Students: Graduate Coordinator in Charge of Admissions Incoming Students: Graduate Coordinator in Charge of Admissions 715 Students: 715 Instructor Thesis Students: Thesis Director In all phases of advising faculty are available via , phone, and/or in-person meetings, so that the schedules of our students, many of whom work full-time, can be accommodated Prospective Students Advising in the Department of Philosophy begins before students even apply. For prospective students, a detailed webpage is available regarding all issues regarding application procedures, the MA program and requirements, as well as department life-including a quite active Philosophy Club, which is organized by MA students. We have recently assigned admissions as one of the primary duties of one of our Graduate Coordinators, and often prospective students will contact this individual, who will review with them details of the program and precisely how it will meet their needs. For the edification of all students and faculty, a highly detailed timeline is available both in print and on the web-page. This timeline of important dates explains precisely how each piece of paperwork is to be completed and the date by which it is to be submitted. (See Appendix C.) 7.32 Incoming Students Students are advised to contact the Graduate Coordinators before registering for classes in their first semester for assistance with clarifying their academic goals and needs, and developing an appropriate plan of study. Students also attend an orientation session (held three time a year: early in the summer, at the start of the fall term, and at the start of the spring term), during which they gain advising regarding: when to take prerequisite courses, the mandatory course on philosophical writing, the qualifying exam; how and when to complete important forms (i.e., Advancement to Candidacy, Proposal for Culminating Experience); how and when to select a thesis advisor and committee; and what kind of research is involved in completing a thesis. Because seats in graduate seminars (except usually for PHIL 715, which is designated for incoming students) are snapped up during Early Priority Registration, and incoming students cannot enroll until Late Priority Registration, the Department Chair has created a laborious process to enable all incoming students to enroll in at least one other seminar. Each provides her with a ranked list of three desired seminars, and the reasons the student wants to be in each, and she distributes them as evenly as possible across the seminars. (Fortunately, as they have different philosophical interests, they do not all make the same choices; in fact the students through their choices distribute themselves.) These students then are provided with permits, as for reasons having to do with the way enrollment works it is a burden on the Registrar's staff to place them directly in the classes. (See recommendation in section 6.1, p. 62.) 80

82 7.33 PHIL 715 Students Once a student takes Phil 715, the instructors with whom they take that course becomes their de facto advisor until they choose a faculty member to direct their thesis. They are encouraged to meet with their PHIL 715 advisors for consultations regarding coursework, progress towards the degree, filing necessary paperwork, etc. Students may also direct questions to the Graduate Coordinator overseeing student progress through the program Thesis Students Once students have chosen to work with a faculty member on the development of their thesis, that faculty member takes on primary advising responsibilities for them. These responsibilities can include advising on filing the necessary paperwork, making progress towards the degree, setting appropriate academic goals, devising an appropriate course of study, and advising on post-graduate opportunities ( e.g., applying to PhD programs or teaching positions). Students may also direct questions to the Graduate Coordinator overseeing student progress through the program. The Graduate Coordinator overseeing student progress through the program also hosts a workshop in the Spring semester called "Taking Philosophy to a Higher Degree: On Applying to PhD Programs in Philosophy:" During these workshops, students learn about issues regarding researching PhD programs, the importance of (and how to study for) the GRE, how to request letters of recommendation, and the importance of the statement of intent and writing sample Evaluation Recent improvements to our program's high-quality advising structure include: Development of a webpage with an advising timeline to direct students Clarification of the guidelines to students for when and how paperwork is to be submitted Specific assignment of one of the Graduate Coordinators to overseeing admissions and new student advising Implementation of the Phil 715 instructor/advisor program Specific assignment of the other Graduate Coordinator to overseeing student progress through the program An important problem remains, however. We are not notified that students are on probation until after the semester ends; this means that the notification arrives when no Graduate Coordinator is formally on duty, unless one of the Graduate Coordinators is teaching in R-1 Summer Session. This means that there may not be a Graduate Coordinator available to discern whether any student is on probation for a second consecutive semester, or has otherwise violated a prior notice of conditions for remaining in the program. Consequently a declassification notice may not be sent out in a timely manner. This time lag has, in one recent instance, had an enormously unfortunate result, and a more reliable plan for year-round arrangement for Graduate Coordinator services needs to be put in place. RECOMMENDATION: As the administration of the graduate program is year-round, with some actions such as new graduate student orientation and probation condition warnings/declassifications/ 81

83 disqualifications necessarily having to occur after the instructional year ends, make provision for year-round Graduate Coordinator services. 7.4 Writing Proficiency Students in the philosophy's MA program are required to write papers for almost every course that can be counted for their degree. Our admissions requirements ensure that upon entering the program students are already sufficiently adept at all the skills necessary for writing graduate-level papers. We therefore focus on preparing our students for producing professional-standard philosophical writing by the time they reach graduation. To this end, after the previous program review, we worked to change the format of our program to include a focus on professional-standard philosophical writing. Most significantly, beginning in Fall 2010, we began requiring our students to take Phil 715: Seminar on Philosophical Writing in order to better prepare them to meet the professional-level standard to which we hold them for their culminating experience. Because of the large amount of writing that must be done for this course, and the corresponding large amount of personal feedback that must be given by the instructor, this course cannot be effectively conducted with an enrollment much over 15 students. Therefore, because the philosophy department has been enrolling so many high-quality students recently, and because we have been operating understaffed for some time now (see section 2.2), we have struggled to offer enough sections of Phil 715. Each section that we do offer also requires a great deal of administrative work, such as airanging for the seats in each section to be prioritized and distributed according to the needs and preparedness of the students, arranging for students to take the section of the course with the instructor best suited to their academic interests, etc. Thus far, we have managed to offer it on the following schedule. 24 Students 13 Students 15 Students 18 Students 17 Students 3 Students 15 Students 17 Students So, in the last two-and-a-half years, we have been able to offer 141 seats in this course (by offering extra sessions during the regular academic year, and additional sections during the summer term, through the college of extended learning). 82

84 Phil 715 is a required course only for those students entering our program in the Fall of 2010 or later, and due to the large demand for it, we have not been able to offer seats in this course to many students other than these. Thus, the data on how successful this course has been in developing the professional writing skills of our students is limited. Preliminary signs are good, however. Professional-standard writing is a requirement for our Culminating Experience. So, assuming that students will not be approved to begin the Culminating Experience unless their supervisors have evidence that they are capable of such writing, we can use the time between a student's first enrollment and when their Proposal for Culminating Experience as a measure of the efficiency with which they have obtained that skill. Since the PCE must be submitted the semester before registering for the culminating experience, in order to complete the program in 2 years, a student must submit their PCE in the third semester or earlier. The table below shows the number of students successfully submitting PCEs within 3 semesters of first enrollment for each semester listed... T.?l>le7()!Succes~ µlrces11bmissions. bysemester NuniBefo:fstudents \1/ith<3seinesters of Enrollment Spring Fall Spring Fall Spring In sum, in regard to shortening time to degree, 9 more students filed thesis proposals within three semesters the year after the first cohort was required to take PHIL 715 Philosophical Writing than in the previous year. Thus, within the confines of the limited data that we have, and noting that this effect may be in part attributable to the unusually large size of the cohort in question, early indicators seem to point to the effectiveness of Phil 715 in imparting to students the philosophical skills necessary for professional-standard writing. 7.5 The Culminating Experience A central component of the assessment endeavor of the MA program in Philosophy is the evaluation of the quality of the student's culminating experience. The Department of Philosophy has explicit program-specific standards for the culminating experience, which will be reviewed in this section to determine the extent to which these standards are being met. Though many programs at SFSU allow students to make a choice as to how they will fulfill their culminating experience-by an exam or by a thesis-the Department of Philosophy requires a qualifying exam (Phil 896) in addition to a thesis, as well as an oral defense of the thesis. The thesis 83

85 and oral defense are both required to fulfill the culminating experience. In this section, we explain how this thesis fulfills SFSU' s "Level Two Written English" requirement by requiring a thesis project for each MA student, and we also explain how faculty collectively assess student theses Level Two Written English Proficiency In the Philosophy M.A. program, the SFSU Level Two Writing Requirement is satisfied by the Culminating Experience, which is a single-authored thesis and oral defense (Phil 898). In their theses, students present sustained philosophical arguments for a specific thesis on a given topic. The research that goes into constructing a thesis-length argument requires a combination of skills. In reading and evaluating many pieces of primary and secondary literature on a given topic, students employ sophisticated reading and analytical skills. In presenting drafts of their theses to their committees, and in receiving feedback, which they use to revise their drafts, they gain facility with the peer-review process, which is used by philosophy journals. In presenting their arguments in written form, students execute advanced writing skills. At their oral defenses, in which students present their positions and field difficult questions from their committees and audience members, they exhibit a combination of analytic and oral communication skills. Faculties on thesis committees examine theses for the importance of the thesis, validity and soundness of argument, consistency of philosophical position, and precision and clarity of writing. It is with respect to the latter that students' satisfaction of the Level Two Writing Requirement is evaluated. Criteria for Evaluating Level Two Thesis: Strong: The thesis is a challenging claim that is presented as a consistent and insightful philosophical position that could be revised or expanded for publication. The thesis has a scope that can be defended in a page paper. Adequate: The thesis is an interesting claim that is presented as a consistent and insightful philosophical position that could be revised or expanded for publication. The thesis has a scope that can be defended in a page paper. Fundamentally Deficient: One or more of the following: the thesis is derivative, trivial, or incoherent; the thesis is either too narrow or too broad in scope to be defended in a page paper. Defense of thesis: Strong: The author defends the thesis with innovative independent argument that is valid and sound. In doing so, the author grapples deeply with especially difficult philosophical issues, revealing a rich understanding of the debate under consideration. Adequate: The author defends the thesis with an independent argument that is valid and sound. 84

86 Fundamentally Deficient: The author attempts to defend the thesis with arguments that are superficial, irrelevant, invalid, and/or unsound. Employment of Primary and Secondary Literature: Strong: The author employs appropriate primary and timely secondary literature where needed to situate the issue(s) that the thesis addresses. Adequate: The author employs appropriate primary and timely secondary literature where needed to situate the issue(s) that the thesis addresses. Fundamentally Deficient: The author employs either outdated or secondary literature or systematically fails to reference secondary literature where needed to situate the issue(s) that the thesis addresses. Writing Skills: Strong: The author's facility in language use, range of diction, and syntactic variety contributes to the paper's enhanced readability. Adequate: The author uses correct grammar, sentence structure, and spelling throughout document. Fundamentally Deficient: The author makes errors in grammar, sentence structure and/or spelling Faculty Reflection on Culminating Experiences Faculty on each thesis committee reflect collectively on students' theses a number of times over the course of the student's writing of the actual thesis. Initially, as students are writing their Proposal for the Culminating Experience, faculty often confer about the strength of the students' writing, how well the project is articulated, and what kinds of specific skills the student may need to develop. Once a thesis is drafted, faculty again meet in person or over to exchange their thoughts about the development of the project. Faculty also share with each other and the student some questions that they will raise at the defense. At the defense-and after the student has given a fifteen-minute presentation of their thesis, and fielded questions from their committee and other members of the audience-the committee meets again, this time formally and without the student. The committee reflects on the strength of the thesis and defense, and makes a decision about whether or not the student will pass (and, ifs/he does pass, whether s/he will pass with distinction). If the decision is that the student passes, the faculty committee then decides whether they will require the student to make any additional revisions to the thesis. If the decision is that the student passes conditional upon minor revisions, these are given first orally to the student and then in writing via an . Once the final version of the thesis is submitted, the committee then meets one more time (by or on the phone) to determine whether or not the student revised the thesis adequately. If so, then the committee signs off on the requisite paperwork. This extensive (and timely) process ensures that students have ample opportunity to gain feedback from their committees, and also that committees are clear with each other about their expectations regarding the quality of the students' work. Ultimately, it allows for a higher quality of thesis to be developed. 85

87 We have recently improved this process by putting new timelines into effect for the submission of theses to the department. To avoid an overly compressed deadline and decision schedule, we now require students to submit to the department and defend their theses one month prior to the day when the student must submit the thesis to Graduate Studies, thus allowing time for students to make substantial revisions, if needed. This change has resulted in theses of much higher quality. We do not currently have the resources for asking students to respond to any exit interviews, exit question:µaires, or alumni surveys, and to generally track student progress after graduation. This is something that would help with our assessment of the success of the culminating experience. (See Chapter 10 for recommendation.) 7.6 Overview of Program Quality Indicators 7.61 PhD Admissions. More than 20 of our '12 and '13 MA graduates are already enrolled or about to enroll in philosophy doctoral programs. (Some students apply to doctoral programs in the fall before they complete the MA, and others apply in the fall that follows award of the MA.) Our MA students who seek admission to doctoral programs have been very successful. Recent degree recipients(' 11, '12 and' 13 MA graduates) have been admitted (most with generous financial support) to philosophy doctoral programs at the following universities among others: Brown University, Boston University, City University of New York (CUNY), Claremont Graduate University, Columbia University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Marquette University, Ohio State University, SUNY Albany, SUNY Stony Brook, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, University of Chicago, University of Colorado (Boulder), University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Maryland, University of Massachusetts (Amherst), University of Miami, University of Missouri, University ofnorth Carolina (Chapel Hill), University of Texas, University of Utah, University of Virginia, University of Washington, Vanderbilt University, University of British Columbia, (Canada), Western Ontario University (Canada), and Edinburgh University (UK). Doctoral programs in religious studies, theology, and interdisciplinary area studies include University of Chicago, Boston University, Indiana University, Masaryk University, (Czech Republic); University of Virginia, University of Washington, Graduate Theological Union, and Rice University. Law schools include Pittsburgh, Lewis and Clark, and William and Mary, as well as many in California. Other recent graduates are studying for doctorates in Sociology at the University of Sydney, Human Development at UC Berkeley, and Clinical Psychology at Palo Alto University (affiliated with Stanford University), and for an MS in Environmental Studies at Kingston University in London. In addition to some of the programs listed above, others to which students who graduated in '10 or earlier were admitted include: Loyola University (Chicago), Michigan State University, Purdue University, SUNY Buffalo, Syracuse University, University of Connecticut, University of Nebraska, University of North Texas, University of Oregon, University of Wisconsin, McMaster University (Canada), University of Toronto (Canada), University of Essex (UK), University of Liverpool (UK), and York University (UK). 86

88 7.62 Teaching Positions Our Graduate Teaching Associate program improves career opportunities both for students who will go on to the Ph.D. and for those who want to teach lower division courses with the M.A. Recent graduates have been hired at CSU, Sacramento (3 recent grads hired), Sacramento City College, San Francisco State University, Santa Barbara City College, Green River Community College (Washington), De Anza College, Madison Technical College (Wisconsin) and Diablo Valley College Fellowships and Awards That our students are well prepared is indicated by a sample of fellowships and awards they have won: A current graduate student has received the Kennedy-King Memorial Graduate Scholarship. A graduate (MA Philosophy '12) in her first year as a philosophy doctoral student has won a prestigious Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. She acquired skills in fellowship application at SFSU as a CSU Casanova Predoctoral Fellow. A continuing MA student has been accepted to Penn State's Cultivating Underrepresented Students in Philosophy program. This summer, a graduating M.A. student will be working alongside Joshua Knobe at Yale University, assisting with the ongoing research in the Experimental Philosophy Lab and undertaking a project of his own related to his interests in metaethics. The student will start in the Brown University Philosophy doctoral program next fall. A continuing MA Student has received, to date, the Scholar of the Year A ward ( awarded by the SFSU Alumni Association), The Gloria Spencer Scholarship from the University Women's Association, the Edward B. Kaufmann Graduate Scholarship (twice), the Associated Students Scholarship, the Critical Language Scholarship for Chinese, and the Judith Anne Ott Scholarship. In 2012/13, three philosophy MA students have been benefitting from CSU system-wide Casanova Predoctoral Fellowships. In 2011/12 two philosophy MA students held this Fellowship. And one philosophy M.A. student has won a Casanova for 2013/14. Three Philosophy MA 2012/13 graduates have received SFSU Graduate Student A wards for Distinguished Achievement, as did three Philosophy MA 2011/12 graduates. There has been a slight slip in numbers for 2013/14, probably due to lower number of applications from our students, which in tum is likely due to so many of our faculty who have been successful mentors being on sabbatical, presidential award, or emergency family or related medical leave during the crucial application period. 87

89 8.0 THE PROGRAM AND THE COMMUNITY 8.1 Professional Engagement of Students and Alumni Here are a few examples of the successes our students have found this year and previously in submitting their philosophical work for publication or presentation at conferences: A graduating student (MA '13) had her paper 'Doxastic Attitudes Governed by a Principle of Coherence', accepted at numerous conferences, including the Trinity College (Ireland) Graduate Student Conference, the North Carolina Philosophical Society Meeting, the Tenth Annual Intermountain West Student Philosophy Conference, and the Berkeley-Stanford-Davis Annual Graduate Student Philosophy Conference. Travel has been funded in part by SFSU IRA Student Travel A wards. A continuing M.A. student presented her paper, "Are the 'Bad' Things We Do Conventional?" at the 64th Annual Northwest Philosophy Conference. Next month, she will be presenting a paper at the 9th International Symposium of Cognition, Logic and Communication: Perceptions and Concepts, in Riga, Latvia. She won an SFSU IRA Student Travel Award to fund her trip. A first year MA student presented his paper on Biological Enhancement, written for the required PHIL 715 Philosophical Writing course, at the 6th Annual Graduate Philosophy Conference: Bioethics at SUNY Albany this month. A continuing MA student has published her co-authored paper "The seeming stability of the unconscious homunculus" in Sistemi Intelligenti. She has also presented two posters at this year's Annual Convention of the Society for Cognitive Neuroscience, after presenting one at that same conference last year, and she has presented two posters at the Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science in 2012, and a poster at that same conference in A continuing MA student presented his paper, "A Feminist Critique of Human Nature Essentialism," at the Berkeley-Stanford-Davis Graduate Philosophy Conference. While an MA student at SFSU, a recent graduate (MA '11) published his paper, "Quine's Behaviorism and Linguistic Meaning: Why Quine's Behaviorism is not Illicit" in Philosophia. Also while an MA student, his paper "Consciousness, Other Minds, and Naturalizing the Mind" won an essay prize at the International Graduate Conference at Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, which paid his travel to present the paper in Germany. He currently is in a doctoral program where he is coauthoring publications with a faculty member. While an MA student at SFSU, a recent graduate (MA '12) published her research on prejudice against singles. Her research garnered her acknowledgment on the website "Psychology today" as: "one of the leaders of the up-and-coming generation of singles activists and thinkers." She also presented a paper at the Fall 2010 Pacific Division meeting of the Society for Women in Philosophy. Further, we offer students both organized and informal opportunities to participate in the philosophical community. 88

90 Professor Wilcox is the new book review editor of Hypatia. Students will have opportunities to work on this professional project, both for academic credit and for pay. In addition, Professors Fairweather and Tiwald are involving students in book projects for which they have contracts, also for academic credit. Professor Peschard has involved students heavily in international workshops funded by her NSF grant. Professor Montemayor involved students in a conference he organized for the Association of Mexican Philosophers The American Philosophical Association (AP A) meets frequently in San Francisco. SFSU students assist with this meeting. They also are included in social events their faculty organize. Students participate in the dinners that follow guest lectures. The Philosophy Students Association organizes some guest lectures. Our students are included as full participants in BayFap, which Professors Sveinsdottir and Wilcox organize (see more discussion in section 9.22) Our students are included as full participants in BAPS, which Professors van Fraassen coorganizes (see more discussion in section 9.22) Professor Silvers employs students as private research assistants and acknowledges their contributions in her published work.. The above are just some of the opportunities our students have for professional engagement. Of course, we have alumni who are professional philosophers, as should any program as old as ours. To illustrate, Professor Silvers reports that her first student, Dale Jamieson, now teaching at NYU, will be spending next year at The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and that other early students are retired from their teaching jobs. 8.2 Civic Engagement The philosophy department has a substantial curriculum in various areas of applied ethics that naturally lends itself to civic engagement and service learning. Below are listed a few of the ways that graduate faculty have been actively facilitating this interaction in the period covered by this self-study. From 2007 until the present, Professor Silvers has worked to place students in internships in the medical profession via PHIL 680: Fieldwork in Philosophy. From Professor Sveinsdottir was the faculty advisor to graduate students who collaborated with The Exploratorium in San Francisco to generate material for museum guests to engage philosophically with exhibits at the museum. Professor Toh supervises a section of PHIL 680: Fieldwork in Philosophy for students interested in the intersections of law and philosophy. Students are placed in internships that involve law and/or social justice. 89

91 Professor Wilcox regularly supervises MA students who are active in their communities. E.g., she recently supervised a thesis in which a student used his experience as an advocate for prison literacy education to critique philosophical work on the prison industrial complex. 8.3 Equity and Social Justice In addition to the program's general mission of opening educational opportunity to under-represented groups, the philosophy department offers several graduate seminars that are relevant to these issues in at least two ways. Some courses have a specific focus on issues of equity and social justice, while others address subject matter that is often neglected for reasons stemming from inequality and injustice Courses Examples of the former are courses taught during the period covered by this self study are: Phil 700: Justice for All Phil 702: Culture/Language/Society Phil 890: Virtue Ethics Phil 725: Foundations of Law Phil 890: Environmental Ethics Phil 852: 20 th -Century Metaethics Phil 805: Social Ontology Phil 890: Issues in Social and Political Philosophy Examples of the latter taught during the period covered by this self study are: Phil 700: Philosophy and Prophecy (includes Islamic philosophy) e Phil 772: Confucian and Buddhist Philosophy ( focuses on political philosophy) Phil 772: Seminar in Cartesianism (includes both male and female Cartesians) Phil 851: Feminist Ethics and Political Philosophy Students who intend to write and/or teach about issues of social justice, or who have other career interests that relate to these, also can choose among many upper division undergraduate courses that address aspects of social justice, such as PHIL 315 : Introduction to Global Peace Studies, PHIL 330: Political Philosophy, PHIL 335 : Law and Society, PHIL 355 : Politics and Ethics of the Consumer Society, PHIL 369: Philosophical Issues in Sexuality, PHIL 375 : Peace Law and Human Rights in the U.S., PHIL 378: Philosophy of Criminal Law, PHIL 379: Philosophy of Constitutional Interpretation, PHIL 380 : Philosophy of Law, PHIL 383 : Ethics in Medicine, PHIL 395 : Ethical Issues: Science and Technology, PHIL 435 : Human Rights in Global Perspective, PHIL 436: Islamic Political Philosophy, PHIL 445 : Sex and Morality, PHIL 450 : Ethics, PHIL 451 : Feminist Moral Issues, PHIL 452: Nature of Morality, PHIL 455 : Sex and the Law, and PHIL 470: Environmental Ethics. 90

92 8.32 Faculty Students desiring to write theses on topics related to social justice can work with Professors Wilcox, Toh, Tiwald, Sveinsd6ttir, Silvers, Montemayor, and Azadpur, all of whom publish on philosophical issues related to social justice Curricular Expansion Many of our students are drawn to philosophy out of a passion to further social justice. Students use our B.A. and M.A. degrees as a platform for application to law school and for careers in policy development for health care and rehabilitation, education, social welfare and similar areas. We believe that the time is right to act on one of the few items in our Fifth Cycle MOU that remains unfinished: "Academic Affairs appreciates the creative and forward-thinking proposal that the Department is considering with regard to interdisciplinary work in comparative political and legal thought. We urge the Department to move forward cautiously given the additional workload that such a program may zncur. " RECOMMENDATION: As proposed in the Fifth Cycle MOU, begin serious planning for interdisciplinary undergraduate concentration in comparative political and legal thought, together with a graduate level concentration or certificate in the same subject area. 8.4 Internationalization 8.41 Courses The Philosophy Department offers some graduate courses that promote international perspectives. Prominent among these are Phil 700: Philosophy and Prophecy, where students compare Islamic and Anglophone epistemological traditions; Phil 772: Confucian and Buddhist Philosophy, and the associated PHIL 891 Graduate Reading Circle in which students read texts in their original Classical Chinese; Phil 890: Issues in Social and Political Philosophy, which includes global justice and immigration issues; and Phil : Environmental Ethics, which includes global justice issues. Students who intend to write and/or teach philosophy with international perspectives also can select among upper division courses such as PHIL 315: Introduction to Global Peace Studies, PHIL 383 : Ethics in Medicine (includes global health care justice), PHIL 435 : Human Rights in Global Perspective, PHIL 436 : Islamic Political Philosophy, PHIL 470 : Environmental Ethics (includes global justice), PHIL 501 : Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, PHIL 502 : World Religions, PHIL 508 : Indian Philosophy and Religion, PHIL 509 : The Buddhist Tradition, PHIL 511 : Chinese Philosophy and Religion, PHIL 516 : Islamic Philosophy, and PHIL 51 7: Islamic Mysticism 8.42 Faculty The department of philosophy also has an internationally diverse graduate faculty. More than half our Graduate Faculty is multi-lingual. There are Graduate Faculty members who are originally from the Netherlands, France, Mexico, Iceland, Korea, and Iran. Most of these individuals travel back to their native countries, or to countries in which they were educated or work, to participate in philosophical communities there, as well as extensively to other destinations. 91

93 Professor van Fraassen is recognized internationally as a leading scholar of philosophy of science and logic. He very often is invited to present his work beyond the borders of the United States. Professor Peschard returns to France regularly and often presents her work at meetings in Europe. Professor Tiwald presents his work in China every year. Professor Toh travels extensively to give talks in Europe and the United Kingdom. He has accepted an invitation for late spring '14 to present his work at universities in Australia. He is coauthoring and collaborating in his work on Philosophical Foundations of Law with philosophers from other nations. Professor Montemayor travels regularly to Mexico, where he is an associate of the Legal Research Institute at UNAM. He regularly presents his work at conferences in Europe (including Turkey) and in Latin America. Professor Sveinsd6ttir returns to Iceland annually and presents her work at meetings in Europe and the UK. Professor Landy also has presented his work at meetings abroad. Professor Silvers no longer travels out of North America, given her inability due to her chair duties to meet the time demands of planning wheelchair accessible foreign travel. She therefore has devised a practice of satisfying international obligations by having the Cinema DocFilm program make films of her talks; she recently keynoted a German conference on the U.N. Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities this way. Previously, just before she became chair, she had a Fulbright to New Zealand. She still travels extensively in Canada to present her research and collaborate with younger philosophers. We also recently hosted a post-doc in the philosophy of science from Italy with a doctorate from the London School of Economics as a visiting assistant professor, a doctoral candidate from Canada studying at Oxford who came to study with Professors Silvers and Toh, and a doctoral candidate from France studying at the Sorbonne who came to study with Professor Peschard. The latter three visitors made presentations to the Philosophy Club and/or engaged in many conversations with students about the differences between how philosophy is approached in their countries and the familiar approaches of Anglophone philosophy. In 2012/13, a professor funded by the Chinese government whose expertise is in translation of classical Chinese texts was with us participating in Professor Tiwald's Reading Circle. We have a Turkish philosopher visiting us on a Fulbright in Fall Students Our students are following in our footsteps: several have had papers accepted at conferences held abroad. We have been fortunate to secure university travel funds for those whose travel is not funded by the conferences. We always have some international graduate students. Right now there is one from Japan and one from Thailand. Three international students are entering in Fall' 13: from Cyprus, Kenya, and Japan. 92

94 8.44 Study Abroad The philosophy department has an ongoing reading group focused on reading ancient Chinese texts, and a student from this reading group is currently spending time studying in China. In a first for SFSU, in 2013 two graduate students won the Critical Language Scholarship for fully funded summer language intensive study of Mandarin in China. Both are Philosophy M.A. students. The success rate for this scholarship is 12%. Another student was in China teaching for a year and upon returning completed his degree and secured a teaching position at Sacramento State University. Graduate students also have spent recent semesters in Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands. This year we have had an invitation to partner with the Philosophy Dept at Southampton so that our students and faculty can exchange. Southampton has a very good department and has strengths in some areas where our students have interests (such as aesthetics) but in which we are not now able to provide sufficient instruction. Our SFSU Director of International Programs has encouraged this arrangement. Unfortunately, the internal demands of the university's approval and accountability work have drained all available time not used for keeping the instructional program fully operational. This has been a loss to our future students and not in concert with the university's commitment to internationalize. We therefore recommend RECOMMENDATION: To facilitate internationalization and offer our students affordable access to areas of philosophical specializaiton not available here, move ahead with arrangement for student and faculty exchanges or visits with the students and faculty of University of Southampton in the UK. 93

95 9.1 Graduate Faculty Statistics 9.11 Graduate Faculty Diversity 9.0 THE FACULTY EXPERIENCE As the Chronicle of Higher Education seems not to tire of pointing out, Philosophy is the least diverse of the Humanities disciplines. Women make up 21 percent of faculty members and just under 17 percent of full professors. (Mangan, Katherine. "In the Humanities, Men Dominate the Fields of Philosophy and History" Chronicle of Higher Education October 29, 2012, The SFSU Philosophy Department apparently is an exception. Women constitute half of our graduate faculty ( 6), one-third of full professors are women (1), and there are two-and-a-halftimes as many women associate professors (5) as men (2). No stand-alone M.A. program listed by the AP A seems to have as many tenured/tenure-track women or as high a proportion of women as SFSU. The closest is Kent State, which has a tenured/tenuretrack faculty of fifteen, of whom five are women, and twenty M.A. students, of whom three are women. Like SFSU, Cal State L.A. reports having 12 faculty, but Cal State L.A. reports that only three faculty are women. TABLE 21: SFSU GRADUATE FACULTY DISTRIBUTION, RANK AND SEX RANK DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR FULL PROFESSOR ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ASSISTANT PROFESSOR NUMBER AND SEX IM 1 F, 1 M 5 F,2M 2M TOTAL 6 F + 6 M = 12 One-third of the SFSU Philosophy graduate faculty are from under-represented ethnic minorities. Of the stand-alone M.A. programs listed by the AP A, only Cal State L.A. has a higher representation of ethnic/racial minorities, with 12 faculty and 5 minority members (so 44% at CSU-LA to 33% at SFSU). But no other stand-alone philosophy M.A. program has as diverse representation of ethnic/racial minorities as SFSU. 94

96 TABLE 22: SFSU GRADUATE FACULTY DISTRIBUTION, ETHNIC AND UNDER REPRESENTED GROUPS Ethnic or Under-represented group Number of graduate faculty Native American 0 African American 1 Chicano, Mexican American 1 All Other Latino 0 Asian 1 Filipino 0 Pacific Islander 0 Middle Eastern, Islamic 1 Disabled 2 European, Non-Islamic Graduate Faculty Homogeneity In age distribution, the SFSU Graduate Faculty is fairly diverse. When the Fifth Cycle self-study was written, all but three of the former faculty had retired and the faculty therefore was being rebuilt. Six of the current Graduate Faculty participated in the Fifth Cycle program review, and at that time another two had accepted offers. Hiring continued during the Sixth Cycle, as did eligibility for and award of tenure and promotion. TABLE 23: SFSU GRADUATE FACULTY AGE DISTRIBUTION AGE NUMBER

97 Three-quarters of the Philosophy Graduate Faculty are of an age at which members of the professoriate often are building families as well as building out their scholarly careers; individuals in this age group also have growing care-giving obligations to elderly relatives. By far the largest part of our faculty is at the rank about which The Chronicle of Higher Education asked in a headline last year, "Why Are Associate Professors So Unhappy?" (Robin Wilson, June 3, 2012, The Chronicle story pointed out that, after the stresses but also the exhilarations of obtaining the doctorate and earning tenure, associate professors find themselves exhausted by demands to carry out department and university organizational work. Meanwhile, support they may have enjoyed for the purpose of initiating a research program no longer is available once tenure is attained. This is the immediate future facing the SFSU Philosophy Graduate faculty. Planning to prevent this unhappy mid-career syndrome from draining our program's vitality must occur. At SFSU the tension between university demands on faculty time, and individuals' rights to a personal/family life, is exacerbated by the combination of extremely high housing costs and very modest salaries; the standard solution turns faculty members into commuters from the East Bay, with commuting cutting deeply into research time and the ability to contribute to the department's intellectual climate and participate in its community life. The university's single solution offered at this time has been to create another mentorship plan, this time for associate professors. But adding yet another activity for individuals who are already severely time deprived seems hardly to be an effective solution. Consequently, the Philosophy Graduate Faculty needs to create departmental plans for both the immediate and the longer range future to maintain the faculty's research initiatives, as well as faculty availability to advise students on professional opportunities and assist them in realizing these. Constructing such plans will challenge both our capacity for strategically integrating productivity and quality, and our ability to craft a just but effective approach to providing for individuals in different situations with different needs. RECOMMENDATION: Seek External Consultants' advice on developing a program of support and reinvigoration for mid-career, mid-life stage faculty. 9.2 PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT So that graduate students can view their teachers as models of professional philosophers, graduate faculty should be active scholars. Faculty publication of research is important for several reasons. Publication is evidence that, in the view of the philosophical community, the individual's philosophical work is serious and deserving of at least a hearing. Further, a graduate faculty's collective published research record communicates the currency and quality of their program's curricular content to other professionals in the field. Other professional achievements that contribute to the discipline, as well as for the application of faculty scholarship in ways that improve the university and the community, also can bestow professional respect. 96

98 For these reasons, the Philosophy Department's recently adopted supplemental tenure and promotion policy requires that, for promotion to associate professor, evidence that the candidate has established and is pursuing an ongoing research program with results acknowledged by professional peers as meeting disciplinary standards. For promotion to full professor, evidence that the candidate is recognized by peers as a source of scholarly or intellectual leadership must be advanced. Evidence for promotion to full professor is exemplified as follows: a series of published articles developing a topic; book or monograph publication; invitations to present one's work at important conferences, to give keynotes or named lectures, or to make contributions definitive of the topic to collections or encyclopedias; a multiplicity of invitations to speak to other departments or to groups of scholars or the community; or a record of assignments to referee or otherwise judge the work of others in the field. In the CSU, tenured individuals who have not been subject to RTP review in the past five years must undergo post-tenure review: philosophy faculty are judged for post-tenure review by the standard applied for promotion to their rank. A tenured Full Professor has just undergone post-tenure review, judged against the criteria for full professor. A colleague who was hired as an assistant professor in 2003, and then tenured and promoted to Associate Professor just after completion of the Fifth Cycle has just been promoted to Full Professor. During the Sixth Cycle there have been two hires at the Associate Professor rank; one will be reviewed for promotion to Full Professor in Fall '13, and the other has completed just two years on our faculty and will be reviewed for retention in Fall' 13. Five other colleagues have been tenured and promoted to Associate Professor during the Sixth Cycle. The remaining two Assistant Professors have been reviewed regularly for retention during the Sixth Cycle and will be reviewed for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in A Y 13/14. Thus all but one of the tenured faculty have been thoroughly reviewed for compliance with our research standards within the Sixth Cycle timeframe. All those reviewed have active research programs with publications appropriate to, and in some instances exceeding, expectations for their stage of career. We attempted to make tables showing the Graduate Faculty's publications and presentations during this six-year period but, given the large number of entries needed to record the professional achievements of our professionally active faculty, we were unable to get the tables to be sufficiently informative and properly readable at the same time. Consequently, we provide information about our faculty's scholarship and other professional contributions in the traditional full vitas that are to be found in Appendix F. These show the individual's Sixth Cycle history at SFSU, each individual's publications (including journal or book publisher), presentations of research, editorial work, consultancies, and other evidence of professional recognition. The vitas also provide readers with the individual's history of scholarship prior to her or his Sixth Cycle residence at SFSU. For the reader's convenience, we have abstracted from the vitas and list directly below the competitive awards with which our Graduate Faculty have been honored in the last six years. During their SFSU residence in the Sixth Cycle, members of the Philosophy Graduate Faculty achieved the following recognition: 9.21 Competitive Recognition of Philosophy Graduate Faculty by Year AY 12/13 97

99 Professor van Fraassen received the Hempel Award for lifetime achievement in philosophy of science from the Philosophy of Science Association. Professor Silvers received the Phi Beta Kappa Lebowitz Award for excellence in philosophical thought. She also received the SFSU Distinguished Faculty Service Award. Professor Montemayor received the SFSU Presidential Award for Professional Development AY 11/12 Professor Landy received a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend and the SFSU Presidential Award for Professional Development. Professor Montemayor received an SFSU Vice President's Assigned Time Award AY 10/11 Professor Peschard received a three-year NSF Scholar Award for the project "Making Sense of Modeling and Experimenting: Beyond Representation" Professor Tiwald received the SFSU Presidential Award for Professional Development AY 09/10 Professor van Fraassen received the International Giulio Preti Prize (Tuscany), awarded for significant contributions to the dialogue between science and philosophy, and to the growth of the CIVIC consc10usness. Professor Silvers received the AP A Quinn Award for Contributions to Philosophy and Philosophers Professor Tiwald received an SFSU Vice President's Assigned Time Award Professor Sveinsdottir received the SFSU Presidential A ward for Professional Development AY 08/09 Professor van Fraassen received an honorary Dr. of Philosophy degree from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), and was elected a Titular Member of the Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of The British Academy Professor Sowaal received the SFSU Presidential Award for Professional Development and an SFSU Summer Stipend Professor Tiwald received an American Philosophical Association Mini-Conference Grant for a conference on Neo-Confucian Moral Psychology and won the Annual Award for Best Essay published in the journal Dao for his first published article AY 07/08 98

100 Professor Azadpur received the SFSU Presidential Award for Professional Development and a CSU Summer Stipend A ward Professor Sowaal received an SFSU Affirmative Action Award Professor Tiwald received an SFSU Vice President's Assigned Time A ward Also during the Sixth Cycle Professors Azadpur, Hood, Sowaal, Sveinsdottir, Tiwald and Wilcox all were awarded, and took, sabbaticals. Our department policy welcomes our faculty members receiving research leaves, both university and externally funded ones. Relief from the unceasing interruptive demands of everyday university organizational duties is essential for executing larger scholarly projects. But while we adjust applications for research leaves to maintain inst1uction in all our programs - general education, two undergraduate degree programs, and graduate program - we are not a large enough group to sustain instruction when faced with additional, unpredicted absences attributable to sick leave, maternity/ paternity leave, family leave, bereavement leave, and other unavoidable absences. As the vast majority of our Graduate Faculty are at the time of life when occasions for such leaves,are likely to abound, detailed emergency protocols for securing instruction in such contingencies are needed Student Involvement in Professional Activity Here are some examples: Professor Sowaal involves graduate students in reviewing submissions for a book she is editing on Mary Astell. Graduate students helped to organize the Early Modern Conference hosted by SFSU and the SFSU History of Modern Philosophy Colloquium Series. Graduate students are active participants in BayFAP, the colloquium series on Feminist Approaches to Philosophy managed by Professors Sveinsdottir and Wilcox. Professor Sveinsdottir brings SFSU graduate students with her to the weekly workshop on social ontology at UC Berkeley. Graduate students are nominated as commentators and chairs for Pacific Division AP A meetings. Professor Tiwald assists students in submitting papers to professional meetings. For example, Paul Williams presented at the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy in June 2009 and Lok Chi Chan presented at a conference at Simon Fraser University in November 2010). Professor Peschard does so as well; for example, Lacy Folland had papers accepted for nine conferences - including one at Trinity College Dublin - in Spring' 13. Professors Peschard and van Fraassen guide students in publishing their work. For example, Tyrus Fisher published "Quine's Behaviorism and Linguistic Meaning: Why Quine's Behaviorism is not Illicit" in Philosophia, 39 (1), 2011, and Andy Peterson published "The Relevance of Scientific Practice to The Problem of Coordination," Spontaneous Generation: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science, vol.5, nol (2011) 44-57, 99

101 Professor Peschard organized a workshop in Philosophy of Perception with students doing independent study with her on various aspects of this topic. The students gave presentations on the work of a well-known philosopher of perception, Anthony Chemero, and he then commented on each student's paper. In 2009, 2010 and 2011, Professors Peschard and van Fraassen organized workshops in Philosophy of Science whose invited speakers were philosophers whose work had been discussed in graduate seminars. Students were involved in managing the workshop, introducing speakers, chairing sessions or being specifically assigned to assist some speakers. Professor Montemayor brought a philosophy graduate student (Allison McBride) into his collaboration with Professor Morsella of our Psychology Department. Ms. McBride is a co-author of the following conference presentations, both at important professional venues:_"phenomenology of the stream of consciousness: Introspections about thoughts and the internal observer" (with Godwin, McBride, Geisler and Morsella), poster presented at the 19 th annual Cognitive Neuroscience Society Meeting, Chicago, Il, April, 2012 (Juried Poster Presentation); and "The phenomenal self: Introspections about the internal observer and origins of thoughts" (with McBride, Godwin, Geisler, and Morsella), poster presented at the Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science, Chicago, 2012 (Juried Poster Presentation). Professor Silvers arranges for select graduate students who are studying bioethics to join her at the San Francisco General Hospital Ethics Committee. She also arranged for students to participate in the San Francisco component of the research project "Biomedical Life Plans for Aging," , University Medical Center Gottingen (funded by German Federal Ministry of Education and Research), for which the SFSU Philosophy Department is an international cooperator. Professor Wilcox is the new Book Review editor for Hypatia. Select graduate students will work with her on this project; they can enroll in our new Advanced Philosophy Publishing course for academic credit. Nevertheless, these opportunities for students that our faculty works so hard to make are serendipitous rather than equitably available for all deserving students, in that some students are without sources of sufficient income to take advantage of them. Unlike some other areas of the university, the Philosophy Department lacks formal apprentice research positions for students. RECOMMENDATION: Secure support for graduate student research assistantships, similar to the graduate student teaching on which the Philosophy Department now relies in order to serve undergraduate student demand. 9.3 Faculty Workload, Supervision of Culminating Experience, and other Supervision Except for the department chair, tenured and tenure track faculty members have basic assignments of 9 WTUs and then add to their workload by supervising the 3 unit thesis, which is the culminating experience, as well as other supervisory courses such as Independent Study, Projects in Teaching, Reading Circle, and the new Advanced Philosophy Publishing. The chair's workload is 6 units of administrative time, 3 WTUs for a large undergraduate class, plus an average of 11 WTUs per 100

102 semester for supervising Community Service Leaming Medical Ethics volunteers, Medical Ethics interns, and occasional Projects in Teaching or Independent Study, for a total of 20 workload units a semester. TABLE 24: Supervision of Thesis and Independent Study semester No. of students No. of faculty No. of students enrolled in culminating Supervising Enrolled in Ind. experience PHIL 898 PHIL 898 Study, PHIL 899 F ' S' F' S' F' S'lO F'lO S'l F'll SP'l F' S' This chart indicates that supervision of M.A. theses is spread broadly across the tenured/tenure track faculty. The differences in the number of faculty who participate each semester to some extent reflects how many faculty have taught graduate seminars the previous semester, as we encourage students to expand and elevate promising seminar papers into theses. For example, the small number of faculty participating in F '12 reflects all of the following circumstances about the SP ' 12 seminar schedule: one seminar instructor from SP ' 12 was on sabbatical in F '12, one was a Visiting Assistant Professor with a one-year ' 11 /' 12 appointment, and one had been on sick leave for most of SP' 12 (replaced by an emeritus from another university). The chart also shows that, as our graduate faculty grew during the Sixth Cycle period, we have been able to accommodate more students moving more quickly through the program. Annual thesis enrollments have doubled. Nevertheless, thesis supervision is one of the components of the Philosophy M.A. program that suffers most from the comparatively small number of graduate faculty we have. In a survey of graduate students we recently conducted, a main concern students voiced was about the large numbers who wished to write theses in some central philosophical areas, and the overload they feared might be placed on the lone or few faculty who can supervise such subject matter. The pressure on students in regard to forming a thesis committee is even greater because not only must a supervisor be found, but one more, or more than one more, committee member also knowledgeable about the subject who will agree to be on the committee. We worry that this penultimate stage of the program could become a bottleneck delaying students' progress to the degree. RECOMMENDATION: To prevent a bottleneck in progress toward the degree, increase number of faculty qualified for thesis supervision, paying attention to areas of specialization where student demand currently is seriously underserved. 101

103 We do not currently have sufficient graduate faculty to acknowledge the WTUs earned through thesis supervision as part of basic assigned workload, substituting for contact hour classes. Fairness calls for doing so, of course, but in that circumstance we could not offer the same number of seminars we do now. 9.4 Discipline Specific Standards for Teaching Graduate Courses Only faculty who publish regularly may teach the gateway Philosophical Writing course. It is important that whoever teaches this course has mastered the art of professional philosophical writing, a mastery demonstrated when one's professional peers select one's work for publication. It is unlikely that individuals who do not have the knack of doing this can teach our students how. It is a concern as well when this level of expertise is not available for students to model in mastering key philosophical subject matter. RECOMMENDATION: Increase number of faculty qualified to teach Philosophical Writing and ensure that currently qualified faculty maintain their qualification by continuing to publish their research. 9.5 Interdisciplinarity Many of our graduate faculty specialize in "Philosophy of... " areas which require knowledge of other disciplines. Professors Peschard and van Fraassen are philosophers of science, knowledgeable about history of science, science theory, and science practice. Professor Peschard has a doctorate in Physics as well as one in Philosophy. Professor Toh is a philosopher of law and has a J.D. as well as a doctorate in Philosophy; he publishes in law reviews as well as philosophy journals. Professor Silvers researches in bioethics and theories of justice. She publishes in law reviews and medical journals as well as philosophy journals. Professor Montemayor is a philosopher of mind who collaborates with Professor Marsella of Psychology. He specializes in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science as well. He also has a J.D. and focuses on constitutional formation and indigenous people's rights. Professor Wilcox specializes in Environmental Ethics and Immigration issues. Professors Sowaal, Sveinsdottir and Wilcox have specializations in different aspects of feminist philosophy. Professor Tiwald is fluent in Chinese and writes on classical Chinese political philosophy. Professor Azadpur' s work contributes to Middle Eastern Studies and Islamic Studies. Professors Azadpur, Silvers and Sveinsdottir all can teach aesthetics. Professor van Fraassen can teach philosophy of literature. 102

104 The above list should suggest to the reader that our graduate faculty have wide interests and many talents. 9.6 Overview of Faculty Quality Indicators Table 25: Summary of Faculty Quality Indicators INDICATOR Qualifications/competence graduate coordinator. RESPONSE There are two highly competent, highly qualified graduate coordinators. Each is assigned some components of the job. % of tenure/tenure track 100% of the tenured/tenure track faculty and the Distinguished faculty participating in Professor all participate graduate program Core faculty credentials See faculty cvs in Appendix F & affiliations Qualifications of adjuncts One well published adjunct has taught one seminar once.when leaves Teaching in Program and other needed teaching assignments depleted M&E faculty. See Fairweather cv for his publications in Appendix F. Faculty capacity to respond We are managing. Please see student letters describing their To student needs experiences in Appendix E. Diversity of Faculty SFSU faculty is more diverse than usual for this discipline FTE and SFR for program Program is highly productive of enrollment and highly efficient in terms of SFR Faculty teaching load Faculty teaching load similar to the usual heavy SFSU load but heavier than usual 2/2 load for top ten M.A. programs. Faculty thesis supervision load, See pp , and advising, committee work and chairing Faculty Professional Development See recommendation, p. 98 Opportunities Faculty Research and publications Very Good, Faculty Highly Active, See cvs in Appendix F Community service See pp Academic collaboration and research See faculty vitas in Appendix F Recognition and honors for faculty We do not have mechanisms for formal recognition. With a small contributions faculty, all should be contributing. 103

105 10. RESOURCES 10.1 INTERNAL RESOURCES Support for Research The Philosophy faculty has been successful in competing for university funding provided for individual research projects. Professors Azadpur, Landy, Montemayor, Sowaal, Sveinsdottir, and Tiwald - all of whom were hired as assistant professors - all competed for and obtained Presidential A wards for semester releases from teaching, which the university has provided so that young faculty can launch research programs. Professors Azadpur, Hood, Sowaal, Sveinsdottir, Tiwald and Wilcox all have had sabbaticals Supplies/Equipment The College of Liberal and Creative Arts, like its predecessor College of Humanities, does not require departments to manage separate budgets. Nor does philosophical scholarship require enormous outlays of funding. The Philosophy Department has been adequately supported within the constraints of the overall College budget. We are very grateful for the prompt and effective support we receive from the College computer techs, especially in keeping our Philosophy Computer Lab running. As the merger with the Creative Arts and other departments has progressed, there have been moments when a system placing our commonplace needs in competition with those high tech, complex equipment usage programs, could have been detrimental. Had that happened, programs like ours would have sunk to the bottom of every priority list. Fortunately, so far service for these programs and the quite different level of service for programs like ours have been well integrated. (We are usually among the last programs in the College to have our lab refreshed, but work in a discipline for which Plato's and Aristotle's texts remain eminently serviceable does not grind to a halt if our lab software versions are more than three years old.) At the start of the most recent budget crisis, the Philosophy Department had constricted in many ways; therefore, there was not as much to lose, nor as much to miss. Nevertheless, over the past six years we sometimes have had a major struggle to catch up to where other departments long have been - for example, to have adequate copying machinery, for which we somehow had not been included in the College's contract- during a time when departments were expected to cut back even more. Thanks to College leadership that has recognized our dedication to cost effectiveness, most of these issues have been addressed. 104

106 of undergraduate and graduating philosophy students receiving degrees each year has grown sharply during the same period that College funding has had to be stretched increasingly far. This year we received about $1.50 per guest from the College. To supplement College funds, one of our faculty has set up and contributes annually to a fund that supplements the College donation and also enables hospitality for other events such as the reception we hold for students in the first week of Fall instruction. This faculty donated fund also supports provision of pizzas for the events that bring graduate student mentors and undergraduate mentees together, for receptions for guest speakers, for the speakers' dinners that enable graduate students to engage in prolonged conversations with them, and for the pizza bribe that induces graduating M.A. students to schedule their public oral defenses early in the semester (to prevent oral defenses from bunching up at the end of the semester, creating an impossible schedule for faculty participation, students who schedule early can offer pizza to the entire audience). To take another example, during the worst of the budget crisis paper was not available. But the Department had carefully saved up the bookstore gift certificates we had earned by getting all our book orders in early and so were able to purchase paper and other supplies during the worst part of the budget crisis. Consequently, while joining the rest of the College in digitizing as much as possible, philosophy faculty were not forced to eliminate all uses of paper, as those in some other departments had to do. Unfortunately, both these sources of funding are likely to disappear. The bookstore no longer permits departments to save up their "on time book order" awards. These must be spent or lost within a year. And whether department faculty are moved to continue to invest loyally in the department ( and thereby in the university) is directly tied to the in~piration and confidence kindled by university-wide strategic goals Speakers and other Scholarly Events Over the past six years, we have, on an ad hoc basis, hosted many successful scholarly events on our campus. As part of recruitment packages for Prof. Tiwald and Profs. Peschard and van Fraassen, Dean Sherwin generously offered funding enabling them to organize national/international workshops in their fields. These projects were extremely successful, eventuating in book contracts in both Chinese Philosophy and Philosophy of Science, as well as matchless opportunities for our students to become involved in cutting edge scholarship in the field. Moreover, an NSF grant supplemented the Philosophy of Science workshops and also enabled additional opportunities for students. As mentioned earlier in this self-study, together with other Bay Area philosophy departments, SFSU also hosts and helps to organize the Bay Area Philosophy of Science Seminar and the Bay Area Feminist Approaches to Philosophy Seminar. Professor Montemayor arranged for us to host a meeting of the Mexican Philosophers Association. Professor Sowaal regularly has invited speakers in modem philosophy when these visit the Bay Area, and she arranged for us to host a meeting of the Southwest Modem Philosophy Association. And at the requests of lecturers Michael Sudduth and Abrol Fairweather, we were honored to invite (in different years) Alvin Plantinga and Ernie Sosa to give talks. Dean Sherwin has been generous in offering occasional honoraria or travel support when we request it, which is infrequently; and our aforementioned hospitality fund has provided for receptions and meals for some of these events. Further, the student Philosophy Club also occasionally 105

107 has arranged for guest speakers from neighboring departments. We have not, however, found funding for a regular speaker series, which is traditional in our field Library Resources Like our colleagues in History (see History Sixth-Cycle Self-Study), Philosophy faculty and students find SFSU Library resources completely inadequate for scholarship in our discipline. The immediate enormous problem is in the dearth of subscriptions to philosophy journals. At the beginning of the recent lengthy budget crisis, departments were asked by the Library to identify all subscriptions made on their behalf that no longer were of crucial need. Our faculty responded to this request generously, spending a good deal of time and thought identifying journals that seemed peripheral to the current curriculum. Consequently, a large number of subscriptions were dropped, but none has been replaced to serve our contemporary needs. Although our faculty can obtain guest access to UCB library resources, not all current material is available to them. And students trying to research contemporary treatments of their thesis topic often are simply out of luck. Since we complied with library staffs reqµest to cut expenditures for philosophy journals, we have not had success in efforts to improve graduate student access to research materials. We will seek our external reviewers advice on which subscriptions we most need. We note, by the way, that CSU subscribes to publishers' packages of journals. Important philosophy journals often are omitted from these packages, although they could be included at very little additional cost. We hope the SFSU library will work with us to take a lead in persuading the CSU to do so. RECOMMENDATION: Request external consultants to identify journal subscriptions necessary to support graduate student research for theses, conference and journal paper submissions, and doctoral application writing samples. Obtain priority in library subscription purchasing consistent with urgency of need for restoration of library support for philosophy journals Non-Faculty Staffing At present Philosophy Department staffing is inadequate to the year-round staff work that needs to be done. Administering the graduate program requires a great deal of staff work, which includes maintaining records for more than 100 graduate students who are enrolled and active each year, as well as for more than 100 applicants each year. This work now is executed by the Graduate Coordinators and the Department Chair with the help of a student assistant. But student assistants cannot achieve continuity of knowledge about students' records, are not available during the summer, and a new one must be trained almost every year. Much staff work necessary to ensure that the current excellence of the Graduate Program is sustained, and that achievements can be leveraged, remains undone. First, the faculty does not have time to assist students in keeping required filings up to date; thus, each year, we find some students have not received their degrees despite having the proper number of units, distributed in the proper way, because their ATCs are out of date (having been filled out several semesters before they completed the program), their thesis committee or topic has changed, or some similar alteration that needs paperwork filing to rectify is not discovered prior to semester's end. 106

108 Further, the faculty does not have sufficient personnel to keep in touch systematically with our graduating students, even to be sure of what doctoral programs of those to which they have been admitted they finally selected to attend. We should be keeping in touch with our graduates, both to be able to cite their successes to inspire current students and to learn whether we need to change our program to help graduates be even more successful. But doing so demands correspondence time that none of us can spare In this vein, one of the recommendations of our external consultants during our last program review was that we keep in closer contact with our alumni. An initial effort was made to do that with an annual fund drive mailing to our graduates. Although the immediate effect raised only $500, a more impressive result recently occurred with a bequest of $300,000 for graduate student scholarships. Lack of trained staff has prevented a systematic fund-raising operation from being put into place, and due to lack of staff support we have not been able to continue an annual fund-raising effort each year. To ascertain the basis for allocating department staff, we have benchmarked against the History Department, because this department's programs and modes of teaching are very much like our own. Neither History nor Philosophy must maintain bench research labs or studios, where staff is required for health and safety as well as educational and research needs. Indeed, Philosophy runs a computer lab that serves students beyond its own, whereas History does not; the lab is supervised by a tenured faculty member with no compensation in assigned time and staffed by one part-time graduate student assistant and otherwise by graduate student volunteers. For many years, History had 1.5 staff positions to support its programs: before its Sixth Cycle selfstudy this support was raised to 2 fulltime staff positions. When we compare the two departments, however, we find Philosophy serves many more students than History. In Fall 2012, for example, History enrolled 705 FTES to Philosophy's 1024 FTES. Philosophy had to serve 50 Graduate FTES, compared to History's 26 Graduate FTE. Philosophy had to do the paperwork and keep records for 133 graduate students in attendance, whereas History had only 77. Philosophy had 98 applicants for the M.A. program for Fall '13, while History had only 47. We do not understand such a divergence in staff support between departments with similar modes of instruction, nor do we believe that the university makes cost-effective use of faculty time by expending so much on work executed in other places by staff. No important difference in program needs that justifies Philosophy's having only half the staff support of History jumps out. Indeed, the need for staff support for Philosophy's very large Graduate Teaching Associate program, for which a tenured faculty member must maintain records and do other staff work, suggests that the justification for staff lies on the other foot. Initially, we thought than History's undergraduate journal might be the reason for History's enjoying double the staff. If this is so, then the arrival of the book review section of Hypatia, the preeminent feminist philosophy journal, to be managed by our SFSU Philosophy department, renders our department at least equally deserving. More important, Philosophy faculty are losing crucial teaching and research time, and the department's ability to raise external support for funded research and for development is severely compromised due to the necessity of faculty repeatedly training and supervising a succession student assistants, and still having to execute a great deal of administrative work more cost-effectively done by staff. 107