Is this the Fastest Growing Undergraduate Philosophy Program in the US?
“In Fall 2022, we had four students majoring or minoring in Philosophy; today we have 31.”
[“Heaven on Earth” by Abedinirad Shirin]
You probably have questions about how they did it. Professor Butterfield was kind enough to share some of their strategies, which we’ll get to.
But he had some requests, which I’ll turn to first. He says, “we’d just like to make contact with other departments who are investing time and effort to increasing their popularity with students, in order to hear about what has and hasn’t worked for them.” You can respond to that in the comments, or reach out to Professor Butterfield directly.
Along those lines, let me remind readers of “Philosophy Departments Under Threat: Information, Pro-Active Strategies, Defense” as well as the occasional series, “Philosophy Department Survival Strategies.”
He is also seeking data that will help frame the department’s achievements, particularly when it comes to interactions with administrators, promoting the department to prospective majors, and approaching possible benefactors. He’d like to be able to compare their department’s growth to philosophy departments at other institutions. So do any of you know of any repository of data that tracks the enrollment of undergraduate philosophy programs across time? I provided him with some leads, but even reports such as this one don’t include that data. If you are aware of anything that can help, please let us know.
Now how did the Philosophy Department at Alfred achieve its growth? Butterfield says: “When I arrived at Alfred in 2022, I made increasing our student numbers my main priority. I credit our achievements to a small number of relatively simple steps, consistently applied.”
Those steps:
- We have pivoted explicitly to a student-focused approach to course offerings. This means that we’ve made sure our topics are responsive to student interest, but also that we are seen to be sensitive to student input. For this reason, we have openly consulted with students about the kinds of philosophical topics they’d like to discuss. I’ve had conversations with Philosophy majors who have mentioned philosophical questions they have about their own personal interests, and these conversations have been the springboard that caused me to create my ‘Philosophy of Sport’, ‘Feminist Thought’, and ‘Philosophy of Music’ courses. Not every student makes a suggestion that ends up inspiring a course, but seeing actual results from consultation makes all of our students feel that they’re part of a community.
- Once you have a small number of students enrolled in your program, they begin seeing each other in multiple classes and a sense of community can build from that critical mass. To help this along, we have adopted a regular calendar of events for Philosophy students specifically. I have implemented end-of-semester Philosophy dinners along with the Division of Human Studies’ semesterly student parties at Foster Lake, a local beauty spot owned by the University. This has helped to reinforce the idea that students are surrounded by potential friends, as opposed to merely fellow students who happen to be in the same classrooms as them.
- Another important goal for me was to maximize the visibility of our faculty on campus. As such, I’ve made sure that I’m a regular fixture at the college’s sports games and theater productions, and my colleague Emrys Westacott and I have hosted a trivia contest at Alfred’s library each semester, which is open to everyone on campus. Emrys retired at the end of last year, and has been replaced by Rachel Silverbloom. Rachel has capitalized on her love for film to start a Philosophy Film Club and is about to take her students on a field trip to our nearest independent cinema.
- Our social media campaign has been a more recent development, spearheaded by Rachel. We intend to post light-hearted, Philosophy-themed videos on our YouTube and Instagram accounts on a regular basis. The idea is to be happy to make fun of ourselves, as a direct counter to the reputation for being stuffy or pompous that Philosophy, as a field, sometimes endures. You can see me humiliate myself in a recent video [the video is below].
As a profession, it may be worth thinking about how to track enrollments across institutions and to recognize and celebrate successes of this type. Ideas about that are welcome, too.
At the University of Chicago, which of course is an R1 and has its own special dynamics, the Philosophy Department maintains an extraordinarily robust philosophy major. My sense is that many of the same principles apply. Night Owls is a popular series of public events discussing pressing topical issues with visiting experts in dialogue with a philosopher that are open to all. It seems to elevate the public profile of philosophy. Another feeder to the major is a gen ed sequence (core sequence) for first years specifically on philosophy texts. I know the philosophy department works very hard to curate tailored emails lists (relevant to larger universities) to advertise events, and rigorously advertises them in advance.
Another feeder to the major is a gen ed sequence (core sequence) for first years specifically on philosophy texts.
It’s a somewhat different thing, but something that helped me get interested in philosophy was taking some “interdisciplinary humanities” classes team-taught by a philosopher, a historian, and an English professor with titles like “Views into Human Nature”, were we read a bunch of different texts, including things like Epictitus, Camus, Marx, and others. I found out I liked the philosophy texts and professors and felt encouraged to take more philosophy classes. If departments have the opportuntiy to offer such classes, I think it’s a great way to expose more people to philosophy.
I am sure it also helps that Chicago has a couple professors (I am thinking Callard and Nussbaum) who have at least some level of popular notoriety outside of the field. It seems to me that that would cause more undergraduates to attend those lectures and take the introductory classes that draw them in.
“Philosophy of Sport,” “Feminist Philosophy,” and “Philosophy of Music”.
In other words, aesthetics is not just the “luxury” subfield it’s often made out to be, when we talk about jobs!
(For those who don’t know, the philosophy of sport and the philosophy of games are closely intertwined).
Amen!
I’ll be honest, I’m really happy for Alfred University’s Philosophy Department for what they’ve done. It’s great to see philosophers inspire undergraduates to major in philosophy. On the other hand, if recruiting majors requires:
1. Implement end-of-semester Philosophy dinners along with the Division of Human Studies’ semesterly student parties
2. Tailor my courses to student requests specifically (though I suspect that this can be a good post-hoc rationale for teaching classes I would otherwise be interested in teaching)
3. Make sure that faculty are a regular fixture at things like: college sports games, theater productions, host a trivia contest each semester, create a Philosophy Film Club, and take students on field trips to our nearest independent cinema.
4. Regularly create, edit, post, and promote social media content for undergraduates
Then I just don’t have it in me and I’d be cautious about prescribing this sort of dedication to my colleagues. In the 15 years since starting my first teaching job I’ve had my course caps rise so that I’m teaching more and more students in each class I teach, my teaching loads rise so that I’m teaching more classes, and my administrative duties increase…a lot! Adding 1-4 to my already busy workload, especially as required or recommended activities, goes against my labor politics – to be clear I already do more than my fair share of service and teaching in my own department. I am not a free rider.
I’m already doing a lot more work now just to meet my teaching, research, and service duties than I was even 5 years ago. I also really enjoy the life I’ve built outside of my work as a philosopher and I’ve struggled to carve out time to live as a human being out in the world that does things outside the world of the university. Doing even half of the things on AU’s list would require me, and my colleagues to not only live for work but to live for our students.
I just can’t do it. I understand that it might seem necessary for some departments to do this if they’re under threat of being cut or downsized but, speaking for myself, I don’t want to live that way. I have family that needs my attention (I’m in the sandwich phase of life where I have duties to my parents and children). I also worry about how these “extra curricular” service burdens are distributed. In every department I’ve ever been a part of we have a lot of free riders and doing the sorts of things on the list above is often unsustainable without getting large department buy-in. It’s too much work for a small group to maintain on their own for very long. I’m not a paternalist but if I had colleagues undertaking all of this work (and it’s good, valuable work!), I would want to counsel them against doing it especially if it comes at the expense of meeting research expectations for tenure (if they’re tenure track) and/or having a life outside of the university.
Our undergraduate program in philosophy usually has about 25 majors. That dropped down to about 5 students in 2023-24. We were able to build backup to about 21 in 2024-25, but in 2025-26, we dropped back to 6. We are actively doing “outreach and visibility” activities again this year after not doing much last year (for personal reasons, I was not able to do anything last year). Here are some things we are doing now:
Sending a list of upcoming (SP26) courses to the professional advisors. We also have a list of philosophy courses that satisfy our core curriculum that we have sent to advisors. I am pretty sure that very few students read the online catalog looking for classes, and most students just take whatever classes their advisors tell them to take. I am hoping all the sept faculty have shared this list of classes with current students, esp thos e n intro courses.
We also communicate with advisors about what philosophy is and why a student might want to double major or minor in philosophy. In the past, a colleague and I visited UNIV110 courses (required for first-year students) to give presentations on what philosophy is…and the instructors, who are also professional advisors, were excited to learn about philosophy. I dont think they ever recommended phil classes/majors bc they did not know what it is. Due to a change in the UNIV 110, we are not visiting these classes this year, but we did share all our course and program info with the advisors/instructors.
We are trying to be present at recruiting events. Just last week we “tabled” at two events for prospective students, and we did two “pop-up” tabling events in high traffic areas during registration week. Handed our info about phil at both and the upcoming spring course list at the latter. We also tabled at a majors’ fair and club day.
Trying to have a consistent presence on social media–facebook and instagram. Publicizing our phil club meetings and upcoming courses.
My colleague, Cliff Sosis, designed cool posters and stickers that we have hung around campus/handed out. We have other swag for our tabling events–t-shirts, draw-string bags, magnets.
Our philosophy club has meetings every other week. While attendance is small, it is consistent. Advertising these events shows we are an “active” dept. We also do a movie night and discussion at least once a semester, and this is on the college’s cultural calendar.
We are planning a virtual panel of philosophy alum who have gone to law school in the spring. Our ethics center has regular events for students and community members.
What I would like to do, but have not got around to yet, is have a room reserved for students to study or play games/socialize in the late afternoons/early evenings. I have noticed that my daughter, who is away at college, spends a lot of time in the studio (she is studying architecture). I think students, esp those living on campus, want a place to hang out and “study.” Another thing I want to do is run an ad in the student paper prior to registration each semester of the upcoming classes (or with a QR code linking to upcoming courses).
Will any of this work? Who knows? I will report back next year.
I agree with the other person who posted…who has time to do all of this? I absolutely have other things I need to be doing. And, I am old. We do not have junior faculty who might have more energy to do these things. Still, we have been warned that small programs like ours face being cut. What all this take is 1-2 people to take the lead, make a plan, and deligate the work. I am still figuring out that last step.
If anyone is interested, I would be happy to organize a panel on promoting the philosophy major/minor at the AAPT conference next summer! Let’s share our ideas! [email protected]
Outstanding, love the sensitivity to student needs. The faculty presence on campus is some sophisticated and cost-effective marketing.
For those who do social media: Which platform(s) do you guys use, and how do you use them?
Estimating a 10 fold increase moving forward out of a jump from 4 to 31 students seems like a stretch. Not saying they can’t do it but that is an awfully small number of students to make that kind of prediction. I hope they aren’t using that prediction to make budgetary decisions.