Professional Documents
Culture Documents
13, 2018
To: Dr. Paul Allen, Associate Dean
Humanities, Languages and Culture
Salt Lake Community College
From: Dr. Jane Drexler, Associate Professor, Philosophy
Salt Lake Community College
Re: Travel Support Request
Dear Dr. Allen,
Please accept this application and cover letter as you consider funding my travel to:
The 2019 American Philosophical Association Conference – Central Division
Denver, CO
February 20-23, 2019.
Accepted Panel Presentation: “Teaching Plato’s Apology: A Way-of-Life Approach”
(see below for the proposal details)
Attending this conference will help me serve the department, discipline, and college
The APA is the principle professional organization in the U.S. of academic philosophy. It
brings together philosophy faculty and graduate students from all over the globe for the
shared exploration of ideas, discussion of developments and challenges in the field, and
advancement of each generation of philosophy graduate students into the faculty role.
Arguably, then, it is one of the most important places to bring the voice of the community
college: Community college faculty not only offer the foundational experience in general and
higher education for millions of transfer students each year, but we also experience first-
hand some of the largest obstacles to student access and success, and we are on the front
lines of creative pedagogies and engaged learning. Our voices should be heard at these major
conferences.
Moreover, Philosophy faculty from community colleges must – and do – grapple with and
articulate, in our theories and in our pedagogies, the value and meaning of philosophy for
the world today. Ours is not an abstract valuing of philosophy. It is urgent and concrete.
We stay grounded in what is at stake in teaching philosophy and in that way are able to
mitigate the loss of perspective that comes from uber-specialization.
AAPT Mini-Conference on Teaching Philosophy
In a concerted effort to bring a greater presence to the value and meaning of *teaching*
philosophy, The American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT) has organized a mini-
conference for the first two days of the APA. Like the larger biennial AAPT conference which
I help organize, this workshop/mini-conference brings together philosophy faculty from
across regions and college-types for an engaged and scholarly exploration of teaching
philosophy at the community college, in general education, and beyond; and particularly
focuses on concrete application in the classroom and in program and curriculum
development.
As one of the only theory-grounded and practically-focused academic organizations in the
world that is centered specifically on the teaching of philosophy, the AAPT actively seeks to
better embed its focus on teaching into that disciplinary overlord, the APA. As you can
imagine, then, attending this conference strengthens networks of pedagogically-minded
colleagues in philosophy, enhances the learning of new techniques and scholarship in the
teaching of philosophy, and puts one front-and-center at one of the major sites for sharing
new ideas.
Attending this conference will help me become a better teacher
The design and purpose of these joint APA/AAPT Mini-conferences is to use collaboration
and scholarship to help develop real guides and practical techniques for teaching philosophy.
Some of my goals in attending this conference are:
• To improve my assignment design and general-education-focused curricula
development to better cultivate effective inclusive practices and engaged learning
• To develop and hone class activities that are grounded in the Way-of-Life approach
• To explore further, and in conversation, the value and role of philosophy for non-majors
Our Accepted Panel Presentation Proposal:
Teaching the Apology: A Way-of-Life Approach
Jane Drexler, Salt Lake Community College, UT (panel organizer)
Caleb Cohoe, Metro State University of Denver, CO
Jacob Stump, University of Toronto, Ontario
Marisa Diaz-Waian, Founder/Director, Merlin CCC, a philosophy nonprofit org, Helena, MT
Ryan Johnson, Elon University, NC
Philip Schoenberg, Western New Mexico University, NM
Alli Thornton, University of South Alabama, AL
Thus, for us, teaching philosophy to our students is about opening spaces for them
to engage with different philosophical ways of life, in order to see how belief inspires
action, affect inspires insight, knowledge inspires commitment, metaphysics inspires
ethics.
Teaching The Apology in the Way-of-Life style, then, is focused on having students enact
the examined life: For example, students in one of our introductory classes write their
own “Apology,” framed around the juicy question, “what would you be accused of?,” and
scaffolded through the first 6 weeks of the semester. In another, students create and
explore narratives based on various character types Socrates discusses (e.g. a person
who has wealth, but who does not achieve virtue/excellence). In a philosophy-centered
non-profit organization, community members explore Socrates’s way of life through a
series of “Philosophy Walks.”
In this Teaching Hub session, participants from the Reviving Philosophy as a Way of Life
NEH Institute propose to present on some of the “philosophical exercises,” like those
above, that they use to teach Plato’s Apology. We will begin by offering examples of our
own “Way of Life” curricula, activities or assignments. That will be followed by a 20-30
minute workshop where session attendees will come together in small groups to develop
way-of-life activities – in-class activities, out-of-class philosophical experiments,
academic assessments, and the like – that they can use in their own classes to teach The
Apology.
The session will end with a Q&A/general discussion. Total time proposed: 90
minutes. Session attendees will take away concrete ideas, handouts and instructions for
in-class and out-of-class activities and assignments, and will work together to develop
some of their own approaches to teaching this foundational text.