College Dean:	cshenkle@udel.edu (Cindi Shenkle) Approved, 12/2/2009
College Undergraduate Committee:	seraphin@udel.edu (Seraphin,Anthony) Approved, 11/25/2009
Department Chair:	SCHUELER@UDEL.EDU (Schueler,George Frederick) Approved, 11/18/2009
Department Undergraduate Committee:	krogers@udel.edu (Katherine Rogers) Approved, 11/16/2009
Submitter:	krogers@udel.edu (Katherine Rogers) Submitted, 11/3/2009

	Course Revision
	PHIL465 AS/Philosophy Effective Term: 10F
	Current	Proposed
Course Title:	SENIOR SEMINAR		SENIOR SEMINAR
Credit Type:	Fixed: 3		Fixed: 3
Can this be taken more than once per term:	No		No
Max. Repeatable Credits:	6		6
Grade Type:	Standard		Standard
Multicultural:	No		No
First Year Experience:	No		No
Discovery Learning Experience:	No		Yes, all sections.
Instructional Format:	Lecture: 3		Lecture: 3
Cross-Listed Courses:
Course Catalog Title:	Senior Seminar		Senior Seminar
Long description:	Various authors and themes; e.g., Plato, Kant, epistemology, philosophy of mind. RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated once for credit when topics vary.		Various authors and themes; e.g., Plato, Kant, epistemology, philosophy of mind.
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Restrictions:			Open only to Philosophy Majors and by permission of instructor. May be repeated once for credit when topics vary.
Justifications:	Justify the need to initiate this course. This course is the capstone course for the Philosophy major. The seminar format requires students to take a great deal of responsibility for course content, and to do what professional Philosophers do regarding assessing, writing, and presenting Philosophy. Thus it seems an appropriate candidate for a DLE course.
	Identify and justify any effect on other courses in your department or in another department. Specifically list other departments chairpersons and/or faculty consulted and summarize results of discussion. Designating PHIL 465 as a DLE course will allow Philosophy majors to satisfy the DLE requirement within their major. Otherwise it will not affect other courses within or outside of the department.
	Identify the main emphasis of the course and indicate the nature of the change. The topic for the course changes from semester to semester depending on the research interests of the instructor. Students are expected to read, write, and present philosophy at an advanced level, and participate in the research of the instructor. The change to a DLE designation would recognize the course as one in which students actively contribute to a professional research project.
	Outline how this course addresses one or more of the 10 goals of undergraduate education.
	Outline how this course relates to the overall program goals.
Supporting Documentation:	http://www.udel.edu/rogers/465syl.htm
Instructor Reference:	Katherin Rogers krogers@udel.edu
Discovery Learning Experience
Context:	Research experiences
Justification:	Explain how this course is an experiential learning experience and how it involves out-of-class and beyond typical curriculum instructional experiences. Philosophy involves thinking, reading, writing, and talking analytically about basic, practical questions such as: What makes any action right or wrong? Do human beings have free will? Does science discover the world or invent it? etc. etc., Thus the in-class/out-of-class distinction is not relevant to the practice of Philosophy. Every class in Philosophy involves students in the experience of doing real philosophy. What distinguishes the Senior Seminar is that, whereas in most classes, the instructor does most of the work guiding the students as they do philosophy, the Senior Seminar places far more responsibility on the student, and also involves the student in an active professional research project. The Senior Seminar also invites an expert in the topic under consideration to come to campus and interact with the class and with the instructor. Explain how this course achieves each of the following student learning goals: Students will apply critical thinking skills and academic knowledge/concepts to develop effective responses to, and make informed decisions about, problems or situations encountered in the course of the learning experience. Philosophy just is the application of critical thinking skills and academic knowledge/concepts to basic, practical problems of the human condition. The Senior Seminar focuses on a problem or set of problems. Students study and analyze the instructor's work and relevant contemporary work by professional philosophers, write and present their own ideas, and critically analyze each others' work. Students will engage in reflection, which incorporates self-assessment and analysis of the learning that has occurred as a result of their participation in the DLE. At a minimum, students will be expected to examine and demonstrate what they have learned as a result of the DLE, how they have learned it, the impact of their learning on their personal and professional growth, and how to apply that learning in other situations or contexts. Philosophy just is reflection, self-assessment, and analysis of one's learning. Questions like "Do human beings have free will?" are necessarily and by nature applicable to almost all situations and contexts. Students write and present major papers and critique each others' work drawing on their study which has involved them in the instructor's research and in the on-going dialogue among philosophers. Students from the Senior Seminar often receive citations in the instructor's research, and sometimes produce papers which are presented or published in standard professional venues. Explain the cycle of when and how this course will be offered. Include terms course is to be offered, (i.e., fall and spring); whether all sections or only selected sections of the course are to carry the DLE designation; and additional information about the particulars of this course offering. Course is taught (one section) every fall and spring, and all sections should carry the DLE designatiion. The topic is different based on the focus of the instructors research, and the course can be repeated once for credit. The syllabus attached is from a Senior Seminar on Free Will.

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Emails:

Dear Prof. Morling,

(I do not speak for my chair here, just for myself.) I am dismayed at the committee's decision. I am not sure how you define "real world". Someone studying law might go to a law office for an internship, and I assume that would count as a "real world" experience because there, instead of just studying law, you work with real lawyers who are actually practicing law. But the law office is a very distinct culture and not part of most people's "real world". The senior seminar is relevantly similar in that in the course the students participate with the professional philosopher working on his or her research. Now it is true that, unlike with most other professionals, almost all professional philosophers live and work at universities. If the "real world" is, by definition, outside of a university, then there is no "real world" where professional philosophy is done.

But professional philosophy has an enormous impact on the so-called "real world". To take an example close to my heart, recently pop philosophy -- to be distinguished from PROFESSIONAL philosophy -- done by certain scientists against religion has had a big impact as evidenced by the NYTimes bestsellers lists. But then, of course, you need the professionals to point out the weakness of the pop philosophers' arguments, and real philosophers on all sides of the religion question have been weighing in. So professional philosophy has a broad and deep impact outside of the university.

It seems to me to do a disservice to our majors to insist that they take a DLE course, but then to argue that intensive training in the actual practice of professional philosophy -- work with a real philosopher on an ongoing research project -- cannot count because it is not "in the real world".

I do hope your committee will reconsider.

Let me know if you have further questions that I might be able to answer.

Thank you for your time,

Kate Rogers

Hi Beth,

My chair sent me the following which bolsters my argument from yesterday:

"Experience" in philosophy CONSISTS OF working on philosophical problems. Conceived of in that way, 465 fits the DLE definition fine. Here is a quotation from the DLE FAQ page:

What is Discovery and Experiential Learning ?

While there are many definitions in the literature, in their most basic forms both discovery and experiential learning is [sic] learning that takes place when students use their knowledge and skills acquired through traditional classroom experiences to discover, for themselves, effective actions, alternatives and solutions to situations and/or problems that occur in “real-life” contexts; that is, contexts that are unpredictable, where problems and situations are complex and lack clear definitions. These contexts are primarily outside of the classroom, but may occur within a classroom experience, as long as the student learning goals of the DLE are achieved.

--Also--

It occurred to me that my Senior Seminar "Freedom and Science" for this spring fits the description above brilliantly. I am working on what free will means for philosophers, experimental psychologists (some of whom claim there isn't any free will!) and the "man on the street" (presumably at least the last of those three lives in the "real world"). We're looking especially at the (ridiculous!)claims to have shown experimentally that people don't have free will, a claim that has been making its way into the mass media (NYTimes, New Yorker...) and even into the court room ("My client is not guilty due to universal determinism.") So this is a really pressing "real world" question. (Most philosophical questions are, but in this case the application is extremely obvious). If you'd like to hear more about what we'll be doing, just as an example of the "using the skills you've developed in solving "real world" problems" aspect, I'd be happy to talk to you or the whole committee, about it.

Thanks again for your time.

Kate

P.S. I hope you'll be sending my e-mails to the whole committee. I can write an official letter if that's the more suitable form of response.

Thanks so much considering our case!

In response to the question of whether or not all Philosophy courses are DLE courses, perhaps a case could be made for that. In any philosophy course students are led through problems and, one hopes, they will absorb the issues and think about them on their own. Unlike, for example, in the study of literature, when you study philosophy, you DO philosophy. And good for philosophy, as far as I'm concerned.

What is special about the Senior Seminar is that students are actually helping the Professor with on-going research. That might happen in another class, but it is the standard in the Senior Seminar. So, for example, right now my students are reading what I have done so far on a book on freedom and science. They come in to each class having written a short paper on what they took to be the strongest and weakest points and then we discuss it. They are also reading some of the literature which figures prominently, and then, for about the last 2/3 of the course they will each write a 10-15 page paper on a topic of their choosing based on my work, and present it to the class colloquium-style. This may lead to my citing them in my work, or possibly even to co-authored articles, though it is too early to tell at this stage. So, what makes the Senior Seminar especially appropriate for a DLE course is that students are participating in the creation of some NEW philosophy in a way that

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they would not be likely to be doing in other courses, and the class is largely driven by student effort.

I hope that answers the questions.

Kate