Teaching Philosophy

My main teaching interests are in ethics and political philosophy. I teach several courses at UMR, including the ethics curriculum. I believe that good teaching requires emphasizing the practical value of philosophy in addition to its intellectual value. I find that practical value in the critical thinking skills that philosophers use when approaching philosophical topics and I try to pass these on to my students. Below I summarize some of my courses and include links to my syllabi. I mainly use Blackboard for my course web pages nowadays, but more for convenience than out of anything resembling positive experience with the system.

I have won two teaching awards since I have been at UMR: the Class of 1942 Alumni Teaching Award and the Freshman Faculty Teaching Award for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. I also participated in the New Faculty Teaching Scholars Program in 2006-2007, which gave me many new ideas. Finally, I have one article published on teaching called "Thinking Outside the Room: Using On-Line Forums in the Philosophy Classroom". It is co-written with Christopher Panza and Christie Cathey.

Courses

Introduction to Philosophy

My introductory course differs from most introductory courses in philosophy in that it is centered around philosophical problems (like the problem of evil in God's existence, the mind-body problem, the problem of free will, and moral relativism) rather than historical figures in philosophy. I construct it this way to emphasize that doing philosophy is a skill that can be put to many uses rather than simply a body of historical knowledge. In this class, we read several dialogues, written by contemporary philosophers, that explore the issues I mention above.

Business Ethics

My business ethics course is divided into three main sections: exploring some of the ethical problems that modern business run into (such as problems with product liability, marketing, race, gender, accounting, and the environment), examining companies that do ethical and socially responsible business (here we see solutions to many of the problems proposed in the previous section), and a final section on the place of leadership in ethical business. Throughout the course, I have my students compile an ethics portfolio for a fictional company. The sections of the project (ethical problems, ethical solutions, etc) closely mirror the sections of the course. We use an affordable textbook called Case Studies in Business Ethics by Al Gini.

Bioethics

I invented the Bioethics course at UMR and try make the course relevant to people taking the course as a philosophy course, pre-med students taking the course to prepare for medical school, or people taking the course to become more informed voters on social issues. We cover issues surrounding the role of the physician such as informed consent and truth-telling; issues about life and death such as abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research, and persistent vegetative states; issues in the ethics of genetics such as genetic screening, genetic engineering, and cloning; and we also take a long look at the ethics of our healthcare system and other healthcare systems in the developed world. We use a textbook called Biomedical Ethics, 6th editionedited by Thomas Mappes and David DeGrazia. There is a group presentation and paper as well as exams and weekly writing.

Social Ethics

In my Social Ethics course, we cover "hot-button" ethical issues of the day that are in some way connected with this particular society's laws and social attitudes. We start with a bit of theory on liberty (Mill's famous On Liberty) and justice (from Rawls's Theory of Justice). From there we examine issues such as poverty, drug legalization, pornography, and prostitution. After the first part of the semester, we delve into issues of different social groups living together in a single society, starting with Charles Taylor's famous essay "Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition". Most of the arguments we read about come from articles in Thomas Mappes and Jane Zembaty's Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy, 7th edition. Students write two longer papers on these social issues.

Foundations of Political Conflict

This course starts with an introduction to historical political philosophy including Plato's Republic, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Mill. I use these philosophers to tell the story of the build up to the modern liberal state. From there we look at several augmentations and problems with modern liberalism including communitarian criticisms and the welfare state. The next time I teach the course I hope to add more material on democratic theory and multiculturalism. There is weekly writing, a midterm, and a longer paper in the course. For a text, I've used Stephen Cahn'sPolitical Philosophy: Essential Texts, but I'm not overly fond of it and may change it the next time through.

The Meaning of Life

Every so often I get the chance to offer this seminar on the meaning of life. The class is dedicated to understanding what people are looking for when they seek meaning in their lives and what philosophers have said about it. The last time through, I separated the course into sections on the existentialist answer, the theistic answer, and the non-theistic/non-existentialist answer to what gives life meaning. The next time I teach it we will probably spend considerably more time on the more abstract notions of purpose, meaning, and destiny. The seminar is semi-practical, by which I mean that I do hope students in the course find some options for meaning in their actual lives. However, I hope no one comes to the table thinking we can approach this subject with anything like mathematical precision. Work in the course includes two shorter papers and a larger course project that expresses something about the meaning of life. Several such projects are still in my office from the last time I taught the course. The last time I taught the course, we used E.D. Klemke's famous anthology The Meaning of Life as well as external readings. I'm not sure if I'll use this book again.

Logic

I have also taught logic in the past, particularly the summer of 2007. Dr. Miller is the usual logic teacher during the fall and spring semesters. I am currently rethinking how I might teach logic in the summer session, since the pace is too quick for traditional methods.

Engineering Ethics

Since UMR is primarily a science and engineering school, I've been working on a course on engineering ethics for some time. I hope to offer it in the near future. I figured that first I should try to learn as much as possible about what engineers actually do. Currently the draft course covers topics such as the ethics involved in design, the social responsibility of engineering, ethics as a part of engineering practice, and the intersection of engineering and business. I have several case studies planned and hope to have a project that tailors itself to each students particular engineering interest.

  • There is no finalized syllabus yet.