Engaged Philosophy and the Public Philosophy Network are partnering to present a special interview series that highlights the work of public philosophers who will be presenting at the 2019 PPN Conference Oct 17-19, 2019.
Judy Whipps recently retired from the Philosophy and Integrative, Religious, and Intercultural Studies Departments at Grand Valley State University. Often working with nontraditional students, she values the way they see philosophy’s implications in people’s lives.
What aspects of your teaching do you think of as public philosophy? What is your role?
Taking Jane Addams and John Dewey as models for teaching and learning, I’ve engaged my students in community issues throughout my teaching career. When I returned to finish my undergraduate degree in my early forties, my question to my teachers was often: “So what? Why does this matter in the world?” As a teacher I want my students to ask—and answer—that question as well, because we learn better when we see why and how ideas change the world. I teach with questions, asking students to find the answers using the course materials and through engaging with their community. Good philosophy is about asking the right questions; with those questions we can begin the thinking process. Texts can help define some of the issues but seeing the larger implications in people’s lives awakens us in a different way.
Give an example of a successful project.
I am near the end of my academic career, so these last few months have been times of reflection on my teaching career. While there are many successful (and not so successful) projects in the last few years, let me go back and talk about an earlier project from some years back.
When my colleague and I first started teaching feminist philosophy, we wanted students to experience why feminist philosophy is critically important. We began by asking students to work with local organizations who served women’s needs. That introduced them to some important realities, but it was hard to translate that to the larger philosophical questions we addressed in class. We approached the GVSU Women’s Center for help and our conversations led to the creation of a position that acted as a liaison between non-profits and students, more adequately preparing our students for engagement in women’s issues. We then worked with a faculty member at another local college to create the West Michigan Women’s Studies Council, engaging seven areas colleges and universities. We eventually obtained a large grant that allowed us to bring national and international activists to Grand Rapids to work with our students and to help educate the larger community about women’s issues. We were able to reach thousands of community members through this work, and it gave our students a place to meet with other students at other universities while seeing the wider significance of their learning. While this organization (and the funding) only lasted about eight years, it was a wonderful way of engaging the larger community in feminist pedagogy.
More recently, I helped create the Accelerated Leadership Program, a 19-month program for returning adult students at Grand Valley State University. It begins with a course in philosophy, and then transitions to community-centered coursework that prepares them to understand and engage in their community, primarily using design-thinking methodologies. In my course, Leadership for Social Change, we begin by reading biographies of social change activists (because stories are just a great way to learn). Then, building on interviews and engagement they did in prior courses, students define a problem and start creating solutions with their community partners around a program called Challenge Scholars which aims at creating a college-going culture in an urban school district. This has resulted in a number of successful projects to support these schools.
What benefits do your students gain from doing public philosophy? In what ways do their projects benefit the wider community?
Engaged pedagogy isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time, experimentation and effort to establish and maintain connections in the community. I confess that I struggle with the question of whether our students provide a benefit to organizations—particularly given the shortness of an academic semester. Before academia, I worked in the nonprofit field and I know that it takes time and training for agencies to effectively work with non-employees who want to contribute to their work. Yet, if nothing else, our class creates a space to come alongside our community organizations and witness their work. When we started connecting returning adult students to the Challenge Scholars program, the Grand Rapids Community Foundation invited eight to ten nonprofits to a meeting to help us connect to the community. One thing I took away from that meeting was that people at these nonprofits want their work—and their struggles—to be seen by others. I always hope we do more, but at least our students leave with a deeper understanding of the issues that our community faces and the good work that others are doing to address these issues.
What role does the PPN play in your philosophical work?
While I have not been deeply involved in the Public Philosophy Network, only attending events from time to time, it is great to simply know that other philosophers are working to bring ideas into practice in our communities.
What motivates you to include a public philosophy component in your courses?
As a late-comer to academia (getting my PhD at age 47), I had worked in law and in the non-profit world before academia. I found that neither of these were sufficient to address the root cause of the issues we face. I thought college might be a place to start thinking with others about social change. Philosophy often faces inward, analyzing itself through rational arguments. I wanted a philosophical approach that faces outward—always looking, as Dewey said, to address the problems of the world as a starting place for thinking. And having done my dissertation on Jane Addams, she become my model for doing philosophy.
What motivates you to teach non-traditional students?
I love how nontraditional students immediately focus on how to apply ideas to questions they encounter in life. It’s a lot of fun to engage with these kinds of thinkers!
What advice do you wish someone had given to you before you started doing public philosophy?
Find partners! I was fortunate to have at least one philosophy colleague who also wanted to do public philosophy when I started teaching. But more partners are needed—at one’s institution and in the community. I needed to go to events, become engaged myself in the issues, get to know people and their passions in order to build trust in the community. Our work in teaching, service and scholarship is so time-consuming that I often didn’t have the energy to make those connections. But finding partners at other schools, or with organizations like the Community Foundation, really helped. I’m grateful that we had some resources at GVSU to help us make those connections.
EngagedPhilosophy readers: If you’d like to nominate yourself or someone else for an interview, email us at info@engagedphilosophy.com.
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