Sample Syllabi and Assignments

Prof. Ramona Ilea and Prof. Monica Janzen have used civic engagement projects in their classes with hundreds of students each. You can read more about their work at https://www.engagedphilosophy.com/about/

They strongly believe that these civic engagement projects (which they call “Experiments in Ethics”) can be adjusted for a wide variety of classes and colleges. Furthermore, the Experiments in Ethics are small assignments that can be used independently of one other:

  • A letter to a person in a position of power (This is a great assignment that gets to many of the same things as a philosophy paper while also having the potential to make a difference.) In fact–Here’s a short video of us explaining the merits of one of our first Experiments in Ethics–the change making letter!
  • Research (This is a great scaffolding activity for other projects)
  • Volunteering
  • Civic Action/Advocacy
  • Charitable Giving Investigation
  • Organize an Activity

Anyone can borrow these materials, copying and pasting as needed. Just add a small footnote crediting Ramona Ilea and/or Monica Janzen and send a quick email to info@engagedphilosophy.com to let us know you’re using these materials. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us! We’re always happy to help.

Dr. Ramona Ilea and Dr. Monica Janzen use similar assignments but they vary them due to the types of institutions they work at and the classes they teach.

Here’s a short video of us explaining the merits of one of our first Experiments in Ethics–the change making letter!

Dr. Ramona Ilea teaches at Pacific University, a liberal arts college. Her materials can be found here:

Dr. Monica Janzen (Mo) teaches at Anoka Ramsey Community College. Here are some of her materials:

More Ideas

To get more ideas, click on the links below or on our interview page, where you can find interviews with philosophers that do a wide range of projects with their students: https://www.engagedphilosophy.com/interviews/ (For teaching ideas, look at the interviews that have “teaching” as a theme). Some excellent examples of philosophers interviewed who assign activist projects are Yi Deng, Stephen Bloch-Schulman, Danielle Lake, Lisa Kretz, Sarah Donovan, and Chad Wiener. Others have their students do equally exciting community-based work: Sharon Meagher, John Torrey, Kathie Jenni, Amy Reed-Sandoval, and Sharyn Clough, for example. See https://www.engagedphilosophy.com/interviews/ for interviews with all these engaged philosophers, and many more.

Another different idea: In an Introduction to Philosophy Class, Monica Janzen asks her students to examine “What is philosophy? As part of this examinations students can choose to pick 3 philosophers from the INTERVIEWS page on Engaged Philosophy. Students can then explain how the different philosophers they found are “doing philosophy.” This is a Wonderful assignment and can be done as a writing assignment, presentations, or students pick. Here is an example of one presentation given online

Monica Janzen, Ramona Ilea, and Susan Hawthorne used to do another type of project (which was the subject of a couple of publications and assessments:

Ethics – Project Guidelines – Older Big Project

Ethics – Project Grading Rubric

St. Catherine University Materials: Ethics Syllabus Phil 2200 F 2020, Ethics Syllabus (2014) and $20 Challenge Project