When students do civic engagement projects in our philosophy classes, they commit to making changes in their communities. Through their civic engagement experiences, reading, writing, and classroom discussion, students learn how philosophical reasoning matters in the world, improve their argumentative skills, and gain practical skills—particularly the ability to see themselves as agents of change.
Engaged Philosophy aims to help other philosophy professors—and their students—join us in civic engagement. The site facilitates organizing, participating in, sharing, studying, and disseminating the results of civic engagement projects in philosophy classes by showcasing examples of student work and by providing syllabi, results, and references. We have been piloting Engaged Philosophy at our three institutions: Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon; Anoka Ramsey Community College in Coon Rapids, Minnesota; and St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Please contact us at info@engagedphilosophy.com if you are already using or are planning to implement civic engagement projects in your classes, or if you would like more information. We welcome your involvement! Feel free to email us if you see any problems with the web site, or if you have any questions or suggestions.
We thank the American Philosophical Association, the St. Catherine University Summer Scholars program, the St. Catherine University Internet Technology Governance Group, and Pacific University’s Faculty Development Grant for the funding that makes this site possible.
Ramona Ilea is a Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy Department Chair at Pacific University Oregon. Her research focuses on demonstrating that philosophical work can contribute to public debates and social issues. She co-edited (with Julinna Oxley) Experiential Learning in Philosophy, published by Routledge Press in September 2015. She has also co-edited (with Avram Hiller and Leonard Kahn) Consequentialism and Environmental Ethics. She has implemented civic engagement projects in about 25 classes for the past 16 years. This work inspired more than 20 presentations on civic engagement and a number of publications, including “Beyond Service Learning: Civic Engagement in Ethics Classes” (with Susan Hawthorne), “Radically Hopeful Civic Engagement” (with Benjamin Hole and Monica Janzen) and “Be the Change: Student Activism” (with Monica Janzen). She won Pacific University’s President’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
Susan Hawthorne is an associate professor in the Philosophy Department at St. Catherine University. She has assigned civic engagement projects in environmental ethics, socially engaged philosophy, and online ethics courses. Ramona Ilea and she coauthored the article “Beyond Service Learning: Civic Engagement in Ethics Classes”. Her book Accidental Intolerance: How We Stigmatize ADHD and How We Can Stop (published by Oxford University Press) exemplifies her core research, which investigates how epistemic, practical, and ethical aspects of clinical science and medical and social practice affect the lives of individuals experiencing mental illness.
Monica “Mo” Janzen is a philosophy instructor at Anoka Ramsey Community College. She is also the recipient of the 2021 Prize for Excellence in Philosophy Teaching, sponsored by the American Philosophical Association (APA), the American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT), and the Teaching Philosophy Association (TPA). Her research interests focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL). She utilizes civic engagement projects as a method of community-based learning in her ethics classes—even when these classes are exclusively taught online. She has served as the Chair of Faculty Development at ARCC and has facilitated faculty development opportunities more broadly within the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system. She has presented about civic engagement at numerous conferences. Her recent publications include: “Scaffolding civic engagement projects: A study into the effectiveness of supported small scale, independent, student-designed projects” (with Dr. Catherine Ford), “Be the Change: Student Activism” (with Ramona Ilea), and “Cultivating Citizenship: Student Initiated Civic Engagement Projects in Philosophy Classes” (with Susan Hawthorne and Ramona Ilea).
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