Assessment Details
Academic Year: 2020-2021 Level: Graduate
Campus Department: Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences [UG and Grad]
Program Type: Major [UG] / Program [Grad]
Program Name: Philosophy MA (Link)
Description of Data Collection:
Achievement of the learning outcomes listed above are assessed in the light of the following data:
I. Outcomes A to G:
i. The usual assessment within a graduate course relies on the writing of one or more research papers.
ii. Observation of and reports on PhD student performance in the doctoral preliminary comprehensive examination, a 75-minute oral examination.
iii. Observation of and reports on the papers presented for the MA qualifying paper and the doctoral comprehensive exam qualifying paper.
iv. Observation of and reports on the articles in the making presented in the writing seminar (MA and PhD students).
v. Observation of and reports on PhD student performance on the doctoral comprehensive examination, the first part of which is the defense of a qualifying, publishable paper written under the direction of a supervisor and examined by a committee on the basis of a reading list. The second part is a two-hour oral defense of the dissertation proposal.
vi. Observation of and reports on doctoral dissertation defenses, and, possibly, on MA theses.
II. Outcomes H and J:
i. Annual review of doctoral students, which includes their participation in professional meetings, presentation of papers at conferences, and publications. These activities also give indirect but global information about outcomes A to G.
ii. Advisers oversee the student’s participation in academic conferences and follow up on their efforts at publication.
iii. Observation of and reports on the papers presented for the MA qualifying paper and the doctoral comprehensive exam qualifying paper.
iv. Report of successful applications of MA students to PhD programs in philosophy and other disciplines, and of PhD students to academic positions. These activities give indirect but global information about outcomes A to G.
III. Outcome I:
i. Observation of and reports on doctoral students’ participation in the department’s Seminar on Teaching Philosophy.
ii. In-class observation, with written report, of doctoral students teaching by faculty members. (Due to COVID 19 classroom limitations, this was temporarily suspended for the academic year of 2020-21).
iii. Examination of student course evaluations for courses taught by doctoral students.
IV. Outcomes A to I:
i. Records of the placement of MA students in doctoral programs, and of PhD graduates in faculty positions in philosophy or in other fields of their choice. These activities give indirect but global information about all nine outcomes.
Review Process:
The graduate program director, in coordination with the department’s graduate committee, which includes the department chair, the teaching seminar instructor, and the MA coordinator; with additional input from the faculty at large. We also have an annual town hall meeting in which doctoral students offer direct and sometimes helpfully critical feedback on the program and its requirements.
Resulting Program Changes:
i. A year ago, (2020) our department modified the MA program in order to bolster admissions in PhD programs, in correspondence with the data/evidence described in paragraph 3.IV to verify outcomes A to H. The oral comprehensive examination has been replaced by a qualifying research paper, with blind and double grading of the paper by faculty members and a report to the student. The system functioned well: the reports, read by the program director, were very useful feedback for the improvement of the students’ papers. However, we noted that some students struggled to pass and so implemented some changes to the program as outlined in point ii below.
ii. This academic year (2020-21), we introduced three new measures: first, a “revise and resubmit” paper evaluation that allowed students to work with referee feedback and improve their papers before resubmission, rather than a simple pass-fail option; second, we designed a writing seminar that will begin in fall 2021 for second year MA students to work with a professor and with peer review in order to improve their writing; and third, we emphasized to individual faculty the necessity of providing active commentary and grades on written work for graduate students prior to the final paper or exam in any given course.
iii. The writing and professionalization seminars previously offered to specific years of doctoral students took place by Zoom due to COVID-19 this year and we therefore opened it up to all years of students who wished to attend. This allows students who wish to begin their preparation earlier for professional life and writing skills. This change was made in order to further enhance goals D-G.
iv. We also introduced summer Zoom workshops where faculty and graduate students together read texts on the philosophy of racism and oppression, with special attention to texts required for the preliminary doctoral comps from the “diversity texts” section of the examination list. The aim of the new workshops was especially oriented towards goals H and A above.
v. This year, we also worked with the Career Center and encouraged our graduate students to make use of their programs for both academic and alt-academic careers in order to further goal I.
vi. This year was also occupied with assisting our teaching fellows with learning classroom safety and protocol, classroom technology for students absent from the classroom, effective use of multimedia, and other “basic” areas of day to day life under COVID. Our aim was to further help our teaching fellows to deepen their pedagogical skills as per goal H.
i. MA Qualifying Paper Submission Data
2019-2020 2020-2021
13 QP 16 QP
8 Pass 9 Pass
1 PWD 6 Resubmit/Pass
3 Fail 1 Unknown
We decided this year to focus specifically on the goal of improving the writing program for the MA students, which began as a project of the department the previous year and continued this year. The two changes of adding a revise and resubmit policy and also augmenting somewhat the role of the paper advisor prior to paper submission shows up in empirical data as having been helpful changes, as can be seen in the chart above. Whereas in 2019-20, we had 3 fails at the end of the academic year, no students failed and a good number who would have simply failed under the old system were given a chance to revise on the basis of referee comments and instead passed. (The one unknown outcome is for a student who as of the writing of this document has not turned in an MA qualifying paper.) In addition, anecdotally the referees who worked with revised papers commented in many cases on the vast improvements in the quality of the papers after revision. We decided to continue with the further strengthening of MA paper writing skills for the fall of 2021 by adding a new non-credit but mandatory writing workshop for MA students writing their QPs in their second year of the program, with both faculty led mentoring and peer writing workshops as part of its structure. This workshop will be piloted in the fall and then assessed in the spring on the basis of MA student performance.
ii. This year we noted some successful placements in PhD programs (at least five this year for entry into doctoral granting programs in 2021-22 from among our MAs), and in academic positions (2 visiting professor appointments and several finalist interviews amongst those who just received or are about to receive their doctorates), despite the dismal state of the job market. Moreover, in the fall of 2020 an independent source evaluated the relative placement rates of different university philosophy doctoral granting programs. Boston College’s doctoral program in philosophy excels in a new survey of junior job placement rates, according to Daily Nous. Boston College ranked third nationally and internationally in the mean number of placements per graduate. The rankings were based on a comprehensive review of academic appointments as listed on PhilJobs (Jobs for Philosophers)
http://dailynous.com/2020/09/22/new-site-presents-philosophy-job-placement-data/”
We see this data as good evidence that a number of our goals are being met, as outlined above in section 1.
Moreover, three of our joint MAs in our joint philosophy/ theology program were accepted into theology or religion doctoral programs; the program is specifically meant to prepare them for such programs, and so we are pleased that they were widely accepted.
iii. The Teaching Awards committee observed and gave feedback to students who applied for the award, and found a high level of teaching quality amongst the graduate students, despite the challenges of teaching in classrooms with new technology and limitations imposed as safety measures as a result of COVID.
iv. First year doctoral students will be tested in oral exams in mid-May as evidence of their competency in key texts in the history of philosophy as well as texts from the diversity list, before being permitted to teach. These exams measure student knowledge of texts as well as their pedagogical approach to teaching texts in the classroom. The results of this exam are not yet available as of the time of the writing of this document, but last academic year, all of our doctoral students passed their board exams which especially measure goals A-C with respect to specific designated texts, and some aspects of H.
Date of Most Recent Program Review:
i. A year ago, (2020) our department modified the MA program in order to bolster admissions in PhD programs, in correspondence with the data/evidence described in paragraph 3.IV to verify outcomes A to H. The oral comprehensive examination has been replaced by a qualifying research paper, with blind and double grading of the paper by faculty members and a report to the student. The system functioned well: the reports, read by the program director, were very useful feedback for the improvement of the students’ papers. However, we noted that some students struggled to pass and so implemented some changes to the program as outlined in point ii below.
ii. This academic year (2020-21), we introduced three new measures: first, a “revise and resubmit” paper evaluation that allowed students to work with referee feedback and improve their papers before resubmission, rather than a simple pass-fail option; second, we designed a writing seminar that will begin in fall 2021 for second year MA students to work with a professor and with peer review in order to improve their writing; and third, we emphasized to individual faculty the necessity of providing active commentary and grades on written work for graduate students prior to the final paper or exam in any given course.
iii. The writing and professionalization seminars previously offered to specific years of doctoral students took place by Zoom due to COVID-19 this year and we therefore opened it up to all years of students who wished to attend. This allows students who wish to begin their preparation earlier for professional life and writing skills. This change was made in order to further enhance goals D-G.
iv. We also introduced summer Zoom workshops where faculty and graduate students together read texts on the philosophy of racism and oppression, with special attention to texts required for the preliminary doctoral comps from the “diversity texts” section of the examination list. The aim of the new workshops was especially oriented towards goals H and A above.
v. This year, we also worked with the Career Center and encouraged our graduate students to make use of their programs for both academic and alt-academic careers in order to further goal I.
vi. This year was also occupied with assisting our teaching fellows with learning classroom safety and protocol, classroom technology for students absent from the classroom, effective use of multimedia, and other “basic” areas of day to day life under COVID. Our aim was to further help our teaching fellows to deepen their pedagogical skills as per goal H.
i. MA Qualifying Paper Submission Data
2019-2020 2020-2021
13 QP 16 QP
8 Pass 9 Pass
1 PWD 6 Resubmit/Pass
3 Fail 1 Unknown
We decided this year to focus specifically on the goal of improving the writing program for the MA students, which began as a project of the department the previous year and continued this year. The two changes of adding a revise and resubmit policy and also augmenting somewhat the role of the paper advisor prior to paper submission shows up in empirical data as having been helpful changes, as can be seen in the chart above. Whereas in 2019-20, we had 3 fails at the end of the academic year, no students failed and a good number who would have simply failed under the old system were given a chance to revise on the basis of referee comments and instead passed. (The one unknown outcome is for a student who as of the writing of this document has not turned in an MA qualifying paper.) In addition, anecdotally the referees who worked with revised papers commented in many cases on the vast improvements in the quality of the papers after revision. We decided to continue with the further strengthening of MA paper writing skills for the fall of 2021 by adding a new non-credit but mandatory writing workshop for MA students writing their QPs in their second year of the program, with both faculty led mentoring and peer writing workshops as part of its structure. This workshop will be piloted in the fall and then assessed in the spring on the basis of MA student performance.
ii. This year we noted some successful placements in PhD programs (at least five this year for entry into doctoral granting programs in 2021-22 from among our MAs), and in academic positions (2 visiting professor appointments and several finalist interviews amongst those who just received or are about to receive their doctorates), despite the dismal state of the job market. Moreover, in the fall of 2020 an independent source evaluated the relative placement rates of different university philosophy doctoral granting programs. Boston College’s doctoral program in philosophy excels in a new survey of junior job placement rates, according to Daily Nous. Boston College ranked third nationally and internationally in the mean number of placements per graduate. The rankings were based on a comprehensive review of academic appointments as listed on PhilJobs (Jobs for Philosophers)
http://dailynous.com/2020/09/22/new-site-presents-philosophy-job-placement-data/”
We see this data as good evidence that a number of our goals are being met, as outlined above in section 1.
Moreover, three of our joint MAs in our joint philosophy/ theology program were accepted into theology or religion doctoral programs; the program is specifically meant to prepare them for such programs, and so we are pleased that they were widely accepted.
iii. The Teaching Awards committee observed and gave feedback to students who applied for the award, and found a high level of teaching quality amongst the graduate students, despite the challenges of teaching in classrooms with new technology and limitations imposed as safety measures as a result of COVID.
iv. First year doctoral students will be tested in oral exams in mid-May as evidence of their competency in key texts in the history of philosophy as well as texts from the diversity list, before being permitted to teach. These exams measure student knowledge of texts as well as their pedagogical approach to teaching texts in the classroom. The results of this exam are not yet available as of the time of the writing of this document, but last academic year, all of our doctoral students passed their board exams which especially measure goals A-C with respect to specific designated texts, and some aspects of H.
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