Category: PFP

Two weeks ago or so I was fortunate enough to give a presentation on the Null Curriculum of Sex and Gender in the Sciences. During my part of the session we processed through what we were historically taught about sex (namely that there are two), gender (also that there are two and that it should correlate with biological sex), and all the things we weren’t taught. What haven’t we been taught?

Well, we usually weren’t taught that:

• there are at least 6 sexes
• the Eurocentric and Western of gender has been and always will be in flux
• Intersex folks call into question the consistency of our correlation of gender and sex
• Intersex “conditions” are extremely common.
• 1/1600 people do not have XX or XY chromosome configurations.
• 1/200-1/2000 people have an intersex condition to include physical “abnormalities”

Continue reading “VT-GrATE: Teach-In”

If I could change one thing right now in Higher Education, it would be our educational model. Specifically, I think we absolutely need to, and must, move away from the banking model of education that tends to be the default throughout many of our disciplines.

In this model there are the folks with the knowledge and those without. The “haves” present the material to the “have-nots” and in doing so allow them to acquire something that they were lacking; this is obviously a deficit model.

Continue reading “Higher Ed: How Do We Educate? The Wrong Way”

The open access journal I’ve chosen to look at is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP). Although I wasn’t sure if it would count as an open access journal per se, after reading through the site it seems to qualify even if it has a slightly different model than most.

Continue reading “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy”

While I am in favor of MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), I also think that for all the positivity there is a way in which we tend to gloss over some of the sticking points for the approach and the negative impacts privileging the digital over the actual can have on faculty at a given institution.

Continue reading “MOOCs: Some Attendance Required”

How far do you have to go to pee? Take a few minutes to think about it and then think about how far you’d have to go if the closest restroom was closed.

For many people on this campus, the answer to the first question is “right down the hallway” though for some folks the answer may be “on the next floor”. For the second question, a number of folks may answer “on the next floor” and, maybe, a few would say “the next building”.

Would that answer change if you were disabled? Would it change if you had a small child you had to take care of? Would it change if you were trans or gender non-conforming?

Continue reading “What Counts as Inclusion?”

When it comes to admissions, philosophy has a bit of a problem. By this, I mean that in hiring we have a tendency to hire white men and to not even have a single woman as a final candidate. How does hiring relate to admissions? Quite a lot.

Continue reading “Reflections on Admission”

Last semester, President Sands addressed a motley crowd on the grounds of Smithfield Plantation. Marketed as a talk that would address the necessity of owning our past if we are going to “Invent the Future,” the sparse, and now deleted, advertisements on Facebook drew members of the university community from various areas and disciplines. Thus framed, persons from the IEC, GIA, Philosophy, VT Engage, Inclusive VT, and other university affiliates gathered together in the pavilion to hear about plausible shifts in the conversations held about the plantation and its historical connection to the foundation, and upkeep, of the university proper. At the cession of the talk, many were still waiting to hear the talk which had been promised (or perhaps more charitably the talk which many expected to be furnished to a group which included people of color, students, faculty, staff, and the decedents of the Prestons who founded the plantation  240+ years ago).

Continue reading “Reparations: Reflections on a Present Condition”

When we consider ethics in the discipline, one conversational topic that sometimes comes up is a question of accountability: when people are not being ethical, who is able to step-in and holds folks accountable?

When it comes to the sciences the answer, at least some of the time, is The Office for Research Integrity (ORI). ORI is the entity that is tasked with investigating allegations of research misconduct among many other things. For this post I’m going to focus on one of the cases that ORI investigated last year.

Continue reading “ORI Ethics”

BACKGROUND

When teaching philosophy, especially a course on ethics, it is not uncommon for instructors to challenge their students to do what we call “argument reconstructions”. They are, as they sound, a task that asks students to figure out what the main argument of an article is, how the author supports their argument, and reconstruct it in a manner whereby a relatively intelligent 6th grader (or their roommate…) could understand what is going on.

Continue reading “Plagiarism: Philosophy Edition”