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| Newsletter 2007-08 | |||||||||
Welcome to the first ever edition of the Philosophy Department's Newsletter - 2007-08 |
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Message from the Department Chair
We hope to keep this regularly updated. For now, there is almost exactly forty years of history to catch up on. We know (on the testimony of Professor Bethel) that Philosophy courses were being taught at Cal Poly in 1967—in the Math department. James Culbertson taught logic and Wilbur Hogan (a retired Coast Guard captain) taught world religions. Ethics was being taught by 1968. In 1969 we became a section of the newly created Computer Science and Statistics Department. The year after, we became a department in the newly devised School of Communicative Arts and Humanities. The Philosophy minor program came into existence in 1982 and our major started in 1992. In 2002 the Religious Studies minor came on the books. Walt Bethel was the first person to be hired (and eventually tenured) strictly as a philosophy professor. Dr. Bethel will be teaching his very last class in the Early Retirement Program this winter. In his forty years here he has seen eight chairs try to run the department (Culbertson, Lascola, Walker, me, Michelfelder, Miklowitz, Houlgate, Bomstad and, now, me again). He has seen a few people come and go and a lot more come and stay. He saw the following hires in the 60s and 70s: Dee Sweet, Russell Lascola, Fred O’Toole, Ken Walker, Judy Saltzman and Larry Houlgate. All of these members of the faculty stayed until retirement.
In the 80s, the department hired me, Chuck Hagen, Diane Michelfelder, Stephen Ball, Paul Miklowitz and Linda Bomstad. Except for Diane Michelfelder (who is now the provost of Macalester College in St. Paul Minnesota) all of us are still here (though, Linda has entered the early retirement program). In the 90s, we added Simon Evnine (who left for a position at the University of Miami) and Ann Forster (who eventually dropped out of the profession). Since 2000 we have been joined by Francisco Flores, Joe Lynch (who had been a lecturer since 1990), Todd Long, Stephen Lloyd-Moffett, Rachel Fern (who had been a lecturer since 2000), Joe Schear and, just this year, Devin Kuhn and Ken Brown. A number of lecturers have come and gone over the years. Still with us are Keith Abney, Judith Cross, Richard Graziano, Laura Andes and Patrick Lin. Other lecturers have gone on to do well elsewhere. Dave Corner has been a lecturer at Sacramento State for many years. Bill Wilcox married Diane Michelfelder and is an associate professor at Utah State University. Janet Folina is currently head of the Philosophy Department at Macalester College. Greg Oakes is an assistant professor at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Among the full-time lecturers we have had in religious studies, Marie Pagliarini went on to a tenure-track teaching position at St. Mary's College in the Bay area and Stephanie Stillman is doing research to complete her doctoral dissertation. Norm Mendel has retired from our department but continues to be the Rabbi of the Congregation Beth David. Many of our graduates have gone on to some of the best professional and graduate schools in the country. Kevin Kukla, David Horacek and Jeremy Dickenson all went to Syracuse University. Billy Dunaway is currently at USC. Nick Sars is at Western Michigan University. Brian Bushman has been accepted at Notre Dame and Dan Fogal has been accepted at USC, Rochester, Notre Dame and the top rated Ph.D. program in the country, NYU. Many of our graduates have gone on to prestigious law schools. Nicholas Shantar, for example, went to Boston University on a large scholarship. Today, we have a faculty of 18. This makes us one of the largest philosophy faculties in the CSU system. We have over 70 Philosophy majors. This makes us one of the largest major programs in the CSU.
These are exciting times. In the last seven years six professors have retired and eight new professors been hired. In a department with hardly any turnover for forty years, we have had nearly a 50% turnover in the last few years. We have been hiring one or two new professors each year while I have been chair. The religious studies faculty and minor program has been entirely reconstituted. Two of our professors (Fern and Kuhn) have joint appointments in the womens’ studies program. But these are also troubling times. After two or three good years, the state budget is—once again—back to its usual state of crisis. Increasingly, we are being expected to find non-state funding and, indeed, we are taking serious steps to bring in outside money. Dr. Lin’s work in the ethics of nanotechnology has received generous funding before and is likely to draw more support at Poly. Other members of the faculty are routinely applying for, and receiving, independent support. Professors Fern, Flores, Long and Lloyd-Moffett have all received funding to help them with their research and their teaching. We have also been very fortunate to receive some sizable gifts from some of our previous students. In the past we have received large gifts from Mr. John Conte and Mr. Marcus Sandoval. His employer, the Schering-Plough Corporation, matched Mr. Sandoval’s gift. Recently we have received another very large gift from Mr. Rigoberto Pena Rankin. His gift will total $10,000. In the upper left of this page are links to blurbs (and photos) from some of our faculty members and alumni. If you would like to have information about yourself included in future versions of this newsletter please send it along and we will do our best to get it in. In the meantime, I invite you to check out our brand new forum (i.e., chat room) Update 10/22/08: The Philosophy Department Forum is no longer active. We invite you to participate in Cal Poly's Alumni on-line community at www.calpolylink.com On behalf of the entire Philosophy Department, I would like to thank Mariam Emyan, the department ASC, for her work on this newsletter. It could not have happened without her dedication. Thanks, too, to Tom Dresel, Rachel Fern, and Francisco Flores, for their technical assistance.
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