Active and engaged learning experiences take place inside and outside the classroom throughout your four-year experience. Contact your advisor for more information on these and other opportunities.
In the Classroom
- Philosophy students have made use of e-portfolios to document and reflect on their intellectual growth in philosophy over their entire time at Puget Sound.
- Students in PHIL 389: Race and Philosophy complete a final reflective project that connects an issue raised in class to their daily lives.
- Philosophy students undertake self-driven projects that are highly experiential in nature, such as creating a series of paintings to represent famous thought experiments, or writing a children's book about philosophical concepts.
On Campus
- Competing in Ethics Bowl gives philosophy students the chance to take the knowledge they've gained in the classroom and apply it to real-life ethical dilemmas. Notably, students have competed in the 2019 National Bioethics Bowl in Mobile, AL and the first ever Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. Our students also have the opportunity to serve as coaches and mentors for our high school ethics bowl team.
- Every year, our students organize and host an undergraduate philosophy conference. This includes inviting speakers, reviewing and selecting papers, publicizing the event, presenting their own research, providing commentary on other people's work, and more. See The Trail's article about the 2019 conference.
- Our students also have many opportunities to hear visiting guest speakers in philosophy and to interact with them, gaining an appreciation of philosophy beyond Puget Sound.
- In addition, our students frequently host discussions on their own accord on such topics as robots and health care, ethics and technology, and agency, narrative, and oppression (as a part of the 2014 Race and Pedagogy Conference held on campus).
- Philosophy students frequently undertake independent research projects, both as an independent study course during the academic year, or on a competitive basis during the summer. Some examples of past summer research topics include pictorial representation, personal identity and the unity of consciousness, a foundation for arithmetic, and scientific realism.
Beyond Campus
- We encourage our students to attend philosophy conferences on other campuses, whether as a presenter, a facilitator, or a spectator. Some examples include presenting at the 2015 Pacific University Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, the 2019 Pacific University Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, and the 2010 University of Alaska, Anchorage Undergraduate Philosophy Conference.
- Our students submit papers to undergraduate philosophy journals, such as Res Cogitans (featuring work by Lee Pennebaker '15 and Connor Sabin '15).
- Students who are interested in pursuing internships are supported by our faculty.
- For those who are interested in studying abroad, we keep a list of available programs at Puget Sound that are especially well-suited for those who want to specifically study philosophy.
- Students can apply what they learn in philosophy classes to timely issues during a summer internship abroad, such as this one at the Institute of Ideas in London.