Feb 28, 2018

Selection Committee for the

Reviving Philosophy as a Way of Life
NEH Summer Institute
Wesleyan University
Middletown, CT 06459

Dear Selection Committee,

I am so pleased for the opportunity to apply to the NEH Summer Institute on Philosophy as a Way of

Life. I have been a professor at Salt Lake Community College for eleven years, during which time I

have received a National Award for online course design, and most recently, The SLCC Teaching

Excellence Award. My excitement for your summer institute—as well as my potential contributions to

it—come directly from my location as a professor of philosophy at a community college.

The Value of a Community College Perspective on Philosophy as a Way of Life

My job means that I teach a 5-5 course-load, all intro-level, with 150 (new) students each semester.

My students come from a wide variety of social locations: the first generation college student; the vet;

the middle-aged, laid-off worker returning to “re-train” for a new career; the gifted, straight-A student

interested in saving money; the recovering addict; and the full-time mom with a full-time job taking a

full-time load. This sounds (and feels, much of the time) pretty daunting. But these students are the

stuff of philosophy—struggling for meaning and self-purpose, and for whom the choice of education is

profoundly momentous…in that William James way: a flourishing or withering, now or never, life or

death (sometimes literally) choice. For my students, philosophy is less academic than it is a place from

which to engage their inner and outer lives in ways that can help them navigate an overwhelming and

difficult world that presses in on them from multiple sides. So my position teaching my students offers

me a meaningful location from which to explore what Philosophy – at its root – can do to help cultivate

and ground an engaged life and a robust citizenry.

Department of Humanities, Language & Culture

4600 South Redwood Road
Salt Lake City, Utah 84130
Phone: (801)957.4338 ∙ Fax: (801) 957.4622
The community-college perspective on the role and value of Philosophy may be indispensible for

another reason as well: because we don’t have a major, but rather serve general education, we (almost

by survival-necessity), look for connections between ourselves and other disciplines and spheres. We

spend a good deal of time advocating for, designing our classes around, and pursuing projects that

emphasize the broad role of philosophy in education and in our lives. When we “program build,” it is

about building curricular bridges between schools. We reach out with patience and passion to embed

the place and value of philosophy, in our students’ lives and in our institutions. Because we don’t have

our own disciplinary space—our own “silo,” our own students—we are by nature an extroverted

discipline. We insert ourselves into the conversations about General Education and Pathways, about

Tenure and shared governance. We build relationships with faculty and administrators across the

college.

Ultimately, teaching Philosophy at the community college helps me to better see the ways that the

standard operating procedures of academia often don’t speak well to the needs of our students, or to

the value of our field for engaging a whole person in their lives. As Paul Hanstedt reminds us,

“although it’s true that many of us (maybe even all of us) in the academy thrive by focusing our

energies on narrowly defined topics…that’s rarely the world for which we’re preparing our students.” 1

For Hanstedt and others, the world is full of what they call “Wicked Problems”: problems that are so

big—climate change, healthcare, poverty, etc. –that no single discipline can address it, where the

parameters of the problem keep shifting, and where its tentacles reach across institutions and

environments, creating conflicting obligations between multiple communities. Living in this world of

wicked problems—as a participant, an agent, a reflective and engaged individual—requires, then,

“Wicked Habits of Mind,” the ability to see patterns and connections, bring varying tools of analysis

and ways of knowing to a given problem, shift analytical lenses and experience others empathetically.

1
Hanstedt, Paul. General Education Essentials, a publication of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. (Jossey-Bass: San Francisco,
2012), p. 21
Department of Humanities, Language & Culture
4600 South Redwood Road
Salt Lake City, Utah 84130
Phone: (801)957.4338 ∙ Fax: (801) 957.4622
We need habits of mind that enable and ennoble us to explore issues and plan solutions with people

coming at them from different conceptual lenses and disciplinary perspectives, and to communicate in

ways accessible and meaningful beyond one’s academic location.2

Researching and Teaching towards Philosophy as a Way of Life

The benefits afforded to me by my community-college perspective may be unexpected, but they’ve

oriented my research and work for the last several years. I’ve continually returned to this framing

question:

Even if (and especially since) a student might only ever take a single class in philosophy,
what could philosophy contribute to the cultivation of a way of being and a way of
thinking best described as “Wicked”?

This question has inspired my work in Faculty Leadership at my institution (including facilitating the

initial stages of college-wide General Education reform). It has grounded my research and publishing

(including a forthcoming chapter in a Hackett-published book on teaching philosophy, 3 an essay on

designing and teaching environmental ethics for non-majors4, and articles for public-audience journals

on the value of philosophy for inspiring and grounding an examined life 5) .

This question has led me to accept an invitation to chair the Organizing Committee for the 2018

National Workshop-Conference for the American Association of Philosophy Teachers, and to organize

the conference around the theme of Public Philosophy: teaching towards a vibrant civic community,

bringing traditional philosophies into the world, and the world into traditional philosophy, bridging

philosophy and other academic disciplines, and using broad outreach to forge our connections.

2
ibid, see pgs 13-24.
3
Drexler, Jane. “This is Teaching,” Philosophers in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching. Alexandra Bradner and Andrew Mills (ed), Forthcoming, Hackett
Publishing, Fall 2018.
4
Drexler, Jane, “Philosophy for General Education: Teaching Introduction to Environmental Ethics for Non-Majors,” Teaching Philosophy, Volume 38(3),
Sept 2015.
5
Drexler, Jane. “Aristotle in a Box,” “CrossFit: a Sisyphean Endeavor,” and “The Greek and the Games,” CrossFit Journal, Feb 2013, Mar 2013, Mar
2014, respectively. (click here)
Department of Humanities, Language & Culture
4600 South Redwood Road
Salt Lake City, Utah 84130
Phone: (801)957.4338 ∙ Fax: (801) 957.4622
And it has led me to redesign my classes. I have spent the last several years redesigning my curricula,

assignments and activities around the broader value of philosophy as a way of life. 6 I have refocused

my Introductory Philosophy course on the Ancient Greek and Roman philosophies of the Good Life, for

instance. I have designed course assignments that disrupt just-a-bit the monopoly of the critical

analysis paper in order to linger on and spotlight moments of wonder, inspiration, connection, and

resonance.

But I’m always struggling with the knowledge and teaching approaches that I don’t have (yet). I don’t

know nearly enough about Eastern philosophies, for instance, and how I might more effectively bring

them into conversation with my students. The more I intentionally focus on Greek and Roman

philosophies of the Good Life, the more essential it becomes I gain fluency and engagement with

Eastern philosophies--Buddhism, Confucianism, and more. Furthermore, I feel I am always learning

new ways to approach my assignments. My curricula and assignment design are constantly evolving

based on new conversations and discoveries.

Overall, while my experiences, accomplishments, and perspective make me confident that I could

contribute much to our explorations on (teaching) Philosophy as a way of life, I feel that I—and my students

and my institution—stand to gain much more than I could ever give. I’m very excited about this

opportunity!

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Jane M. Drexler, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Philosophy

6
See my portfolio for examples of specific kinds of assignment and curricular design. http://jdsteachingportfolio.weebly.com/slcc-2016-tea---
letter---innovative.html
Department of Humanities, Language & Culture
4600 South Redwood Road
Salt Lake City, Utah 84130
Phone: (801)957.4338 ∙ Fax: (801) 957.4622