Undergraduate Conferences as a High-Impact Practices with an Impact on Gender Parity

Author(s)W. John Koolage; Danielle Clevenger
JournalTeaching Philosophy
AbstractThere has been a recent explosion of undergraduate philosophy conferences across the United States. In this paper, we explore undergraduate conferences along three lines. First, we argue that, as a well-designed learning activity, undergraduate conferences can serve to increase gender parity in philosophical spaces—a widely accepted and important goal for our discipline. Second, we argue that this increase in parity (and other beneficial learning outcomes) is due, at least in part, to the proper design of undergraduate conferences as High-Impact Practices. Our empirical work on our own undergraduate conference demonstrates that properly designing the conference as a High-Impact learning activity does, as expected, benefit underserved student populations, including women. Additionally, the study also revealed unexpected  opportunities to intervene on student learning. Third, we argue, also in line with our data, that undergraduate conferences occupy a previously taxonomically unrecognized grouping (Culminating Events) among recognized High-Impact Practices.
KeywordsHigh Impact Practices, Gender Parity, Equity, Learning Beyond the Classroom, Conference Best Practices
Date Published 2018
Volume41
Issue3
Pages261-284
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.5840/teachphil201882890
URLhttps://www.pdcnet.org/teachphil/content/teachphil_2018_0041_0003_0261_0284
Google Scholar Linkhttps://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=14354248745374067469&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
Open Access?No

Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.