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APA Philosophers Beyond Academia Event

A while back, I relayed how another academic discipline mentors its grad students and job-marketeers–by, among other things, devoting entire days of their annual conference (i.e. their version of the APA) to sessions and networking events designed to help prepare students for academic and non-academic jobs.

I am delighted to learn that our own APA is beginning to pursue important programs like this, with its upcoming Philosophers' Beyond Academia Kickoff with Patrick Byrne (Philosophy Phd & CEO of Overstock.com) at this year's Pacific APA. I think the APA is very much to be commended for this, and hope it continues to develop more programs–both at APA meetings but also more broadly–to help philosophy graduates succeed inside and outside of academia.

If you attend the APA’s event, please do feel to report back. I would love to hear how it goes!

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One response to “APA Philosophers Beyond Academia Event”

  1. anon outside academia

    This is very exciting indeed!
    Just wanted to note a contrasting way in which the APA could perhaps have felt a little more inclusive to those outside of academia: I’m in a job outside of academia and on the program at this years’s APA Pacific. I asked if I could say that I could list my affiliation, and was given the following response:
    “Dear ****** (if I may),
    ​My colleague ****** forwarded me your question about why the Pacific Division of the APA lists affiliations only for academic institutions.
    We list affiliations in order to disambiguate among common names Sally Smith (Utah State) ≠ Sally Smith (Ohio State). We list academic affiliations that are not universities (National Endowment for the Humanities) but not non-academic affiliations (The New York Times). We don’t do it as a means of credentialing or establishing scholarly status. It really is just disambiguation.
    ​Why then don’t we list non-academic affiliations? The answer is that the APA, including the Pacific Division, is run with extremely limited resources, including personnel. If we expanded the data we enter into our affiliations database to include non-academic affiliations (a very large group of institutions), the data ​would need to be ​entered, ​edited.​ it, standardize it, keep it updated, and do this every year. ​​We could not do this given our current resources and we’ve made a choice to focus our limited resources and personnel on tasks that allow us to create and sustain the meeting itself.
    Thank you for understanding. We are proud to have many Independent Scholars listed in the program each year​ — it’s part of what makes philosophy and the APA an excellent community. I’m looking forward to your participation this spring.
    Best,
    *****”

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