American Association for Philosophy Teachers 2024 Workshop-Conference on Teaching Philosophy

2024 Workshop-Conference Registration Available

The AAPT is happy to announce the opening of registration for our 2024 biennial Workshop-Conference on Teaching Philosophy at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, from Thursday, July 25, 2024, through Sunday, July 28, 2024: https://www.pdcnet.org/wp/2024-aapt/. 

Early bird registration deadline: Friday, May 31, 2024

Special opportunity: This year, the Council of Independent Colleges is offering a select number of grants for philosophers who teach at CIC-member institutions to attend the AAPT conference. Please visit the CIC website here: https://cic.edu/opportunity/support-for-cic-philosophy-instructors/ for more information or to apply for a grant. The CIC will consider applications in the order they are received, through July 1, 2024. Grants will cover the registration fee, room and board, and some portion of your travel.

The Workshop-Conference will be focusing on the theme “Philosophy Amplified,” which asks us to think about the many ways in which we might work outside of our field to deepen the impact, demonstrate the value, and extend the reach of philosophy…

… into new pedagogies, through open source texts, ChatGPT assignments, alternative assessment strategies, new voices, and interactive, student-centered classroom activities.

… into new academic spaces: to build our majors and make interdisciplinary connections.

… into new communities: through mentoring, experiential learning, public philosophy, K-12 philosophy, and philosophy in prisons.

… into the workplace: by highlighting transferable skills and careers outside of the academy.

… and into the unfamiliar.

Highlights will include more than 50 interactive workshops to invigorate and refresh your teaching; a keynote address by Nancy Chick, Rollins College, who assists faculty in the production of SoTL research; plenary panels featuring recent winners of both the AAPT-APA-TPA Prize for Excellence in Philosophy Teaching and the Lenssen Prize for the best paper on philosophy teaching; a special session sponsored by the CIC on making philosophy indispensible; the AAPT Presidential Address, delivered by Russell Marcus at the Saturday night awards banquet; birds-of-a-feather breakout groups to seed collaboration and gain support; our lively trivia night, in which impromptu teams meet in the arena of philosophical esoterica for friendly competition, and our famously collegial and inclusive conference culture. 

The full program will be available on the AAPT website conference page by June 1, but you can see a list of sessions here. We have started to build our local information page for the conference here. Please stay tuned for updates.

We did have to increase our registration fees this year, but please consider the following: At four full days and nights, the AAPT Workshop-Conference is a long event. We have seen some inflation since 2022. We subsidize everyone’s expenses by offering inexpensive room and board. Four nights in the dorm will be $150 to share a room and $275 for your own room. Seven meals (4 breakfasts and 3 lunches) will be $100. Finally, it’s a conference that aims to offer more than the usual talks and papers. We do some community building with special events, like the Banquet and Trivia Night, both of which involve some free alcohol. The AAPT is a non-profit organization that is administered by members, like yourselves, who volunteer their time because they believe in our mission. We do not make money on the conference. (For those of you looking to stay in a hotel, details about reserved blocks at local hotels are being arranged; information will be added to the local information page when it is confirmed.)

Concurrent with the Workshop-Conference, the AAPT will be offering its national “Seminar on Teaching and Learning in Philosophy,” an interactive teacher training workshop for graduate students and early career philosophers. Please forward the call to graduate students who might be interested and post the call to relevant social media platforms. The application is competitive. But participation in the Seminar is heavily subsidized and accessible to most students.

PLATO will not be offering its usual seminar this time around, due to declining interest. But we will have plenty of relevant workshops and opportunities for K-12 philosophers. Please encourage PLATO members to attend.

We will be communicating more about the workshop-conference in the coming weeks. If you have questions about the Workshop-Conference, please contact AAPT conference programming committee chair Andrew Mills ([email protected]). If you have questions about the AAPT, please contact Executive Director Alexandra Bradner ([email protected]).