Self-Evaluation

Introduction

I feel confident that my time at Edmonds College as a probationer has been successful and productive. I could not ask for a more supportive Dean and Academic Review Committee. Colleagues in the Division and across the College have been universally welcoming and generous. My students are curious and engaged. I feel lucky to be part of this vibrant teaching and learning community. 

This self-evaluation is divided into five parts: (1) Teaching and Advising; (2) College Service; (3) Department Head; (4) Community Engagement; (5) Looking ahead.

I discuss what I’ve accomplished during my time as a probationer, as well as the challenges I faced. I'm pleased with the progress I’ve made over the last two and a half years, not only in teaching, but in the active role I’ve played as a member of the Edmonds College community. Most importantly, I feel I’ve made a difference at Edmonds College, which is a source of pride and satisfaction. 

1. Teaching & Advising

Teaching

My first year at Edmonds College was the first year I taught asynchronously. 

It probably goes without saying that building an asynchronous course from scratch is labor-intensive. I created two asynchronous courses from whole cloth my first year at Edmonds: Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL& 101) and Contemporary Moral Issues (PHIL 110). More than two years on, I continue to refine and augment all of my course materials, and I feel proud of what I offer students who take my asynchronous courses. 

Crafting my asynchronous courses meant creating everything from introductory pages, to lectures and videos, to quizzes and assignments. I began by adopting the Amphitrite Canvas template developed by our colleague Rachel Phillips. The template has many virtues, including an accessible format and easy navigation. I'm grateful for the elegance it has lent to the organization and appearance of my courses. 

I learned how to divide and refine course content into 5-8 minute lectures, and I learned how to use Panopto to record, edit, and post my lectures to Canvas. I reached out to Katrina Lefrancois-Hanson and Debbie Kuhlmann several times during my first year to ensure that my courses were meeting accessibility standards. I took Online Teaching Essentials whose principles I continue to implement in my courses.  

I've been mindful of the importance of faculty-initiated Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) in my asynchronous courses. I reach out to students with frequent emails and announcements, and I’m quick to respond to student emails. I meet one-on-one with students frequently. 

I've thoroughly enjoyed my face-to-face and hybrid courses and continue to utilize and refine the tools and skills I've developed since I started teaching in 2013. Looking ahead, I do need to be more intentional about integrating group work in our meetings, as this is something students often mention in their feedback. 

The arrival of AI chatbots like ChatGPT in November 2022 forced me to reevaluate cherished assignments I’d spent years developing and refining. What sort of assignment would enable students to show that they had read and thought about the readings? Was it possible to satisfy these goals and make assignments more immune to plagiarism? As a longtime member of the Facebook group Teaching Philosophy, I recalled several posts in which instructors discussed Perusall, a relatively new social annotations platform. Students read and discuss course texts, videos, and podcasts together on the platform. After reaching out to members of Teaching Philosophy for advice, I adopted Perusall in Winter Quarter 2023. 

For their Perusall annotations, I ask students to record the thoughts and questions that occur to them as they read. I’m not looking for signs of outside research or anything sophisticated. My hope is that students are less tempted to use the internet as a substitute for this kind of work. 

Integrating Persuall into my courses Winter 2023 was a heavy lift, but it has since proven to be an effective teaching and learning tool. After two years of using Perusall in my courses, I’m happy to share that my students consistently report that they love the platform. They can see how their peers respond to the readings, and this is often the start of conversations that carry over to the classroom. 

I'm also pleased to report that I've continued to integrate diverse voices in my courses, including the work of C. Thi Nguyen and Barry Lamb in my Critical Thinking course, as well as an article by non-binary philosopher Quill Kukla in my Contemporary Moral Issues course. 

In my second year at Edmonds, I built from whole cloth an entirely new course, Artificial Intelligence and Human Values, under the PHIL 155 designation. The course covers topics in the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Transparency, Bias, Privacy, Autonomy, Autonomous Vehicles, Autonomous Lethal Weapons Systems (so-called “Killer Robots”), and the Ethics of Friendship, Love, and Sex in the context of emerging technologies. It bears mentioning that this subject matter has not only stretched me beyond my areas of specialty (17th century European Philosophy and Political Philosophy), but requires some competence in the basics of artificial intelligence and its development in the field of computer science. Meanwhile, staying abreast of the constantly shifting landscape of AI and the intense scrutiny it continues to receive from academics and the popular press requires ongoing professional development of the sort that is faster paced and more demanding than, say, the subfields in which I’ve published (Locke and Hume studies).

I’ve continued to improve my teaching in my second and third years at Edmonds. I want my students to find and nourish their inner philosopher, not just learn about philosophy as a piece of intellectual history. But here my students face immediate obstacles. Philosophy is not easy. The texts are dense. The ideas are abstract. Given these obstacles, how do I get my students to not just learn about philosophy, but actually do philosophy? Answering that question is what guides my teaching. More broadly, I think of teaching as translation. How do I translate the language, ideas, and disciplinary norms of philosophy into what’s recognizable, familiar, and accessible to the newcomer? And how do I make philosophy’s questions and subject matter relevant to my students’ lives and their concerns? Finally, how do I make philosophy alive and participatory? I think of philosophy as a garden that my students and I cultivate together, one that reflects our unique attributes as a class. I strive to become a better translator and a better cultivator each time I teach a given topic, and I continue that work in earnest. 

I also teach in recognition that my students lead complicated lives, that they are likely juggling several things besides their courses, and that they may face hardships that threaten to interfere with their success. I continue to be mindful of how best to encourage and motivate my students to attend class regularly, participate, and complete their work on time while also maintaining a level of flexibility and open dialogue that is sensitive not only to their needs but to evolving expectations and norms in the wake of the pandemic. Striking a balance between high expectations while also being appropriately flexible requires that I make ongoing adjustments to course policies and grading regimes in search of what works best for each student. I make every effort to get to know my students so that I can tailor policy to best fit their particular circumstances. 

I’m also happy to share that one of my students, Cleo Kim, approached me about doing an Independent Study Winter quarter 2025. Our focus is on recent works in Feminist Philosophy. 

Finally, it may be worth noting that all of my courses in my second and third years at Edmonds have filled or have enrolled close to the enrollment cap. I taught over ninety students each of Winter and Spring quarters 2024, and I have 98 students enrolled in my courses Winter Quarter 2025. 

Advising

My advising calendar was very active in AY 2023-2024, when I logged over fifty advising hours, and it continues to be busy AY 2024-2025, which includes a Winter Quarter '25 Independent Study (PHIL 298). 

Many of my students have approached me for advice about transferring, majoring in philosophy at a four-year college or university, and/or requesting letters of recommendation. Fall quarter 2023 I served as Advisor to the Women in Business Club, and while the club never really got off the ground due to the ambitious schedules of its founding members, the invitation to serve as Club Advisor was a sign of the students' trust and confidence in me. 

I’d also like to highlight the participation of one of my students, Cleo Kim, in PIKSI-Boston during the Summer of 2024. Cleo attended PIKSI-Boston at my urging and recommendation. I alerted her to the opportunity and wrote a recommendation in support of her application. PIKSI stands for “Philosophy in an Inclusive Key,” and PIKSI Summer Institutes are: 

[U]ndergraduate and recent graduate institutes committed to elevating and broadening inclusion in philosophy by creating opportunities for those who may not otherwise have access to similar programming and mentorship, empowering them to pursue advanced studies in philosophy and continue on to the professoriate. PIKSI-Boston is a summer institute organized through a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Harvard University. The institute is held at MIT.

2. College Service

AI for Everybody Day & AI Community of Practice

I’ve participated in the AI for Everybody event on campus the last two years. In 2023, I gave a forty-five minute talk on Ethics and AI. In 2024, I gave a forty-five minute talk, titled “The Philosophical Case for Robot Friendship.” I plan to continue participation in this important event. I also participated in AY 2023-2024’s two AI Community of Practice meetings and posted to the AI Community of Practice Google Chat. 

Building Community Day 2023

As part of my continuing work to build programming around Responsible Computing, I hosted a session titled “Responsible Computing in the Curriculum” at Building Community Day 2023. 

Teaching and Learning Day 2023 & 2024

I hosted a dual-delivery session at Teaching and Learning Day Fall 2023 and Fall 2024. The session was titled “Perusing Perusall, the online Social Annotations Platform.” 

Here’s a description of the event: 

“Have you heard of Perusall, the online Social Annotations Platform, that enables students to read and annotate course texts, videos, and podcasts together? Are you curious to learn more, and/or are you interested in adopting Perusall in your courses? Do you want to know how to integrate Perusall in your Canvas courses? Are you curious about how Perusall might disincentivize the use of generative AI in course assignments? Join this session to learn about the platform and how to integrate it in your Canvas courses. Hosted by a semi-seasoned adopter at the College.” 

Campus Green Fund Committee

I served on the 2024-2025 Campus Green Fund Committee, which is “responsible for awarding allocations of the fund through a grant-awarding process.” We reviewed applications and met twice in June. “Committee members are expected to read through all of the applications, score them, and make recommendations for awards.” My service on the committee will continue through Spring 2025, when we will review applications again. 

Faculty Senate AI & DEI Activity Group Facilitator

My first year at Edmonds, I reached out to colleagues about collaborating on a long term project: to develop programming around Responsible Computing. At the end of that year, I was approached by Faculty Senate Equity and Inclusion Committee Co-Chairs Lauriel Elsa-Gordon and Ted Chen about serving as Facilitator for a newly formed Faculty Senate DEI Activity Group. Its focus would be on AI & DEI and work would begin in earnest Fall quarter 2023. 

The facilitator role placed me in a position of leadership at a time when I was still learning institutional norms and culture. There was certainly a learning curve as I sought to gain a better understanding of how best to utilize the group’s time, and how best to craft goals and work products that played to our strengths while factoring in various practical constraints. Over the course of the first year, our group moved from early discussions about how to narrow our focus (Fall quarter ‘23), to developing an AI & DEI Resource Group in Canvas (Winter quarter ‘24), to presentations I hosted Spring quarter whose aim was to raise awareness about such topics as sustainability, privacy, and bias in facial recognition software as well as best practices around the use of AI chatbots like Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT. 

Fall 2023, the group started by discussing three areas of focus. The first concerned the intersection of Academic Integrity and Equity: Does AI detection software unfairly target non-native English speakers? Are there other equity concerns faculty and staff need to be aware of when it comes to Academic Integrity? The second topic concerned Access, or ensuring that historically underrepresented and vulnerable student populations are well positioned to utilize AI in advancing their educational and professional goals. The third concerned the implementation of EthiCS Training Modules, borrowed from Harvard’s Embedded EthiCS program (“Ethical reasoning is an essential skill for today’s computer scientists. The Embedded EthiCS distributed pedagogy embeds philosophers directly into computer science courses to teach students how to think through the ethical and social implications of their work.”). 

As our discussions evolved, our goals evolved, too. Over Winter quarter ‘24, our group narrowed our focus further, settling on the issue of Access and what that meant. Access meant championing AI literacy and competency among our colleagues and students. Rachel Phillips created a Canvas workgroup that hosted a module on AI literacy. In Rachel’s words, “This module was designed by the Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation (CTEI, Rush University) and adapted by Edmonds College as a resource to support faculty by introducing students to fundamental competencies of AI literacy in order to help students become critical users of AI so that they will understand how and when to leverage the technology responsibly and ethically.” The module includes four competencies: (1) Awareness, (2) Capability, (3) Knowledge, and (4) Critical Thinking. 

As we continued to think more about what AI literacy and awareness might involve, I presented parts of an Introduction to Data Ethics Module, hosted by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, authored by philosopher Shannon Vallor. I proposed that we utilize some of its contents in our Canvas module. 

Spring Quarter 2023, I presented some of the latest research on topics related to AI literacy and competency. At the first meeting of spring quarter, I presented some of Ethan Mollick’s research on how to best utilize AI chatbots. At our second meeting, I presented on issues of sustainability, privacy, and bias in AI. 

3. Department Head 

I had little preparation for my role as Philosophy Department Head and the Division has been incredibly supportive as I’ve acclimated to this newer role. 

The bulk of my work has been devoted to the Department’s ongoing revitalization. Since I arrived at Edmonds, I’ve worked to boost the visibility of the Philosophy Department and Philosophy course offerings. I’ve created course fliers using Canva and posted them around campus before Fall, Winter, and Spring registrations. I’ve tabled many OIP Resource Fairs, the Center for Student Engagement & Leadership Resource Fairs, Enroll Edmonds Days, and Triton Visit Days. 

As part of my ongoing work to develop and promote programming around Responsible Computing, I attended and moderated a session at Stanford University’s Ethics and AI conference in March of 2023. 

Finally, over the course of Fall Quarter 2024, I ushered a new course (PHIL 159, AI & Human Values) through the Curriculum Committee approval process.  I’m happy to report that the course was approved and will be a part of the Philosophy Department’s permanent offerings starting in 2026. 

4. Community Engagement

I’ve been an active  and visible member of the Edmonds College community since I arrived on campus. 

In my first year, I participated in the Academy for New Faculty. I joined the Retention Calling Campaigns for Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters. I attended three sessions of Teaching and Learning Day: “The Artist’s Way” with Kate Gavigan,” “The Edmonds College Center for Creating Equity, and “Aligning RSI with Teaching Best Practices.” I also attended the college wide DEI mini workshop with Karina Hooks and participated in the Spring Quarter 2023 Climate Justice Institute. 

In my second year, I attended the DEI Course (Sp & Sum ‘23) Follow up with Dr. Terrell-Powell (Nov. 28th, 2023). I attended the AAPI History Month Community Circle Discussion “focused on the nuanced topic of racial invalidation and the pervasive notion of not feeling "Asian enough”” (May 14th, 2024). Students from my hybrid class joined me in attending the AAPI History Month Student Celebration (May 15th, 2024). Students from my hybrid class also joined me in attending the year’s Juneteenth Celebration (June 6th, 2024). 

Fall Quarter 2024 I attended the AI Brainstorming Workshop (Nov. 14, 2024). 

5. Looking Ahead

As Department Head, I plan to collaborate with Carey Schroyer, Frank Kadwell, and Ishaani Priyadarshini to promote programming in Responsible Computing. For instance, I’ve approached Frank Kadwell and Ishaani Priyadarshini about applying to participate in Northeastern University’s Summer Training Program on Responsible Computing Education, a program that aims to 

“spread robust, quickly deployable responsible computing education to a more diverse range of schools. For ten days, a cohort of two-person interdisciplinary teams who teach at minority-serving institutions interested in building responsible computing curricula will learn about strategies used at other institutions. The program will provide opportunities to learn, discuss, and exchange educational and institutional know-how. Participants will develop concrete plans for programs suited for their own institutions.” 

My longer term goal is to develop, in partnership with Edmonds colleagues, ethical reasoning modules that would be embedded in some of our computer science courses. The advice I received at the 2023 Stanford Ethics and AI conference was to start small, with one module for one course. 

Finally, I'd like to explore the possibility of establishing a high school equivalency for Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL& 101).