KAMLOOPS – The role of a regional university like TRU is to help post-secondary learners gain the education they need close to home, and TRU’s new philosophy major will help southern interior students do just that.
Until now, students wishing to major in philosophy had to leave TRU after completing two years of study. In the words of one such student, “If TRU had a philosophy major I would have finished my studies in Kamloops. I would be relatively debt-free, living in my home-town and attending a school that I know and appreciate. At TRU, classes are more personal and students are more likely to create a dialogue with their professors, so the chance of clearly and completely understanding concepts is markedly higher.”
There’s no doubt that individual attention and engaging classroom dialogue are crucial for students wrestling with questions like ‘Is there progress in history?’ ‘What role does conflict play in human development?’ ‘Does life have a meaning?’ ‘Is there free will?’ ‘Are there fundamental rights?’ and ‘How can we distinguish knowledge from belief?’ and looking at issues involving ethics and reasoning in health care, biomedical research, environmental planning, law, religion, and even those thorniest of age-old human conundrums, sex and love.
And if some out there are still wondering, not in an existential way, but in terms of practical outcomes, ‘What’s the point?’ here it is: a philosophy major at TRU will not only allow graduates to be able to gain admission to graduate studies in philosophy, the program will also satisfy the needs and interests of students who may be planning on pursuing other post-baccalaureate studies in education, law, social work, management and administration, health, public administration, and journalism.
Philosophy graduates in North America have a proven track record of successful entry into law school and graduate management programs, outperforming students from other fields on the Law School Admission Test, the Graduate Management Admission Test, and the Graduate Record Examination; philosophy grads placed second to Math students (and well ahead of Business students) on the GMAT and first and third on the other two tests (out of a field of 28 disciplines).
As Bruce Baugh, a philosophy professor at TRU and major impetus behind the major initiative said, “Graduates of the TRU philosophy program will have all they need to pursue further studies, but with a difference that can be found nowhere else, because the TRU philosophy degree is unique. Only TRU offers courses in the philosophy of pop culture, the philosophy of rock music or the philosophy of computing and technology. In BC, only TRU offers courses on the philosophy of sex and love, and only TRU offers regular courses in Continental philosophy: existentialism, postmodernism, structuralism, critical theory, the philosophies of difference which continue to shape our time.”
TRU also offers majors in aboriginal studies, economics, economic and political studies, English, geography, history, mathematics, psychology, sociology, and theatre arts under the Bachelor of Arts degree.
For more information, please contact Bruce Baugh at 250-371-5581 or by email.
