Questions about UConn? Ask me!

[NathanKellen]

Hi all!

 

I'm a bit hesitant to make this thread, as it seems a bit self-advertising in a sense, but I figured it's worth it to give anyone who wants to an open venue for questions. Sorry if anyone is annoyed by this!

 

My name is Nathan Kellen - I'm a third year PhD student and the graduate president in the philosophy department at UConn. I've been around since near the start of the semester, and have approached a couple people, but figured I'd make an open thread for anyone who's interested. I'm here to answer any questions you might have about the grad program here at UConn - e.g. about professors and their current research interests, the climate, the teaching, the area, etc.

 

If I may just give a short summary of what I think this department excels in:

 

1. We are an excellent place for logic, and may very well be the best place for philosophical logic (i.e. work on the paradoxes) in the world. We have a big interdisciplinary Logic Group, which has members from philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, psychology and law (with an emphasis on the first three). You can check out this year's talk schedule here, if you'd like. We also host an annual workshop, which kicked off last year with a workshop on NeoFregean abstractionism/neologicism - you can see the workshop lineup from last year here. Grad students routinely take classes in the various different departments - this semester there were mathematicians in the modal logic course taught by Keith Simmons, philosophers in the set theory course taught by Reed Solomon and philosophers in the semantics course by Jon Gajewski.

 

2. We have a great cognitive science program which is very interdisciplinary as well. Students have an opportunity to get a cognitive science graduate certificate, and again there's a lot of crossover between the various disciplines, including talks, courses and research and reading groups.

 

3. We are an up and coming place for moral, political and social philosophy. We have two senior members, one who works in analytic philosophy and one who works primarily in Africana philosophy, as well as a bunch of junior philosophers who host their own "Injustice League" lecture series and annual workshop which is focused on injustice and nonideal theory.

 

4. We have a very vibrant graduate community which I'm particularly proud of. The graduate community puts on two internal mini-conferences each year, one at the beginning of each semester, to bring the community together to present and comment on each other's work. We also just rebooted our annual graduate conference which went very well and was on "Realism and Anti-realism". There are a ton of reading groups and workshop groups, some of which can be seen here.

 

Anyways, that's enough I think to get a feeling for the department. If anyone has any questions about anything that they would like answered, please send them my way (it's part of my job). I'm a good deontologist who works on truth, so I'm obligated to answer truthfully. Feel free to post any questions here, or PM me, or email me at nathan.kellen@gmail.com.

 

Hope everyone's applications go well! I still shiver in dread when remembering my season.

 

PS: If anyone would like to come visit our department (either now, or even when you're deciding on offers) to get a feel for it, please shoot me an email. I organised one of those meetings earlier this semester for overoverover, and I believe it helped him. I certainly had a great time!

[overoverover]

Like Nathan said, I visited UConn earlier this semester. 
 

It's a really nice department with a wonderful environment—the professors and the grad students were all very friendly and happy to answer questions and just talk about philosophy. Visiting departments is great since you really get a feel for what work is being done and what everybody is excited about, and my visit to UConn was especially helpful in that regard. I got to attend a Logic Group meeting as well. 

 

If you can visit, I highly recommend it!

Edited December 16, 2014 by overoverover

[reixis]

Hey Nathan, thanks for the post!

 

I have one question about department visits. I heard that departments usually pay for students to visit, but what about international students? Granted that I can secure a visa by my own, is it a common practice to help students from overseas on their expenses?

[MorganFreemanlives]

congratulations to you guys. you really jumped a lot of spots in this year's philosophical gourmet report. very impressive.

[NathanKellen]

Hey Nathan, thanks for the post!

 

I have one question about department visits. I heard that departments usually pay for students to visit, but what about international students? Granted that I can secure a visa by my own, is it a common practice to help students from overseas on their expenses?

Good question, and sorry if I was a bit misleading earlier. UConn doesn't typically (ever?) pay for students to visit unfortunately - it's just not in the budget. I'm not even sure that it's "usually" the case that departments pay for applicants to visit - none of the programs I was invited to did. I think it's become less and less common unfortunately.

 

It's not much, but we do offer free places to stay (with grad students) and current students generally chip in to pay for meals for visitors, but there's no official support. I know that's probably disappointing, sorry!

[Establishment]

It's good to hear that the climate has improved since that one murder a few years back between the grad students.

[MattDest]

Good question, and sorry if I was a bit misleading earlier. UConn doesn't typically (ever?) pay for students to visit unfortunately - it's just not in the budget. I'm not even sure that it's "usually" the case that departments pay for applicants to visit - none of the programs I was invited to did. I think it's become less and less common unfortunately.

 

I don't know if it's usual, but I know several universities still paid for prospective students to visit last cycle. It's a shame that UConn doesn't offer it, but totally understandable. My entire trip to Arizona was paid (including a few people offering to put me up/pay for meals) for, which was splendid. 

 

I've heard glowing things about UConn. Out of curiosity (I'm not a prospective applicant), how do you find living in Storrs? 

[NathanKellen]

I don't know if it's usual, but I know several universities still paid for prospective students to visit last cycle. It's a shame that UConn doesn't offer it, but totally understandable. My entire trip to Arizona was paid (including a few people offering to put me up/pay for meals) for, which was splendid. 

 

I've heard glowing things about UConn. Out of curiosity (I'm not a prospective applicant), how do you find living in Storrs? 

RE: the travel stuff - good to hear that some people are still doing it! In a perfect world everyone would, but some places are hit harder by budget cuts I suppose. Glad to hear Arizona was able to help people out; I hear it's a nice place (one of our newest professors, Daniel Silvermint, did his PhD there and speaks glowingly about it).

 

There are a lot of great things about UConn: the department as a whole, the grad community, etc. Storrs isn't one of them unfortunately. It's a very small place with not much to do. There are towns nearby (e.g. Willimantic) which are better, but require using the (free) bus or a car. We also typically carpool from Willimantic to campus - I drive people to school 5 days a week myself.

 

That being said, there is some good news. Storrs is rapidly expanding (much like our department!) and starting to get stuff built. It's absurdly different from when I started here - there are a couple restaurants, couple fast food places, a nice cafe, etc. It's getting better. Also we are close enough to other places, like Boston (1.5hrs), Providence (1hr) and NYC (2.5hrs) that taking trips isn't prohibitive.

 

So TL;DR: it's not great by any means, but liveable, and getting significantly better in the past 2 years (and more to come).