{"id":3334,"date":"2014-12-02T14:29:44","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T19:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/2014\/12\/02\/scholarship-creates-new-opportunities-for-philosophy-students\/"},"modified":"2024-07-24T14:13:01","modified_gmt":"2024-07-24T18:13:01","slug":"scholarship-creates-new-opportunities-for-philosophy-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/scholarship-creates-new-opportunities-for-philosophy-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Scholarship creates new opportunities for philosophy students"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PhilosophyMajor\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sarah Worth<\/a> \u201992 can give a lot of concrete reasons why you should major in philosophy.<\/p>\n

Philosophy majors score the highest on the verbal and analytical writing sections of the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE). Only biology majors beat them on the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). No humanities major tops philosophy graduates in starting salary and percent salary increase to mid-career.<\/p>\n

Now she can also give you one for why you should major in philosophy at Furman.<\/p>\n

Beginning this year, the department began awarding scholarships to four incoming freshmen who have shown in interest in the field. The students split $72,000 annually for four years, and at least according to information on collegescholarships.org<\/a> that is far and away the largest grant awarded to incoming undergraduate philosophy students in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s huge. That\u2019s a big chunk of change to be able to go study philosophy,\u201d Worth, the Furman Philosophy Department chair, says. \u201cThe huge benefit is we can get people in the door their freshman year knowing that this is what they want to do, so we can compete for some of the best students in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inaugural recipients are Sarah Byrd \u201918 of Fairhope, Ala., Abby Dow \u201918 of Sacramento, Calif., Allie Johnson \u201918 of Columbia, S.C., and Kathleen Smith \u201918 of Butler, Pa. Byrd and Smith have already said they plan to be philosophy majors, but another thing that makes these scholarships unique is that they don\u2019t have to. Either way, the money is guaranteed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have to take a minimum of four courses, and they have to have one of us an advisor,\u201d Worth said. \u201cWe have to involve them, but we don\u2019t actually require them to major. . . We don\u2019t want to tie people with their scholarships to the department.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith said the money helped push her in Furman\u2019s direction, and her early experience has been even better than she had hoped.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scholarship was kind of secondary to location I guess, but it was definitely something that locked up my interest,\u201d she said. \u201cI love the class I\u2019m in right now. I\u2019m just in introductory philosophy, but it\u2019s been really great . . . I want to work with families in crisis, and I hope to do that through law so it matches nicely with my career goals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dow wanted to go to school in the Southeast after her parents elected to move to Tennessee, and she first heard of Furman when she Googled \u201cbest liberal-arts schools in the South.\u201d She\u2019s not committed to a major yet, but philosophy is a real possibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like that you get to question some of the bigger things, questions like why instead of facts and challenging you to think bigger and have an open mind,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m in Dr. Worth\u2019s intro to philosophy right now, and it\u2019s my favorite class at Furman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Worth says there are currently about 60 philosophy majors at Furman, and over her 16 years she\u2019s seen the number as low as 35 and as high as 70. That\u2019s an excellent range, but her goal is always to make things better. The scholarships will only help.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost often people don\u2019t come to college thinking they\u2019re going to major in philosophy because they\u2019ve never had it and they don\u2019t know what it is. Our best chance (was) getting somebody from an intro class,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to raise the level of the kids. I want to raise the level of what we can do with them\u2014more publications, more conference papers, just continue to grow the health of the department.\u201d<\/p>\n

With seven faculty members, Furman has shown a commitment to philosophy. Worth says that shows in the quality of graduates being churned out, who are turning abstract thinking into tangible real-world accomplishment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey go into the clergy, go into law. It\u2019s just really good preparation for a whole bunch of things,\u201d she said. \u201cMy standard line about philosophy is we teach people to read difficult things, to write clearly about those difficult concepts and to be able to articulate various positions about things. Those are very good job skills.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more on the Furman philosophy department click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Worth \u201992 can give a lot of concrete reasons why you should major in philosophy. Philosophy majors score the highest on the verbal and analytical writing sections of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":14090,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,26,34,35,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-administrative","category-admission","category-parent-news","category-philosophy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33270,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3334\/revisions\/33270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}