Residency Requirement

Active enrollment in the program requires one’s physical presence in the Philadelphia area for the duration of the program, unless formally approved otherwise. Exceptions may be requested through a petition to the Department and are typically granted only when being away is essential for research or educational purposes.

Professional Expectations for Graduate Students

To foster a productive, respectful, and intellectually stimulating environment, graduate students in the Philosophy Department are expected to:

1. Engage Respectfully: Participate in all academic discussions and interactions (in-person and online) with civility, openness to diverse perspectives, and a focus on constructive critique of arguments.

2. Communicate Professionally: Maintain clear, timely, and courteous communication with faculty, staff, and peers, adhering to standard email etiquette.

3. Act with Integrity: Uphold the highest standards of academic honesty in all scholarly work.

4. Mentor Ethically: Provide responsible, fair, and constructive support when acting  in teaching or mentoring capacities.

5. Participate Constructively: Contribute positively to the department's intellectual community and collegial climate through active and supportive engagement.

These expectations complement all university-wide conduct policies and are essential for professional development and the flourishing of philosophical inquiry within the department.

Refer also to the University's Code of Student Conduct.

Research Expectations for Graduate Students

As developing scholars, graduate students bear a responsibility to conduct their work with the utmost integrity. Key expectations include:

·       Honest Scholarship and Attribution: Students are responsible for ensuring the originality of their work and for giving full and accurate credit to the sources of ideas, text, and data through rigorous citation practices. Avoiding plagiarism in any form is a core professional obligation.

·       Ethical Engagement in Research: Students undertaking research, particularly with human participants, are responsible for understanding and complying with all ethical requirements. This includes completing necessary training and securing IRB approval before research begins, and responsibly managing participant interactions and data according to approved protocols.

·       Membership in the Philosophical Community: A key component of philosophical research is participating in workshops, talks, and other aspects of life in the philosophy department and community more broadly. Receiving and giving critical feedback is how work gets better and it is a core professional obligation.

Research Skills

Philosophical research often involves skills beyond those regularly taught in philosophy courses. Such skills include advanced knowledge of foreign languages and literatures, history, logic, statistics, mathematics, computers science, experimental design, social science, and natural science. 

As part of the Preliminary Examination, committees may require students to demonstrate a high level of competence in one of these areas as a condition for doctoral candidacy. Students are expected to consult with the Graduate Chair and their potential committee members about what skills are necessary for their intended fields of study no later than the beginning of their second year.

Philosophical Community

Graduate training extends beyond courses, exams, and dissertation work. Students should begin to participate in the broader philosophical community. The colloquium series exposes students to the range of current work in philosophy, and students are expected to attend colloquia. Other local activities include participating in departmental workshops, joining reading groups, and attending Philadelphia area events.

More generally, students should join the APA, keep up with relevant journals (several of which offer special rates to student subscribers), and consider submitting papers to conferences and journals. Students should keep in mind that not all conferences are of equal value as credentials or as venues for presenting work. 

In general, refereed, special-topic conferences are to be recommended. Before accepting an invitation to participate in a conference, students should seek advice from their advisor. Similarly, not all journals are equally valued as venues for publication, and students should seek advice before submitting a paper for publication.

The GDAS and the Department provide limited travel subventions for giving papers at conferences (for the SAS form, inquire to the office of the Graduate Coordinator in Philosophy; for Departmental funds, inquire to the Graduate Chair). Students who are teaching or taking courses should, in general, not expect approval of applications to fund travel that requires them to miss their own courses or their recitation sections.

See the Doctoral Support page for more information.

Transfer Students

A student who transfers into the Ph.D. program must take at least eight regularly scheduled graduate courses in the Philosophy Department. No decision either as to how much credit to grant a student for work elsewhere or as to what distribution requirements such work satisfies will be made until the student has been in residence for two terms and has completed PHIL 6000 and six other courses. Transfer credits that result in course load reduction and hence the expected duration of a student's program will be accompanied by corresponding reduction in the student's units of funding.