The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated an abrupt shift to virtual community-university partnerships for many community partners, instructors teaching community-engaged learning courses, and students. This shift exacerbated challenges to fostering mutually beneficial, equitable community-university partnerships, potentially affecting access to and participation in programs benefiting K-12 and college students alike. This paper discusses the Writing Partners letter exchange program, highlighting how challenges were considered and addressed, as well as ways we could improve in future semesters of community-engaged learning. Assessment data using surveys suggested challenges related to exchanging letters virtually and use of videos in lieu of an in-person university campus tour. Solutions included partnership meetings and early planning for future virtual events. We then discuss lessons learned and future directions for mutually beneficial and equitable community-university partnerships that could involve virtual work for various reasons. This paper adds to emerging literature which shares experiences related to virtual community-engaged learning. Sharing our experiences and lessons learned through the Writing Partners program will inform educators and administrators interested in implementing similar letter exchange programs, as well as those interested in learning more about community-university partnerships in the virtual space.
Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for most federally funded public benefits programs with few exceptions such as emergency medical assistance and nutrition assistance for women and children. This paper defends the view that a liberal society should provide greater access to undocumented immigrants to public benefits programs and responds to an important economic objection that a state should be able to prioritize the needs of its own members who contribute to these programs. This paper specifically addresses empirical and moral versions of this objection. It also distinguishes between two kinds of public benefits. Certain public benefits, such as social security, may reflect an agreed-upon distribution of public goods, to which people are entitled based on their membership or contribution. Other public benefits, such as nutrition assistance, are set aside primarily to help people based on their need. In the latter case, it is not membership or contribution, but need or which need is greater, that supplies justification for the distribution of these benefits even when resources are limited.
Academic internships are increasingly common in other disciplines, but have not been discussed or implemented widely in the discipline of philosophy. This article fills this gap by discussing the potential benefits of philosophy internships and addressing two important questions: whether there is something different about philosophy—possibly its abstractness, versatility, or what I refer to as “pluripotency”—that renders the benefits of internships out of reach for many philosophy students, and whether philosophy faculty should be responsible for developing and implementing philosophy internships. In this article, I argue that there is nothing about the discipline itself that prevents philosophy majors from experiencing the benefits of academic internships and that, among the different possible internship coordinators, philosophy faculty bear primary responsibility for developing academic internships in philosophy and assisting philosophy students as they transition from college to professional career.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.