Way back when I was a graduate student, I was instructed by my handlers that the Group Program of any APA meeting was to be avoided like the plague. Well... there was a slight qualification sometimes added: "Unless the Group in question has managed to enlist top people to participate as well." The unstated implication of the qualification was that no session on the Group Program which managed to enlist the top people would also invite a graduate student to join the bill, so, again, the Group Program was to be avoided. An additional consideration that was frequently offered was that "any paper good enough to be presented should be able to make it on to the Main Program." The underlying principle was not only that the Main Program is far more presitgous than the Group Program, but that having appeared on the Group Program may actually damage one's profile. So I avoided it, and have for years advised students to do the same.
But I wonder if this is still the prevailing wisdom, and whethere it's really wisdom at all. It seems that the Group Program is philosophically a mixed bag at best, but could presenting a paper on the Group Program really count against a job applicant? Any views?
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19 comments:
When reviewing TT applications, getting a paper accepted for the main program at any APA division is obviously much more impressive than participating in a group meeting. But I can't imagine why a search committee would penalize anybody for participating in the society meetings, and shame on any that do.
For one thing, the only way to get travel money at many schools (whether grad student or faculty member) is to get a paper onto a meeting's program. With acceptance rates often running at only 20% at many APA meetings nowadays, society meetings are the main hope for getting that travel money.
I've organized a society's meetings in one division for many years. Occasionally, one of those papers will also be accepted for the main program, but given all the overlapping scheduling, that hasn't been a problem. More of a person's professional friends can get to hear it some time.
I consider that society's meetings as an opportunity for very junior people and graduate students to get feedback on their work-in-progress, when it's not yet competitivve for the main program. And that, I think, is a useful function we should all try to provide.
When I've been on search committees, I see such society meeting participation as demonstrating that the student has a research agenda they're pursuing and trying to get feedback on (along with getting some travel money to get to a professional meeting). And while that's not as impressive as a main program paper, it's a "plus," for sure. Why would anybody hold such ambition against a candidate???
Timely posting. I'm an officer in the Philosophy of Time Society, and I think that our meetings this academic year testify to the fact that society meetings can be first-rate venues for participation or attendance. With people like Ted Sider, Dean Zimmerman, JK Campbell, Nathan Oaklander, et al you just can't go wrong by taking some time from the main program to sit in on our presentations. As well, let me make a plea for you to consider membership in a society--it's a great networking opportunity if nothing else.
Spiros--I (kinda) apologize for my shameless promotion of my society and I do not encourage any other society to take advantage of your thread to do likewise.
Platowe:
Yours was the "timely posting." No problem re the shameless promotion.
Anon 8:24,
But we all know that there are many societies which put on APA sessions that do not subject papers to any review at all. The Group session is sometimes (often?) used *simply* as a device to get travel money to take a trip to the APA (more commonly the city it's being held in). I've attended sessions on the Group program that have been absolutely horrific, and horrific in ways that I would argue are positively counterproductive from the perspective of graduate student development.
To be sure, there are Societies that put on Group Program sessions in a way that is responsible. But, again, these sessions typically feature well-established speakers rather than graduate students. Now, I'm sure that the Group sessions you've organized have been very responsibly done. I'm not trashing the Group Program's overall quality, but rather it's quality-control: many societies enlist participants without any review process at all. I guess my question is whether this is the norm or the exception.
People want to micro-manage prestige in order to feel better about themselves, not about the candidates in question. The difference between getting a job and not getting a job will NEVER rest on whether you presented at a group meeting or not. If you are competing at that level, it has more to do with how the recruitment committee ranks NYU, Rutgers, and Princeton, and that ordering will ultimately depend on whether they themselves got their degree at NYU, Rutgers or Princeton. It's about how bad they feel about themselves when they look in the mirror, and how much they want to pretend they don't feel bad.
Most people at the APA present at group meetings. Most of them have jobs and most of them get tenure. Do the math yourself. People who work hard, are intellectually disciplines, and do good work will be able to easily show that fact.
Despite all of the above, the real question to ask is: if you didn't get a job because you presented at an association rather than at the main program, did you really want that job in the first place? The people who condemned you for being at a group meeting will find other ways: well its "Cambridge UP, not Oxford, so its not good enough," or, "well its Oxford, but its not series X at Oxford, so its lesser."
Screw it. Just do your best, engage your community, and learn.
It's not like anybody is required to go to any of the society meetings. There are typically 8-10 group meetings in each time period, usually in the early or late evening, when many meeting participants are out for a night on the town. They're not taking away time slots from the main program at those huge hotels.
The group meetings enable a great many people to get travel money to attend the APA meeting, so they can hear the "famous" people at the main program. They get a little feedback on their projects from peers at the society meetings. Everybody wins.
Sure, the review process for many group meetings is not rigorous blind-review, but many sessions on the main program are also invited sessions organized by individual program committee members or APA committees. Nobody is required to attend those either and during the day there are numerous sessions at the same time to choose from.
Finding ways to get junior people and graduate students to those meetings is good for everybody. Many are ordinary people teaching at non-prestigious institutions. But they love philosophy, they buy books and textbooks by the famous people, their registration fees and room bookings help keep the APA afloat. Who is hurt by this?
I suppose some of the famous people are offended that the riff-raff are in the same building. Tough!
Platowe, from your list it looks like you need to start getting some women to present. If they aren't submitting then try inviting. How depressing.
Yes, Platowe, we all noticed that your list of four people (which must be all the people that have ever presented at PTS meetings, since I don't believe in "et al") doesn't include a woman. Shame on you. If it's not an exhaustive list, then you should have listed a woman so that people wouldn't be depressed. As it is, from my high horse, I judge you to be a poor human being.
There are real issues in philosophy about taking women as seriously as men, especially in metaphysics and epistemology. Not taking that issue seriously enough to make an extra effort, whether in listing "important names" to indicate prestige or in organizing meetings, is a problem for the field. And yes, it is depressing to those of us who care about this issue.
In defense of the Society, we have had a number of women present over the years that I have been a member; it just turned out this year that there were (to my memory and involvement) no women who submitted papers or abstracts. There is a current call for submissions for the 2010 Eastern session, and of course the Society wishes diversity in its membership and programs. I apologize to anyone offended by my off-the-cuff attempt to promote interest in the Society.
I can't imagine any presentation counting against a candidate since we all know that we need presentations for travel money _and_ we don't treat presentations in the way we treat publications in evaluating a CV.
My impression was always that APA presentations count for next to nothing when it comes to ranking candidates and so our efforts should go into publishing papers. If it's common knowledge that something like conference presentations really doesn't count in favor, I don't think people should hold it against a candidate if the candidate is giving papers at, say, less than optimal conferences precisely because we don't expect effort to go into conference presentations and so shouldn't take an absence of results as evidence of an absence of ability. Isn't it the equivalent of discovering that some candidate had a letter to the editor published in the New York Times as opposed to the Tuscon Morning News?
Or, maybe that isn't so. I have tons of APA presentations on the main program and everyone has told me that they don't count for anything. (Of course, I'm also told that my publications don't count for anything since I'm always competing against people with fancier degrees, but whatever.)
Platowe: thank you. I did not mean to insinuate that you intended to suggest anything that undermined progress towards diversity.
One reason why people present papers (especially grad students, perhaps, who may have a smaller network to call on, though that also applies to Jr. profs at small schools) is to get feed-back. It's imperfect, obviously, but better than nothing and once in a while pretty good. Is there any reason to think that one is more likely to get useful feedback on say, a paper on Nietzsche or environmental ethics in the main program (in a session that might be a sort of hodge-podge of topics) than in the Nietzsche society or environmental ethics society session, where assumedly the people there care about the topic? I'd doubt it, but don't know for sure. If one is more likely to get useful feedback at the specialty session, then that seems like a good reason to submit to such things, beyond travel funding, etc. The idea of holding it against people seems beyond dumb to me, but then, I'm rarely surprised with the lack of sense I find in most philosophers.
In response to the original question:
I do not think there is any stigma about being on the group program, and there is no reason to discourage graduate students from being on the group program.
It's true that the group program has more sessions on "fringe" topics, but that doesn't tend to reflect poorly on the other group sessions.
It's also true that the group sessions are sometimes in the evening, which is a bummer, but that's not so bad.
As soon as I read the original post, I was going to say that the Philosophy of Time society has put on some excellent sessions over the years! And I see someone beat me to saying that.
I was once a participant in a Philosophy of Time society session, when I was a graduate student, as a commentator. This was a GREAT opportunity for me, as there were some excellent philosophers in the session and in the audience. (And, by the way, I'm a woman, so the group does sometimes include women.)
I suppose that being on the main program counts as evidence of a candidate being capable of producing minimally decent/passable work. Of course, if I have to read down to the Presentation Section of a CV to find that evidence, then Main Program Presentation might as well be a 4-H Blue Ribbon in Animal Husbandry.
What actually may hurt the candidate is if I spy several years-old conference presentations ("Qualia Can Suck it" Main Program Eastern APA 2007, "Girthy Concepts" Main Program Pacific APA 2007) but notice a lack of transition to publication. Just because something's interesting enough to make on to a conference program doesn't mean that it's good enough to get published. And there are some folks out there who are quite adept at coming up with projects of the former sort but are terrible at turning those into works of the latter sort.
I'm on Team Spiros.
Say there's a candidate who has a number of GP presentations at the APA with societies known for their laxed selection process. Say there's no presentations in venues that use rigorous review. Say there's no publications either. The conclusion I'd draw is this: the candidate cannot get his work into a properly reviewed conference. A GP presentation won't kill an applicant, but being ONLY on the GP warrants certain inferences.
Dr Killjoy:
I really like presenting at conferences, but I want to wait to publish until it will count towards tenure.
Also, it certainly shouldn't count *against* S that S has presented at conferences, even if S hasn't published. Why would that make S *worse* than S*, who neither published nor presented? Hasn't S* shown that she can't come up with works of the former and the latter sort? At least S can come up with works of one sort!
"What actually may hurt the candidate is if I spy several years-old conference presentations ("Qualia Can Suck it" Main Program Eastern APA 2007, "Girthy Concepts" Main Program Pacific APA 2007) but notice a lack of transition to publication. Just because something's interesting enough to make on to a conference program doesn't mean that it's good enough to get published. And there are some folks out there who are quite adept at coming up with projects of the former sort but are terrible at turning those into works of the latter sort."
There's something strange to this. Some of us have lots of conference presentations and that means lots of things to develop into papers. That takes lots of time. If you think about the additional time it takes some people to get referee reports in, I sure hope you'll forgive someone who hasn't published something presented in 2007. The thing I presented at the APA the time before last time has been under review at the same journal for almost two years now.
Some of us have few conference presentations and we all know that the probability that some decent article will get into a journal is rather low. I think we know that, at any rate. I'm sure loads of us have had papers rejected by journals for no/bad reason that were later accepted by comparable journals with no real changes made to the paper. If we know that it's something of a crapshoot even if we're 'rolling' with good papers, should the lack of an acceptance be held _against_ someone? Would you really use that as a tie-breaker against someone? If two people had an equal number of pubs but one had a few more presentations that didn't get published, it seems strange to think that this would bump the candidate who gives less public talks a leg up.
(Oh, and Phil Studies, will you please referee my paper! How many months are people waiting to get refs assigned at Phil Studies these days?)
Well, it is true that the field is increasingly beset by careerism and cronyism. So I can easily believe that there are some who would look askance at anyone who cares so little for their career prospects that they do not attempt to cultivate the right cronies (and the right ones don't present at group meetings). Then again, you might want to consider whether you really want to join a department full of assholes who would penalize you for wanting to give a talk to a bunch of people who lack big reputations, but who share a particular philosophical passion with you.
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