Featured Faculty: Greg Ealick

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 12:49:51 -0500
ealick, phil, umbc, winter

“Winter courses tend to be slightly ‘off-the-wall-er’ than those offered in Spring and Fall, so they ought to appeal to students motivated by curiosity above and beyond the obvious goal of satisfying degree requirements.”

– Greg Ealick, UMBC Department of Philosophy

I have been teaching for something like 25 years. I have master’s degrees from The William Marsh Rice Institute and from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Philosophy Shapes Young Minds

One thing Philosophy students get really good at is expressing their feelings, guesses, intuitions, etc. clearly and developing and defending them. This turns out to be an incredibly valuable skill in the “real” world.

Workplaces are like other places; some conflict is inevitable. The person who can shape that conflict constructively tends to win it.

Winter Session 2018

I am teaching two courses: PHIL 248 – Introduction to Scientific Reasoning and PHIL 251 – Ethical Issues in Science and Engineering. I think both courses are unique in that they encourage thinking about things that most of us take for granted most of the time.

“Science is not some monolithic world view that comes complete with a creed. It’s a process, and we’ll appreciate it better if we can understand the process better.”

Winter courses are highly efficient, of course. They also tend to be much smaller, which allows for individual attention in a way that simply can’t be offered the rest of the year. There’s something rewarding about one class having all of your attention. It’s a very different mode of learning, and one worth trying.