The APDA Blog

Changes at APDA: Board of Advisors and Website

Carolyn Dicey Jennings -

Since the last post in July, APDA has been making some changes.

First, there is now a Board of Advisors. Advisors were selected based on the rough criteria of a) being familiar with the APDA project and/or data analysis regarding the philosophy profession, b) demonstrating a willingness and interest in serving the philosophy profession, and c) (collectively) representing as broad a range of philosophers as possible, considering many different demographic variables (gender, race/ethnicity, geographic location, career stage, institution type, etc.). The following people have agreed to serve, listed with anticipated service years:

Marcus Arvan, 2020-2022
Berit Brogaard, 2020-2023
Amy Ferrer, 2020-2022
Ivan Gonzalez-Cabrera, 2020-2021
Linus Huang, 2020-2021
Quill Kukla, 2020-2023
Mohan Matthen, 2020-2022
Eric Schliesser, 2020-2021
Eric Schwitzgebel, 2020-2023
Amia Srinivasan, 2020-2021
Janet Stemwedel, 2020-2023
Morgan Thompson, 2020-2023
Manuel Vargas, 2020-2022
Brian Weatherson, 2020-2021
Kevin Zollman, 2020-2022

These individuals were asked to serve APDA by guiding it toward a Board of Directors model in the coming years. In this transitional period, the Board will advise APDA on changes that will make it as efficient and effective as possible.

The first meeting of the Board of Advisors was October 23rd, 2020, and they discussed changes to the website that will be enacted over the next few months. The website is currently being rebuilt by Karna Errande, Armaan Kapoor, and Umesh Krishnamurthy (see the "about" page). As determined by the Board, changes to the website will include:

  1. The "about" page will be the new homepage, but streamlined and split off from information about personnel and a new FAQ page.

  2. Current students will be removed from the anonymized data lists on the public site.

  3. Information will be added to help guide data entry on the individual and program dashboards.

  4. The first placement drop-down list on individual and program dashboards will be changed to:

non-academic, not higher ed
higher-ed, non-faculty
academic: permanent tenure track or equivalent
academic: permanent lecture/instructor track
academic: fellowship/post-doc
academic: non-permanent
current student/further education

  1. A check box will be added to individual and program dashboards, "did not seek placement."

  2. A "non-academic, not higher-ed" drop-down list will be added with the following options:

education
tech
law
health
government
finance
consultancy
other
non-profit / NGO
arts
non-university research institution
religion
media
publishing
food & drink
recreation
travel
military

  1. Gender options will be changed to man, non-binary, other, woman (alphabetized).

  2. All options will be alphabetized (to avoid appearance of hierarchy).

  3. Sexuality options will become not straight, straight, and an optional textbox.

  4. Other changes are currently being discussed by the Board over Slack and will be more formally addressed in a meeting in March 2021.

Karna, Armaan, and Umesh will also be working with me to improve the website in various ways, including SSL, a dark mode, and new graphics. You can see some screenshots from the current version below: the desktop version, mobile light, and mobile dark versions. We plan to announce the new roll out sometime between January and March 2021. Stay tuned!

Link to this post at: https://academic-placement-data-and-analysis.ghost.io/changes-at-apda-board-of-advisors-and-website/