The Department of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University offers an undergraduate major leading to the Bachelor of Arts Degree. Students may also pursue minors in Philosophy or Religious Studies. The Department’s offerings include numerous specialized courses in applied philosophy.
Southern’s philosophy training engages the classic philosophical debates on the nature of reality, the workings of the mind, and the meaning of the universe, but unlike many university philosophy departments, it also confronts the tangle of questions and conflicts that characterize contemporary life: cloning, online privacy, abortion, affirmative action, deceptive advertising, and the death penalty. Students broaden their focus by drawing on Southern's diverse offerings, including study of Asian, Islamic, Jewish, and Christian philosophical and religious thought.
This area of the curriculum is especially dynamic, and one that the Department intends to expand more fully in the Religious Studies Minor program. Its coordinator is Dr. Krystyna Gorniak-
Kocikowska, a Jaspers scholar. She is also a Senior Research Associate in the Research Center on computing and Society as well as Chair of the University Honors Committee. The
Department has recently strengthened its offerings in Asian philosophy with the addition of
Xiaomei Yang, a philosophy trained both in China and the United States.
The Department provides significant service to the wider university community, including the option of a minor in Religious Studies and electives appropriate for the programs in other departments. The Department offers courses that are either required or strongly recommended in “Computer Ethics” for computer science majors, in “Bio-Ethics for the Life
Sciences” for Nursing and Health Science majors, “Logic” and “Moral Problems and the Law” for pre-law students, “Business Ethics” for business majors, and “Women and Philosophy” for the Women’s Studies program. “Aesthetics” is offered for majors in any of the Fine Arts, and
“Philosophy of Education” is required for certification by the State of Connecticut as well as by
Southern’s School of Education. Faculty from the Department have been active in the Honors
College and the First Year Experience Program.
The Department has experienced considerable growth in the number of majors and minors in recent years, a sizable proportion of whom have gained admission into competitive graduate programs in such universities as Boston College, the University of Connecticut, and De
Montfort and Southampton Universities in the UK.
Eleven full-time faculty and twelve adjunct faculty members make up the teaching staff.
The scholarly and professional achievements of Philosophy Department faculty members are impressive. Several have presented papers at Ethicomp conferences, an international conference on computers in society. Professor Terrell Bynum recently served as a consultant/moderator in
Paris at the U.N. conference, “The World Energy Technology Summit.” Department faculty
(Marsoobian, Pettigrew, and Bynum) published four books in the last two years. Professor
Bynum’s book:
Computer Ethics and Professional Responsibility (Bynum and Rogerson editors,
2004) will be translated into Chinese and be published by the University of Beijing Press.
Professors Rex Gilliland and Eric Cavallero regularly present papers at national conferences and publish articles in philosophy journals.
Professor Armen T. Marsoobian, the current chair, is a specialist in aesthetics, American philosophy, and ethical issues related to genocide and crimes against humanity, whose articles in these fields have been published in leading journals and anthologies and have been translated into Russian and Armenian. He has edited five books, most recently The Blackwell Guide to

American Philosophy which appeared in a Russian translation in 2008. His most recent edited book,
Genocide’s Aftermath: Responsibility and Repair
was featured in a special session of the
International Association of Genocide Scholars biennial Meeting in Sarajevo, Bosnia. He has lectured nationally and internationally in his fields of expertise.
Professor David Pettigrew’s abiding interest in continental philosophy provides the
Department with expertise in Martin Heidegger and the writers he has deeply influenced. Dr.
Pettigrew has co-translated and/or co-edited seven important books about Heidegger and French psychoanalysts.
The Department’s former chair, the late Professor Florence Ellen Lowe helped design
LINKS, a 13-year old program that provides incoming freshmen with small classes focused on innovative, thematically integrated content. Most options include a philosophy and composition component. Professor Richard Volkman now directs the program which plays in vital role in the
University’s First Year Experience Program.
Southern maintains a close connection to the worldwide philosophical community through Metaphilosophy , a noted international philosophy journal edited at Southern and published by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing in Oxford, England. Metaphilosophy publishes articles and reviews books. The journal’s scope is broad, and any method, field, or school may receive consideration. The journal has sponsored conferences and lectures at Southern, around the nation and internationally, including in Scotland and Turkey. The journal’s editor in chief is
Professor Armen T. Marsoobian and its associate editor is Professor Eric Cavallero. The journal also sponsors a book series in philosophy. Recent books published in this series include:
Cyberphilosophy (co-edited by Bynum), Global Institutions and Global Responsibilities , and The
Philosophical Challenge of September 11 (co-edited by Marsoobian), Genocide’s Aftermath:
Responsibility and Repair (co-edited by Marsoobian) and Stem Cell Research: The Ethical
Issues .
The Research Center for Computing and Society, founded and still led by Professor
Terrell Ward Bynum, is dedicated to the advancement of computer ethics as an academic discipline and to the ethical use of computer technology. Professors Richard Volkman and
Gorniak-Kocikowska are active in the operations of the Center. The Research Center produces multi-media course materials used in more than 300 universities, promotes research through conference sponsorship, fellowships, grants, internships, commissioned publications, library creation, etc. It has its own impressive web site with teaching materials, articles and papers, multimedia materials, and links to other computer ethics resources. The Research Center has joined with the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility (De Montfort University, UK) to offer seven Ethicomp conferences. The Center is considered to be at the forefront of the international computer ethics discussion.
As one of the projects of the Research Center, Professor Gorniak-Kocikowska and
Professor Elzbieta Pakszys from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland are working on a book edition of a collection of papers by international authors on ICT (Information and
Communication Technology) and Women. Both the Center and Metaphilosophy offer challenging opportunities for ambitious students who want to help develop and edit top-quality work.
The Philosophy Department boasts an exceptional degree of success seeking and receiving grants. Professor Pettigrew has secured more than a million dollars in state, corporate, foundation, and federal funds since he became a full-time faculty member. Nearly everyone in the Department (e.g., Bynum, Gorniak, Gilliland, Marsoobian, Pettigrew) has written and

secured funding from local and federal sources for money and reassigned time to conduct research, writing, editing, and service projects.