Michael Veldman

Teaching

For those interested in the compact version, here is my statement of teaching philosophy and my teaching portfolio, last updated Fall 2024.

Teaching experience

  • *Science, Ethics, and Democracy (PHIL282) — Taught Summer 2024 (Syllabus)
  • Introduction to Logic (PHIL150) — multiple semesters, most recently taught in Spring 2024 (Syllabus)
  • Philosophy of Science (PHIL242S) — Fall 2023, co-taught with Reuben Stern (Syllabus)
  • History of Modern Philosophy (PHIL 201) — Spring 2022, co-taught with Andrew Janiak (Syllabus)
  • Philosophy of Mind (PHIL212) — Summer 2022 (Syllabus)

*This course introduces students to tools from philosophy of science and ethics to think about climate change.

Complete student evaluations for recently-taught courses

“This class was fantastic. Michael is an amazing educator! Clear, concise, to the point, knowledgeable, patient in clarifying, very accommodating and kind. I absolutely loved this class, Michael made it very special.” –Logic student, Spring 2024

Courses I’d love to teach

Philosophy is all about discussion and, as a teacher, I am intentional about including every last student in the conversation. But speaking up in class can be stressful! Here’s what students have said about my ‘warm-calling’ approach:

“I will think a lot about emulating Michael Veldman’s teaching style if I ever decide teach in the future: the classroom environment was joyful, the students were engaged (despite the class being an 8:30AM!), and the material was taught approachably. I really appreciated the warm-call system; I also admired how he would continue engaging with a student who didn’t understand the question until they caught up (truly a no-one left behind approach!).” –Logic student, Spring 2024

My approach to undergraduate teaching

As a teacher, I aim to be intentional about taking the ‘craft’, or the skills-based parts, of philosophy to deserve as much attention as the content. The most important skills I take myself to be able to impart as a philosophy teacher are writing — especially in the concise and clear analytical style that is the philosopher’s ideal — and critical, analytical reading. To these traditional two, I’d venture to add a third: philosophical conversation and discussion. If writing is thinking on your own, discussion is thinking with others. I think we become better philosophical interlocutors by cultivating confidence in the value of our own perspectives, willingness to hear and adjust in light of criticism and feedback, and the ability to listen and respond to others in ways relevant and responsive to what they have said.

Building a Philosophical Skillset

When it comes to writing, I give students improvement-oriented feedback over a succession of assignments, using a ‘gradient’ for improvement that is tailored to the course level. Revision in response to feedback is as much a part of the writing process as the initial draft, so they are also tasked with “revising and resubmitting” a piece of their writing.

Student comments

  • “I learned to write on philosophical topics with more precision and concision.” (History of Modern Evaluation 2022)
  • “I learned how to form and support arguments, how to write succinctly and directly, and how to read and follow arguments of older texts.” (History of Modern Evaluation 2022)
  • “One-on-one meetings with…Michael were especially helpful. Michael is very patient with students and provides really good insights.” (History of Modern Evaluation 2022)

For reading, I compose guided reading questions for the assigned texts, which can be particularly important when working with primary texts in introductory and mid-level courses. The questions provide guard rails for students who are newer to the task of reading philosophy, allowing them to practice homing in on a paper’s core claims and arguments and to write brief analyses or commentaries on them.

  • “I liked how you created specific reading questions for each reading because that enabled me to figure out the most important parts of the readings, especially when they were long and dense.” (Philosophy of Mind Evaluation Summer 2022)
  • “I learned how to dig deeper into dense readings in order to glean the important points.” (Philosophy of Mind Evaluation Summer 2022)

To foster active participation in discussion, I “warm-call” in my classes. What’s warm-calling? Basically, it’s cold calling, except I am nice about it. Students in my courses can expect to be invited by name to enter the conversation nearly every meeting, but with no penalty for “wrong” answers or drawing a blank, and I work with the class to think through their philosophical puzzlements.

  • “I really appreciated Michael’s ‘warm-calling.’ I thought it was a great mixture of keeping people engaged but without inspiring dread about being called on. You could expect to be called on, without worrying that he was trying to trap someone who was having trouble following or having an off day.” (Introduction to Logic Fall 2022)
  • “The lectures were engaging because he would call on people (but without a lot of pressure). I genuinely enjoyed going to class even when the course content felt difficult to grasp because it was a nice learning environment…“
  • “The professor highly encouraged class participation by calling on every student at least once per class. As someone who doesn’t typically raise my hand to ask questions, I appreciated that this teaching style kept me engaged and on top of the material.”

Mentorship

Fostering young scholars outside of the classroom context is just as important. While at Duke, my mentorship of undergraduates has taken two main forms.

First, I have been Research Lead and Coordinator for Project Vox since August 2022, where I lead teams of undergraduates towards writing multimedia articles on marginalized philosophers. Together, we work through feasibility research, research on primary and secondary sources, locating and sourcing images, writing, revising, and publishing. This year, we published a new entry on Napoleon’s nemesis, Germaine de Staël. In Spring 2023, we published an entry on Brazil’s first feminist, Nísia de Floresta, the product of a collaboration with graduate students, faculty, and librarians at Duke and other institutions.

I’ve also guided my students in preparing their original papers to submit to conferences, like the North Carolina Philosophy Society’s 2023 conference, and worked with them to practice and prepare for their presentations. Jocelyn, Faith, and Emma all gave amazing talks, and I can’t wait to see what they accomplish next! A special congratulations to Emma for winning the prize for Best Undergraduate Essay! The conference program is here, and a Duke Philosophy News announcement is here (with links to drafts of their papers).

Miscellaneous course materials

Most logic texts do not cover informal logic or Aristotle’s logic, but I think these are important subjects for philosophers. They are also an aid to learning propositional and predicate logic, which can seem mysterious and unmotivated if not grounded in good old informal logic. To fill this gap, I’ve written some brief, self-contained lecture notes, with accompanying homework problems, which you can find (and, if useful to you, use!) here:

Syllabi and inclusivity

One of the most exciting recent trends on the teaching side of philosophy is expansion of the canon and diversification of syllabi. I think that diversification provides the impetus and the license to bring in fresh themes and perspectives into our classes, and that they can complement and give body to traditional or ‘core’ subjects and authors.

My research is aligned with these aims, too. I focus on non-canonical figures, and through my research I aim to change how the history of philosophy is taught. My sample syllabi above have some examples of how I’ve begun to tackle this task, and my teaching statement explains why I think these trends can be a win-win for inclusivity and pedagogy alike.

If you’re curious about making your own syllabi more inclusive (especially for courses in modern philosophy), check out my description of Project Vox under the Friends tab. Project Vox creates and compiles resources for teachers, which you can check out here: Project Vox resources for teachers.

Training for teachers

My teaching practice has benefited from teaching workshops at Duke and Duke’s Certificate in College Teaching program. Two experiences I’ve found especially valuable are workshops on giving effective feedback on student writing and in-class observation with PhD students in other fields.

As a result, my students have tended do better on comparable assessments year over year, and enjoy the courses more. This has led to big boosts in engagement (course evaluations from Fall 2021 to Fall 2022 showed increases from 4.4 to 4.71 out of 5) and how much students favored the course (3.8 to 4.43 out of 5). This is so even though the students actually found the course more challenging on average (3 versus 3.29 out of 5).