Philosophy Department 100th Anniversary

On September 11, 1923, The Pennsylvania State Faculty Bulletin announced that the Board of Trustees had established a Department of Philosophy within the College of Liberal Arts. While, “moral and intellectual philosophy” had been part of the curriculum of the Farmer’s High School as early as 1859, the newly formed Department was designed to offer specific instruction in the areas of “philosophy, logic, and ethics.” The faculty initially consisted of two members. The first was Edwin W. Runkle, who was appointed in 1893 to the now named Pennsylvania State College as an Instructor in Philosophy and Ethics; he then served as Head of Philosophy from 1923 to 1938. The second faculty member was Ray H. Dotterer, who subsequently served in the same position from 1938 to 1947. From the year of its foundation the Department offered a B.A. and M.A. curriculum to students at Penn State University Park, and in 1959, under the headship of John M. Anderson, it began its ongoing Ph.D. program. Over the last one hundred years the Department has been home to almost one hundred forty faculty members and has trained generations of scholars contributing internationally to the field of philosophy.

The first hundred years of the Penn State Philosophy Department (founded in 1923) have laid a remarkable foundation for its second hundred years. For decades, students interested in philosophy have looked to the Penn State Philosophy Department for its excellence in the history of philosophy and European philosophy. Students today still look to us for these same strengths but pressing social issues have been driving students to depend on us for our philosophical engagements with race, gender, and the environment. Through our traditional and new strengths, the Penn State Philosophy Department is responsive to and responsible for a changing society. In this way, the Penn State Philosophy Department aims to be a leader in the national and international philosophical community and in academia at large. 

What follows is an annual list of faculty appointments and turning points in the Department’s history. Included on this list are the names of all the Department’s faculty members who have served at the University Park campus, some of whom, for reasons unknown, were not included in the Department’s 50^th anniversary program. As these women were active in the department as early as 1958, it is only fitting that they be acknowledged with the rest of the tenure-track and teaching faculty.