Philosophy Department

Did you know?

When you minor in philosophy at SPU, you develop strong skills that are important to a wide variety of careers. Such skills include being a good critical thinker and problem solver; understanding connections across complex ideas; communicating and listening well; and weighing others' different values and points of view.

Such skills are among the characteristics most highly sought after by potential employers in tech, business, government, and non-profits. See: 

• Philosophy majors are smarter than others — and tend to make more money (Big Think, May 5, 2023)
• The surprising thing Google learned about its employees—and what it means for today’s students (Washington Post, Dec. 7, 2017)

Many of our graduates also continue study in graduate school or law school: recently, at Harvard Divinity School, Princeton University, Oxford University, University of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Indiana University, and Villanova. Others enter careers in the tech industry, data analysis, data science, business consulting, ministry, teaching, and counseling. (Famed pastor and theologian Eugene Peterson, perhaps SPU's best known graduate, was a philosophy major!) Here is a recent profile of one of our philosophy graduates who works in AI at Microsoft.

Upcoming Events

Check out past speakers for the Layman Lecture, an annual event in this department.