Student Opportunities
Clubs and Activities
The department is proud to offer interested students a number of unique and exciting opportunities to extend their education beyond the classroom. The exact activities vary from year to year - for example, a group of students in a class may propose attending an undergraduate conference to present their papers, as happened in recent years when students from the Asian Philosophy seminar traveled to the Southeastern Asian Studies conference. The list, however, always includes:
Ethics Bowl
Held each year in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE), the National Ethics Bowl is inspired by TV's College Bowl. In the Ethics Bowl, over 100 teams from schools across the nation prepare for debate on a set of 15 ethical case studies. The cases present ethical dilemmas in a variety of areas, the classroom (e.g. cheating or plagiarism), to personal relationships (e.g. dating or friendship), professional ethics (e.g. engineering, law, medicine), and social and political ethics (e.g. free speech, gun control, etc.) The cases for each round are randomly selected and then a moderator poses a specific question for the team to answer about that case. A panel of expert judges evaluates the answers for clarity and intelligibility, focus on ethically relevant factors, avoidance of ethical irrelevance, and deliberative thoughtfulness. Clemson's team has done well in recent years, winning the national championship in 2008, placing second in the nation in 2009 and 2012, placing third in the nation in 2019, and being a semifinalist (one of the top four teams) in 2006 and 2007. For more information, contact Dr. Adam Gies.
Moot Court
Learn to read, think, write, and argue like a lawyer. The department has established a moot court team to compete in undergraduate events held by the American Moot Court Association. Moot court is a mock appellate argument of the type held before the Supreme Court of the United States and the federal and state courts of appeals. Students write a brief and prepare an oral argument on a topic in U.S. constitutional law. If you want to practice your oral advocacy and legal writing skills, this is one of the best ways available, and almost every law school has a moot court.
In recent years Clemson undergraduates have competed at the American Moot Court Association (AMCA) nationals (Winter 2022) and placed in the top ten orators, including the top orator, at an AMCA regional (Fall 2022)
For more information, contact Cary Berkeley Kaye, Lecturer in Philosophy or visit the AMCA website.
The moot court team was recently featured in the Fall 2022 edition (p.27) of Decipher, Clemson's Creative Inquiry magazine.
Clemson University Moot Court team Fall 2022 at the Rosenberg College of Law
Libby Morgan and Kate Tesh, top-ten orators at the Fall 2022 Bluegrass Regional
Student Organizations
Clemson has an extremely active body of undergraduates interested in extracurricular Philosophy and Religion activities. The department has allocated a budget for these activities, which has been used in the recent past to fund things like:
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Occasional free food and drink at meetings of The Clemson Philosophical Society (the Clemson student philosophy club) and the Clemson Religious Studies Club.
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Occasional distributions of free club T-shirts and paraphernalia.
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Coordinating occasional trips by students to undergraduate conferences, such as the National Undergraduate Bioethics conference.
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The Philosophical Society has had the opportunity to propose and bring-in their own speaker from another university in the past. The Religious Studies Club regularly brings in local faculty and other experts as speakers.
Religious Studies Club
The Religious Studies Club meets once a month for dinner and discussion about hot-topic issues in the world related to religion or to hear from faculty about their latest research. The Club is student-led and is open to all students at Clemson. Past meeting topics have included religion in the presidential election, native American religions, student research on public school teachers and religious freedom, ISIS and many more! For further information about the Club, please email Dr. John Thames, Advising Coordinator for the Religious Studies program (jtthame@clemson.edu).
Clemson Philosophy Club
The Clemson Philosophy Club meets several times a month to discuss various philosophical issues. The Club is open to all students, and typically meets on Thursday evenings at Andee's Belnded Ice Cream. The Faculty Advisor is Dr. Quinn Gibson. For more information, check out their facebook page.
