Philosophy’s Professor Phyllis “Peggy” Vandenberg is enjoying phased retirement in much the way she has approached her career. She is working to keep her intellectual community vibrant.

All faculty have a sort of disciplinary home in their school or department, but in the specialty area of their expertise, each professor must find that more particular room of one’s own, and that is often through identifying the particular professional society that nurtures that specialty.

“I encourage new PhDs to find a society where they feel really comfortable. I recommend that they try different ones to find a home for their writing and research,” Professor Vandenberg explained.

This has certainly been her experience. In fact, Peggy now serves on the executive committee of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum (SEAC) where she found her intellectual community. One of the important manifestations of its benefit to her has been a wonderful collaboration with current society president Deborah Mower (associate professor of Philosophy, University of Mississippi). Though at different points in their careers and being opposites in some ways, they find they can room together at conferences. Mower is a night owl and Vandenberg a morning person, so it is not unusual when they are working on a project for Vandenberg to wake up to 6 emails from her collaborator.

“The partnership really works,” Vandenberg smiled.

Together they have edited a book and found the motivation to host conferences.

“Writing is lonely,” Vandenberg observed with obvious gratitude that she found such a productive collaboration. “A community outside your department is affirming--to have those who really appreciate your particular area of research and talk about the pedagogy on teaching your specialty.”

The society holds a conference each year. In both 2012 and 2017, Vandenberg served as a conference co-director and hosted the SEAC conference at GVSU. Since the nature of the society is cross-disciplinary, the conference is an opportunity to bring together those involved in the ethics of fields such as medicine, business, law, social work, journalism and more as well as academics in the field of the philosophy of ethics.

Between these two conferences Vandenberg and Mower received a $150,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to run a four-week long Summer Institute for College and University Teachers on “Moral Psychology and Education,” which took place at GVSU May 30-June 24, 2016.

Professor Vandenberg also reviews for the society’s journal, Teaching Ethics.

“This is the core of my scholarly work, really close to my heart. I appreciate the involvement of philosophers, engineers, business people,” Vandenberg acknowledged. 

“I teach Ethics and the Professions so I also am affiliated with the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics which is larger organization that also brings in doctors, lawyers, academics. Both of these organizations have provided enough for me to be able to ‘do my thing’.”

Vandenberg also serves on the Metro Health Hospitals Ethics Board. “It’s humbling. They have to make ethical decisions quickly,” Vandenberg explained. The hospital personnel like having the theoretical background she can provide, but Vandenberg is quick to note how much the experience has taught her. “Day-to-day they make tough decisions. You can’t just play the ‘it’s complicated’ card—there has to be a resolution from the options before them. You do your best and come up with the rationale. This helps me to understand what these real life decisions are like. I help them articulate it, but they have to do it. I help them to see what the action implies, that their action makes a claim, an ethical claim. Our actions are our claims.”

After a career of such considerations, the field has laid its claim on Professor Vandenberg. This is her second of three years of phased retirement, but she imagines that along with more travel, she will probably keep writing and presenting and attending the fall SEAC conferences.