This year, two philosophy majors will start graduate programs with full-ride scholarships to Penn State and the University of Hawaii. This marks the second time in the last two years that Georgia College philosophy students are rising in the ranks of graduate studies during a time when it is increasingly difficult to gain admission with funding to the top philosophy Ph.D. programs.  This year, Penn State had 160 applicants and accepted only six.  In the last three years, four Georgia College philosophy students have been admitted to prestigious Ph.D. doctoral programs with funding.  Dr. James Winchester, along with graduating student Kailah Jeffries and graduate Bobby McCullough, talk about what makes GC’s Philosophy Department stand out. 

n 2005, Coordinator for the Program of Philosophy Dr. James Winchester, along with other members of the department, made the conscious decision to lead the program onto a different path. It was a path that at the time, not a lot of other philosophy programs took. Since then, several GC philosophy majors have found themselves on the forefront of the field, receiving comprehensive scholarship packages in graduate level programs such as Penn State and the University of Hawaii. Two of those students, Kailah Jeffries and Bobby McCullough, will start their graduate programs in the fall. 

“This didn’t happen by accident,” Winchester said, “we asked the administration, if we found an African-American philosopher, would they support us? And they did. There are so few African-American philosophers.” The Philosophy Department didn’t just seek to diversify its faculty, but to broaden its scope of disciplines as well, “We offer Chinese philosophy, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam. It’s a joint philosophy and religion program. We’re really offering diverse courses.” 

By expanding course offerings, students also began expanding their interests. Jeffries, who came into GC on a soccer scholarship, and has been a star athlete for 15 years, found herself drawn to issues at the intersection of race, social and political, and feminist philosophy. 

“I’m hoping that, when I get to Penn State, I’ll be under some really great professors who specialize in Latina feminism and Afro-Caribbean philosophy,” she said. 

 Jeffries originally began her studies as a psychology major, but after taking one of Winchester’s courses during her sophomore year, and discovering the range philosophies taught, she found that what had originally interested her about psychology were relational connections between thought and lived experiences explored in the humanities. 

“What I enjoyed about his courses was that it included such a wide range of philosophers. There were some traditional, some continental, some analytical, and then there was also more modern stuff. We read the novel ‘Exit West’, which was rich with philosophical theories,” Jeffries said.   

Another of Winchester’s students, who will enter into the doctorate philosophy program at the University of Hawaii in the fall, is Bobby McCullough. McCullough graduated the philosophy program in 2017 and has just received his Masters at Fudan University, where he’s been studying Chinese philosophy. Dr. Huaiyu Wang introduced McCullough to Asian thought and was instrumental in helping him get to Fudan. McCullough can remember first talking with Winchester back in 2015, “on a whim, I emailed the head of the philosophy department, which ended up being Jim. We just sat down and talked in his office, and he was an incredibly charismatic and knowledgeable individual. He pretty much gave me the drive to get into college. And since that time, Jim has been, what I would consider, a mentor.” 

McCullough said that one of the things separating Georgia College’s Philosophy Department was its diversity of faculty and programming, “Almost every branch of philosophy you can think of is being covered at Georgia College, minus some really niche ones.” For McCullough and Jeffries, the broad scope of philosophical disciplines is reflective of how philosophy filters into everyday life. “If you go to school to study marine biology, you very likely want to be a marine biologist. That’s not really the case with philosophy because it’s a foundational sort of thing, and it’s at the roots of almost every other field of study,” McCullough said, “I mean, there are hundreds of jobs in the market right now that people have never even heard of. I know of someone who graduated in philosophy who now essentially writes reports for a major company about what each department is doing and delivers that to management, and they make something around six digits per year.” 

When talking about how the shift in GC’s Philosophy Department to a more diverse programming model has led to its recent success, Winchester points to the work of its incredible faculty, “We’re applying philosophy to the present day in ways that make it important and exciting,” Winchester said. Jeffries was surprised to discover both how much her studies in philosophy widened her appreciation of soccer as a sport, and also how it led to her pursuit of intersectionality, “there’s no one right way to frame the world,” she said but, like soccer, it’s a game that can be played where ever you are and whoever you are.