Nova PhDs

Dear friends,

I am happy to say that I attended a very successful dissertation defense today. Emily and I drove to Villanova for the day to see Greg — Dr. Hoskins! — defend his work in front of about 35-36 people in SAC 400. He had an impressive presentation followed by a lively q&a session. We all thought that Greg did very well and I was extremely pleased to be there for this event. This is the advantage of being in DC; daytrips to Nova are feasible.

This evening, we joined Greg and a handful of others for drinks at Ludwig's Garten in Philly. We all bought him the Tower Beer special, a gallon of beer in a very tall glass. (Joe should have been there!)

Congratulations to Greg!

Greetings all. I'm at Villanova for the next few years straddling the ethics program and the philosophy department. Finished up the PhD Spring of 04, setting a sweet record of a smooth decade as the longest finish so far (though Ed insists he is working on his dissertation and plans to finish). Just got happily married.

Many personnel changes here:

Finally hired someone to replace Maria Carl: Mike Waddell. Does Aquinas stuff. Very energetic teacher.

Finally hired an Augustine scholar to replace Don Burt: James Wetzel. Don't know a thing about him.

Hired a new Cook Chair following last year's departure of Jack Caputo: William Desmond. Hegel with a post-modern twist.

Much hiring in the pipeline (Kant, Environmental, Senior Continental to name a few).

New Department Chair is John Carvahlo.

Feel free to contact me if you have questions about how things are going here. Enjoyed reading through the posts (one caveat: can we make a rule banning "y'all"?).

...has now completed a full draft of his dissertation. and no, nobody (neither busch nor the other committee members) has seen a single page out of the 260 up to this point. so if anyone would like to pray for the boy, or send him best wishes, or whatever, now might be an appropriate time. although this is a very seth-like thing to do, i didn't really think he would actually do it. but he called me a couple nights ago to say he has, so there you are...

this just in from walter (i don't know how long i will continue to receive these emails, probably just until i'm purged from their "student" lists):

walter continues as grad director, and john carvalho as department chair; julie klein will be placement officer this year.

confirmations that greg and adam will be defending in august, and that shaw will be defending this fall. [as i noted before, seth has said he is also trying to do so prior to the first JFP of the year.]

alexi is in germany this year on a DAAD; danny is in denmark on a fulbright.

think that's all the relevant info. for us.

The first of what I expect will be several defenses this fall (maybe even this August!) has just been officially announced:

Adam Miller will be defending his dissertation, "Immanent Grace: Badiou, Marion, & Saint Paul" on Friday, August 12th, from 3-5 pm (in SAC 300).

I understand Greg, Mike Shaw, and perhaps even Seth are planning to defend in the next month or so. Hopefully this year's placement will be as good as last year's was, as we'll have a lot of people out on the market with PhD's in hand — I think the blog could be pretty helpful in that regard, at least in terms of us knowing where people's top positions are, and maybe getting in touch with people at those institutions we know on behalf of our newly minted PhD's...