Great post, Emma, with valuable insights. I’d just add one point regarding university courses and the role of EA-aligned faculty.
As a psych professor, I’ve taught a course on ‘The psychology of Effective Altruism’ three times for 20-25 upper-level undergrads at a large state university. My university doesn’t have an EA student group, but there are other EA-adjacent groups, e.g. for veganism and AI research.
I’ve noticed that there’s often a social/intellectual firewall between student groups and formal courses, such that the student groups don’t realize how easy it might be to recruit a professor to teach a course on EA, rationality, or specific EA topics—or for student group members to give guest presentations about EA in an existing course (such as ones on AI, judgment & decision-making, microeconomics, or moral philosophy.)
One efficient way to promote the skill-building mission of student EA groups would be for student organizers to be less bashful about approaching faculty like me about doing more formal teaching, conference organizing, colloquium inviting, and other ‘service work’ in support of EA. Our promotions, tenure, and raises depend in part on doing this kind of service work, and most faculty I know who are open to EA would rather do EA-related service than other kinds of service we could be doing (e.g. serving in a Faculty Senate, an IRB committee, or department website committee.)
So, student groups might even find that they can offload some of the community-building and skill-building to faculty mentors and allies—especially since we’re already paid and encouraged to do this kind of service.
Great post, Emma, with valuable insights. I’d just add one point regarding university courses and the role of EA-aligned faculty.
As a psych professor, I’ve taught a course on ‘The psychology of Effective Altruism’ three times for 20-25 upper-level undergrads at a large state university. My university doesn’t have an EA student group, but there are other EA-adjacent groups, e.g. for veganism and AI research.
I’ve noticed that there’s often a social/intellectual firewall between student groups and formal courses, such that the student groups don’t realize how easy it might be to recruit a professor to teach a course on EA, rationality, or specific EA topics—or for student group members to give guest presentations about EA in an existing course (such as ones on AI, judgment & decision-making, microeconomics, or moral philosophy.)
One efficient way to promote the skill-building mission of student EA groups would be for student organizers to be less bashful about approaching faculty like me about doing more formal teaching, conference organizing, colloquium inviting, and other ‘service work’ in support of EA. Our promotions, tenure, and raises depend in part on doing this kind of service work, and most faculty I know who are open to EA would rather do EA-related service than other kinds of service we could be doing (e.g. serving in a Faculty Senate, an IRB committee, or department website committee.)
So, student groups might even find that they can offload some of the community-building and skill-building to faculty mentors and allies—especially since we’re already paid and encouraged to do this kind of service.