For those students and graduates of our core program who are preparing to pursue a career as a professional intellectual, the OAC offers a program of advanced career training with an emphasis on mentoring.

A wide range of skills and activities are required to achieve a successful intellectual career. In addition to deep knowledge of one’s field and training in proper thinking methods, one must also develop a proper career orientation. The goal of the OAC’s career training program is to help its students to develop the professional skills necessary to implement that orientation.

Admissions criteria:

To be eligible to apply to the OAC’s career training program, you must be:

1. A graduate of, or current enrollee in, the OAC’s four-year core program; and

2. Able to demonstrate—in your Statement of Purpose and other application information—that you are

   1. a student who is seriously considering an intellectual career (particularly in academia), or

   2. an intellectual who is already actively pursuing such a career.

Space in the program is limited. Phone interviews may be conducted, and official transcripts may be required. Those who are interested can apply to the Career Training Program at any time, as applications are processed on a rolling basis. Applicants will be notified of results periodically throughout the year.

The program consists primarily of workshops and seminars on career and professional development, with occasional courses offering advanced instruction on Objectivism and its applications.

Selected examples of past program offerings:

Individual mentoring

Example: Faculty Adviser

Some students in the career training program are paired with faculty advisers—tenured academics or OAC faculty—who can offer them advice on their career and on intellectual matters. Students meet with, and report to, their advisers on a regular basis and write a quarterly report describing their career progress and their interactions with their adviser.

Grants and other forms of financial support

Example: Dissertation Grants

If either a part-time job or a heavy teaching load (whether as a teaching assistant or an instructor) is slowing your progress on your dissertation, ARI provides funds so that you can write full time.

Teaching Workshops

These consist of small, private sessions that give students in our career training program an opportunity to develop their teaching skills. Students choose a topic from their field of study and prepare to teach one class from a college course on that topic. They then present that class at the teaching workshop as though they were teaching a group of college students, and they receive feedback on their teaching from the workshop evaluators. Typically, each workshop involves a small group of students (no more than five), with evaluators consisting of OAC faculty as well as Objectivist professors affiliated with the Ayn Rand Institute.

Advanced Instruction Courses

Examples:

Confusion Papers I

(recorded seminars taught by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, with discussions by Dr. Onkar Ghate)

In 1994–1995, Dr. Leonard Peikoff offered a series of advanced seminars on Objectivism. The student’s assignment was to select a broad topic within Objectivism, one about which he felt substantial confusion or unclarity, and then to write a one-page paper on the topic. In the paper the student identified what he thought he understood about the topic and what precisely were the points of confusion or unclarity in his mind. The seminars consisted of Dr. Peikoff’s critiques of these papers, with emphasis on the broader principles of philosophic thinking involved in the student’s confusion and misunderstanding.

For this OAC course, the assignment is to first read the old student’s “confusion paper” and then to write a short (no more than one-page) assessment of the fundamental error(s) in content and/or method that are causing the student’s confusion. One then will listen to a recording of Dr. Peikoff’s analysis of the student’s paper. Afterward, the assignment is to write a one-page paper on what fundamental, wide-ranging lesson(s) one learned from Dr. Peikoff’s analysis.

Confusion Papers II

(recorded seminars taught by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, with discussions by Dr. Onkar Ghate)

This is a continuation of Confusions Papers I, with the same format. Completion of Confusions Papers I is a prerequisite for this course.

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

(a course taught by Dr. Harry Binswanger)

A systematic, detailed study of Ayn Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, aimed at providing the student with a thorough familiarity with the nature, basis, and proper use of concepts.

The History of Capitalism in the United States

(taught by Dr. Eric Daniels)

This course explores the political, intellectual, and legal developments that transformed the United States from a mostly capitalist nation into a mixed economy. It examines the interrelationship between the predominant philosophy of the culture and how it affected politics, the legal system, and the economy. Students learn the concrete details of how the mixed economy took root in America as well as the philosophic arguments behind that system. By understanding these historical developments, students are able to analyze the essential nature of government policies and assess their overall effect on a free economy.