There is an active Graduate Student Club and an Organization of Philosophy Students that includes graduate and undergraduate philosophy majors. The Graduate Club provides representatives to Department committees. The Organization of Philosophy Students in the past has sponsored several speakers and discussion groups.

The first Graduate Student Philosophy Conference, organized each year by a committee of philosophy graduate students, was held October 1999 and the eighth was held in March 2007. Details are available on the conference web site.

Council of Graduate Students

The MSU Council of Graduate Students promotes the academic, social, and economic aims of graduate and professional students at Michigan State University. It promotes communication among graduate and professional students and between them and the academic and administrative units of the University. Each department sends a representative and an alternate to the Council.

Graduate Employees Union

Graduate assistants and other graduate student employees of the University are covered by a contract negotiated with the Graduate Employees Union.

Philosophy for Young People

For some years, graduate students from the department have been teaching philosophy to middle-school students. The material is presented in ways that encourage students to see its relevance to their lives. By teaching basic argumentation, the means of civil discussion of controversial topics, and basic concepts in philosophy, the Philosophy for Kids program offers to a new generation skills and knowledge that can help them make sense of themselves and of their pluralistic society. The graduate students in turn learn new things about teaching and about philosophy itself.

Graduate student Alison Reiheld, a participant in the project, presently builds scholarly reflection into this experience through her co-editorship of the annual peer-reviewed journal Questions: Philosophy for Young People, published through the Philosophy Documentation Center.