authority

[aryanhwy]

Back in spring I joined an "Academic Mamas" group on FB, and it's been quite interesting. One thing that has recently come to the fore, in many different threads, is what students should call their teachers. There are a lot of people in the group who are very exercised by ensuring that their students call them "Prof. X" or "Dr. X" and not "hey [

Comments

[ursule]

One aspect you're missing here is the way titles or lack thereof become part of an institution's culture. Some campuses default to "Professor", some to "Dr.", some to first names. If students use the default for male faculty and something else for women, it does feel pointed. But using "Dr." on a non-Dr. campus is just as weird.

[ex_hrj]

This is an aspect that immediately came to me. It's important to consider not only your own personal comfort levels, but the institutional culture that you're participating in. If there is a gendered aspect to what titles people default to, then personal choice can contribute (either positively or negatively) to how institutional culture affects *other* people, even when they make a different choice

[aryanhwy]

I'm a bit curious why you feel that using a professional title is "holding students at arms length". Or why the existence of a formal distance between professor and student would be a detriment to teaching.

This is definitely a My Personal Experience thing: I don't like being Dr. Uckelman or Prof. Uckelman to my students because I'm not entirely sure who that person is and I am not entirely comfortable being that person, and I feel awkward trying to teach while being that person and thus I don't teach as well.

As for formal distance between professor and student -- I don't think it has to be detrimental. But again, I think it is detrimental for me and my teaching. This has a big part to do with why I went into teaching in the first place: The pastoral side of things. There are many aspects of being a university student in the 21st C that are already hard enough, and I don't want "an uncomfortable distance between you and the person who could help you" to be another barrier. What level of distance is "uncomfortable" goes both

[aryanhwy]

Yes, when the students have different defaults for men and women, that is definitely an issue. I'm not sure, though, to what extent that was the case. If anything, what I was finding from people who insisted on being "Dr." or "Prof." to their students were at places where their male counterparts went by their first names (by choice, most likely).

[ursule]

I'm navigating this anew, because I'm not currently in a professorial role. Every so often I write a work email along the lines of "Dear Prof. So-and-so, would you like to review a book?" and get an answer beginning "Dear Ms. Whitcher." This drives me up the wall, but adding "PhD" to my signature feels pretentious.

[aryanhwy]

Add "Dr." to the signature rather than "PhD"?

[tedeisenstein]

Use the German fashion of "Frau [Professor] Doktor Uckelman" in English?

[aryanhwy]

God no.

[jf_scientist]

I do call all my students Mr/Ms/whatever Lastname! And I also insist on Dr. Scientist. Around here it is considered blatantly disrespectful to use a professor's first name (THE SOUTH Y'ALL) plus some stuff about where I teach means that I do see it as deliberate disrespect. But that's just me!

[aryanhwy]

Yeah, one thing that came out of this discussion was that The South is a totally different beast from EVERYwhere else! :)

[jf_scientist]

Also for reasons the faculty and students are a strong majority male and caling me Mrs Scientist equates me with the majority female admins. As Ursula mentions. Think.... people in uniforms. Lots of uniforms.

Also this year I've finally had 100% uptake of Dr. Scientist! I didn't even write my first name on the board this time.