<p>Pizzagirl, I know you are mad about your D’s experience, and prof’s non-response was passive aggressive and annoying, especially if the assignment was not well-designed. But it is simply not true that people are not “serious” about their jobs if they do not answer student emails over the weekend. You are applying the standards of your own professional world (which is not “the” professional world) to a different profession with different norms. I work on the weekends. I need large blocks of uninterrupted time to do the work on which I’m actually evaluated and promoted, and the weekend is when I get those blocks. I will not get one iota of credit, financial or institutional, by answering 20 dumb student emails about information that’s already on the syllabus or the assignment sheet or e-campus. And that’s what 99.9 percent of those student emails consist of. Trust me. I suppose I could just put auto-reply on: “It’s on the syllabus. Best, Prof. X.” </p>
<p>In fairness, if the prof checked email and decided to write back to keep her at arm’s length, it would have cost her little to just answer the question.
Unless it was an auto-response, in which case she is effectively out of range and that’s that.</p>
<p>DH sometimes did answer weekend emails. My former career was such that many of us had to turn off on weekends. There were alternate ways for clients to get critical tech support. That was zero lack of commitment. Much of what’s right depends on the particulars.</p>
<p>I’m generally more peeved by profs who never keep to stated office hours, never return a contact. D2 had one of those. </p>
<p>There should be a minimal relationship between professors and parents.</p>
<p>What a parent wants from a college is their child to learn and be happy. The professors are only a part of that.</p>
<p>Even at the best schools, some professors and/or classes have to be taught a certain way, no bells, no whistles, no earthshattering revelations.</p>
<p>For example, my son will start with Calculus 1 even though he has taken AP Calc AB and BC. I don’t expect him to learn too much, maybe just adjust to college.</p>
<p>As for weekend emails, every person has the right to decide if they will answer them or not. Frankly, in my line of work, if I am REALLY needed before Monday morning, my boss or co-worker will call my cell phone, if they email and don’t get a response quickly. My spouse has the same thing. However, there is NO CASE where a student absolutely positively must know, quickly, by email about some sort of assignment.</p>
<p>So, what do I do?</p>
<ul>
<li>I assign homework that is due on Fridays nights. That way, they aren’t asking me last minute questions on the weekend. I never ever have an assignment due on a Monday any more.</li>
<li>I do answer student emails, when I have time, even nights and weekends. But I also remind them that I am not on email 24/7, and that though they aren’t bothering me if I answer an email, I might not answer if I read their email.</li>
<li>I do not have set office hours, because if I do, I sit there by myself. Schedules are very scattered where I work, no cohesion at all (like, M 8:30 am - 10 am, then Thursday 12 pm - 1:30 pm, sometimes in different rooms!) and very few common hours. My office hours are by appointment only therefore.</li>
<li>I do appreciate that answering student emails, especially at night or on the weekends, is NOT something most of my department or even my university does. Many are over 60 years old and are not good with email, and find it a bother. I try not to push this fact, but I warn students that certain professors should be me in person not just emailed. </li>
</ul>
<p>One thing that does bug me is this time of year, almost finals, and people start sending me long detailed excuses/begging letters. I send them to the Dean of Students, who has to sift through them, and let me know if an excuse is approved. At one point, I had the same student in three different classes over the course of a few semesters, and he had three family members die in that time, all right on exam days. Go figure. I checked with another professor, and it appears that he was using the same death to miss exams on different days a week apart.</p>
<p>So as a parent, please don’t get huffy if you want special treatment for your child, help them go through the right channels. A well-placed phone call to your child’s advisor might help a lot more than calling the President of the University (or the Governor - I was threatened with that by a parent LOL!).</p>
<p>And tell your kids to go to RateMyProfessors.com, obviously it isn’t 100% reliable (especially the hotness scale, ugh!) but it does give some insight into particular professors.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That also has to do with the nature and culture of one’s field. For instance, it’s the norm to work 70-80+ hours a week as a biglaw attorney and/or staff or in a tech startup. I’ve done it myself. However, that’s what I signed up for when I entered those industries just like that’s what YOU signed up for when you went into business organizational consulting or moreso…what your H and my MD resident roommates signed up for when they decided to become medical doctors.</p>
<p>However, THAT’S NOT what most Profs/teachers signed up for when they enter the K-12 or college teaching profession. Especially if we’re talking tenured/tenure-track Profs at research 1 universities like Northwestern or Columbia U where one’s evaluation for tenure/promotion in the professoriate ranks is overwhelmingly determined by the quality of one’s research output/publications. </p>
<p>Not so much one’s teaching and anything related to it. If anything, spending too much time on teaching matters is often perceived by tenure track profs and grad students looking to become academics in research 1 institutions as a “kiss of death” come tenure decision time. </p>
<p>A joke I keep overhearing at academic conferences and among friends in academia is receiving the “Professor/teacher excellence award” means one’s chances for gaining tenure has gone down as the senior Profs who determine whether they get tenure or not may perceive them as “not being serious enough about research/publications”, a factor which is considered the main priority when determining who gets tenure or not. </p>
<p>To some extent, having Profs who concentrate more on research than teaching is also what students who opt for a research 1 university sign up for when they opt to matriculate there as opposed to LACs or LAC-like universities. </p>
<p>Frankly, I’d have much more sympathy for the complaining student/parent if the student concerned had this issue at LAC*/LAC-like universities where Profs are evaluated as much/more on their dedication to teaching and all that’s related with it than the quality/quantity of their research/publications. </p>
<ul>
<li>Top-tier LACs have what many friends in academia regard as the “worst of both worlds” as they not only can have high research requirements, but also a higher minimum teaching load of 5-6 courses per year regardless of whether the Prof is a young tenure track Prof or a 20+ year full/chair Prof with high expectations in rigor/attention to each student.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<p>Heh, you’re far more kind than a few Profs I’ve had. </p>
<p>Asking too many dumb questions in class or via email/office hours and the guilty student will be hit with grade deductions for “negative class participation”. </p>
<p>Some classmates were surprised at how much of a hit they took as a result when final grades came out. </p>
<p>I’ve never had a non academic boss who responds to emails on weekends or evenings…</p>
<p>Yes, I do reply to students “it’s on the syllabus” or “it’s in the slides” or “read the book” in some cases. It’s not 99% of the student emails I get, most are related to our obscure online homework system (free to the university, terrible for students and professors) and what questions mean. I don’t write the questions, I have to interpret them.</p>
<p>I disagree that bosses don’t respond on weekends or evenings. Then again, I’ve done weekend and shift work (24 hours per day, usually 12 hour shifts overlapping to get a major project done). I do not mind emails at night or on the weekends, I just don’t answer if I don’t want to.</p>
<p>I tell students to give me 24 hours to answer an email during the week, and until Monday afternoon to answer a weekend email, though I am usually much quicker.</p>
<p>If I give anyone my cell phone at work, I expect it to be a serious emergency, like when a colleague died.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>At my small LAC, Profs were more than willing to invite students to their homes and even provide home phone#s for emergencies. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, some classmates didn’t seem to have a good understanding of what constitutes a genuine emergency or how it’s inappropriate to call up a Prof in the middle of family holiday dinners to deal with a matter that could have waited till the following class session or have been dealt with earlier if said student hadn’t procrastinated. And then they wonder why they took hits for “negative class participation” or worse, found some Profs were no longer willing to write LORs for work/grad school. </p>
<p>Here is an interesting quote from an online article “The Role of Knowledge and Experience in Expert Problem Solving”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.edci.purdue.edu/ertmer/docs/AERA07_Exp_PS.pdf”>http://www.edci.purdue.edu/ertmer/docs/AERA07_Exp_PS.pdf</a></p>
<p>“Experts are able to achieve this superior problem-solving performance, in large part, because they
have at their disposals vast, well-organized stores of domain-specific knowledge, gained through
extensive experience (Bruer, 1993; Chi & Glaser, 1988). However, by itself, this knowledge and
experience may not be enough. In fact, experience may lead to a kind of “crystallized expertise” (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993), resulting in individuals who may not be particularly good problem solvers because they simply implement well-practiced procedures. In contrast, individuals with “fluid expertise” (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993) use their experiences to think through a problem in a way that is more dynamic and constructive. While the former would include the acquisition of automaticity after extensive practice in a relatively stable and constant system, the latter would be characterized by flexibility that is responsive to changes in a dynamic world (Feltovich, Spiro, & Coulson, 1997).”</p>
<p>So how do you teach “fluid expertise”? I think it starts by developing a storehouse of information and knowledge.</p>
<p>Only read the original post. I do not get why it matters at all what PARENTS want from professors. They are merely paying for the education. The education expectations are between the student and school. Where do parents get the idea they are involved??? Let go of your adult child. </p>
<p>
I’m wondering how “negative class participation” is entered on Blackboard.</p>
<p>I suspect that almost every professor has asked himself or herself the same question that I asked at the beginning of this thread. They must wonder: To whom am I responsible? Do I serve parents or students? Do I serve some higher principle? In what ways are students the best judge and in what ways are parents the best judge? What is the best way to use class time?</p>
<p>Students complete course evaluations. I wonder if they are objective and constructive.</p>
<p>I wonder how the admissions office and financial aid office feel about the opinions of parents?</p>
<p>No professor that I know cares one iota about the opinions of parents. Some don’t even care about the opinions of students. That doesn’t mean they aren’t good teachers, but it most professors have enough pressure meeting the demands of their difficult job to care about irrelevant stuff. The successful ones I know are ruthless with their time because they trained themselves to be that way in order to accomplish what they needed to do in order to get tenure. Junior faculty often work 100+ hours per week. Why would a tenured professor care what a parent thinks?</p>
<p>Admissions offices care a lot about the opinions of parents because before admissions each one is a potential revenue stream. After your child has deposited, parents are important viewed as an important source of donations. At least that’s the way it appears to me given all of the solicitations I get. </p>
<p>I think what set me off (and I think I was the one who did it) on the question of answering e-mails on the weekend was the tone of “I have a family and a life outside” work and that therefore it was somehow outrageous for the student to think that e-mails would be read and answered on the weekend. Hey, we all have it hard, and a lot of us have to answer e-mails on the weekend despite having families, etc.</p>
<p>I think if we put that specific example aside, the point (or at least my point) is that students should be able to expect professionalism from professors. I think it’s usually provided, but when it isn’t, there can be valid complaints about it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The norms of academia, especially in research 1 institutions is that answering emails on weekends is completely at the discretion of the individual academic running the course. </p>
<p>It isn’t unheard of for Profs to specify on the syllabus that they won’t answer emails over the weekend or do so instantaneously(E.g. 24 hour turnaround). </p>
<p>And while carving out family/life time outside work is a part of it, a much more likely reason is the Prof is trying to leave him/herself time to do what may be just as/more important to his/her career and further promotion in the academy…especially research 1 institutions…research and publications. </p>
<p>Here are some examples of what professors consider unprofessional behavior from students.</p>
<p>1- “Professor Jones- can you write me a recommendation for law school? It’s due on Friday and please don’t mention the part about me being two weeks late with my senior thesis draft.”
2- “Professor Smith- I’m going abroad next semester so won’t be able to take your course which is a requirement for my major. Can you call University of London and find out what courses I can take there to satisfy the degree requirement here?”
3- “Professor Brown-I’m deciding between applying to grad school and getting a job on the Hill working on tech policy. So can you write me a recommendation for grad school, and then make some calls among your contacts and colleagues to see if they want to hire me? But I can’t start until August- my girlfriend and I are backpacking in Peru after graduation.”</p>
<p>
What’s for lunch? Did I lock the back door? Will the dogs last until I get home if I stop for groceries on the way?</p>
<p>
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Students come in with their own expectations and perceptions of what things will or should be like. They evaluate their courses through their own lens. Rarely is that totally objective, but they may have constructive comments or ideas. </p>
<p>"Pizzagirl, I know you are mad about your D’s experience, and prof’s non-response was passive aggressive and annoying, especially if the assignment was not well-designed. "</p>
<p>“Mad” isn’t remotely the proper word for what I felt. It was more of an eyeroll – here was someone answering an email over a weekend and spending more time to say “it’s my weekend, I don’t answer these questions” than it would have taken to have actually answered the question, which probably would have taken about 10 words. And trust me, this was NOT a “it’s on the syllabus, stupid” question. I would have no patience for that, either!!</p>
<p>(Though I will say a heck of a lot of my client emails are … you never sent me XYZ, can you send it to me … and I dig in my files and forward them the email that I sent to them 3 months ago with XYZ. And I do it with a smile.)</p>
<p>"I suspect that almost every professor has asked himself or herself the same question that I asked at the beginning of this thread. They must wonder: To whom am I responsible? Do I serve parents or students? Do I serve some higher principle? In what ways are students the best judge and in what ways are parents the best judge? What is the best way to use class time?:</p>
<p>I cannot imagine any professor wondering who they serve - the parents or students. I would venture they do not care one wit about the parents. </p>
<p>And how in the world would any parent be able to judge unless they go to classes with their kids? </p>
<p>I have a hard time even remembering the courses my kid is taking. And I have never know any of his professor’s names. </p>
<p>@Hunt wrote: “I think if we put that specific example aside, the point (or at least my point) is that students should be able to expect professionalism from professors. I think it’s usually provided, but when it isn’t, there can be valid complaints about it.”</p>
<p>As has already been mentioned a few times, you (and those arguing alongside you) appear to be defining “professionalism” according to the norms of your own fields. Different fields have different norms for professional behavior. In some fields, it’s unprofessional to let an email sit for 24 hours; in others that would be a quick response. In some fields it’s unprofessional to meet with anyone wearing anything other than a suit; in others a suit is quite simply wrong.</p>
<p>I agree that students (and, on those rare occasions professors need to interact with them, parents) should expect professionalism from professors. I do not agree, however, that professors should be held to professional standards that aren’t standards of professionalism in their profession.</p>