<p>
</p>
<p>Yeah . . . never. And I laughed when I read that. </p>
<p>I work for a state government and the standard is that we get back to you within 24 hours or the next business day for e-mails and phone messages. I do work in law enforcement, so if there is a true security related emergency, we are on call 24 hours. Never would a staff person call me on the weekend, or expect me to answer routine work when I am not at work. And yes, I do sometimes log in or check my messages to see what may or may not have come in while I am off. I am not however, going to open up a can of worms by answering them though. Sets a bad precedent.</p>
<p>
A student in one of my spring courses found it necessary to comment on a part of my anatomy that I normally do not discuss in public. I have read some nasty and weird comments before, but this one took the biscuit.
I work at a student-oriented school, so we have that conversation quite often. I have never heard parents mentioned as a party we “serve.” They come into the picture only when they complain. From time to time we do talk about the greater good. One of the justification for general education requirements (there are many) is that we would like college graduates to be active and informed citizens. It’s hard to make decisions on a lot of issues if you don’t have a basic understanding of statistics and reasoning skills. I hate the idea of setting morons lose on the world. But I am an idealist.</p>
<p>Can we complain about professors who don’t respond to e-mails at all?</p>
<p>
As long as students are sending emails to the correct address, certainly.</p>
<p>Or as long as the professor stated on the first day of class “email is the best way to reach me”. If the professor requested something else- leave a voice mail, email the department assistant with an explanation of what the problem is, come to office hours unless it’s an emergency… etc.</p>
<p>I have colleagues who just naturally assume that sending random emails is the best way to get a quick response. Sometimes, I want to tell them, “Just get up off your chair and cross the hall, get a 20 second answer to a 40 second question and get on with your life”.</p>
<p>Easier to complain about the “lack of response”. I have observed that a lot of student’s complaints and questions about their professor’s slow response is about issues which are NOT the purview of the professor. So maybe it takes time to forward up the chain of command or figure out who to talk to. If you aren’t being allowed to register because you haven’t paid your bill in full, emailing the professor asking for an exception to the policy isn’t fair to the professor- who likely doesn’t care who has paid or not, he or she doesn’t make the registration policy. Emailing the psych professor to tell him that you’ve got a geology class right after his but it’s a mile away so you can’t take both- and he can he please move the lecture hall so you can in fact do both- wow. Not a college in the world where faculty are responsible for picking their own classroom assignments.</p>
<p>Students need to understand who does what on campus. Making the faculty responsible for reading every single email on every single weekend - when probably 60% of those emails shouldn’t even be sent to that professor- give me a break.</p>
<p>You might be interested in the remarks that Drew Faust made to Harvard freshmen and their parents about how the university is accountable to students and parents. Among other things, she says: " I pledge to you today that for the next four years of your daughter’s or son’s life here, we are accountable to them, and to you."</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.harvard.edu/president/speech/2007/teaching-and-transformation-how-university-accountable-to-parents-and-students”>http://www.harvard.edu/president/speech/2007/teaching-and-transformation-how-university-accountable-to-parents-and-students</a></p>
<p>I, for one, don’t care about what a college PRESIDENT (which isn’t a professor and has a distinctly different role) has to say… Especially when I don’t attend his/her school. </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>I specifically mentioned my D, and you know she’s not at a research 1 institution, but an LAC. You’re going to have to trust me that this was not a case of “look on the syllabus, stupid.” </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 sits there and thinks about or worries about what the parents think. And I cannot imagine any circumstance in which I would be asking my kids about how their professors are running things. It would be their job to bring up any issues / questions / complaints / whatever with them – not me. I’m out of it. As I should be.
And I cannot imagine any circumstance in which I’d be contacting a professor. Even with something like an excused illness, that should go from the student to the dean to the faculty. </p>
<p>I have had exactly 2 “quasi-interactions” with professors through my kids:</p>
<p>1) Interaction #1 - my D happened to wear a sweatshirt from my alma mater to class and her prof remarked on it, at which point she mentioned that her parents went there and her brother was currently there. Turns out the prof was my year - I didn’t know him, but we have a friend in common. I did encourage her to wear the sweatshirt often - couldn’t hurt :-)</p>
<p>2) Interaction #2 - my S wound up taking a class from a prof who I actually had 25 years ago. He did mention to the prof that his mother had taken this same class. (Of course, the prof wouldn’t have remembered me.)</p>
<p>Nonetheless, this “you kind of know my parents” was through them - not me. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It may not be a case of “look on the syllabus, stupid”, but could be related themes from the Prof’s perception ranging from “if you were awake…even in a stupor/took extremely crappy notes, you should have gotten this” or worse, “A student from [insert name of elite/respectable college here] should be intelligent enough to figure out/make the correct inference without my prompting/“spoon feeding*””.</p>
<ul>
<li>This was a common retort from a few HS teachers at my public magnet. With most students, this had the effect of discouraging them from asking questions which could be answered by looking up the information themselves or with a little bit of noodling with what they have learned already and thus, keep “stupid questions”…especially repeated ones to a minimum. On the other hand, the less mature/more mischievous among us would take that as a signal to double-down on the stupid questions and sarcastically thank such teachers for making belittling remarks about our intellects just to get a rise out of them and possibly see steam come out of the orifices on their heads. To be fair, we were 12-19 year old HS students…not 17-22+ year old young adult undergrads.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>I’m probably not a representative sample, as I’m still a grad student and haven’t had more than 35 or so students in a semester, but I definitely differentiate between silly or entitled e-mails and reasonable ones. “What is the reading for this week?” probably isn’t getting a response at 11 PM. A more substantive question, or a clarification over a legitimate point of confusion, rather than something they would have known if they had been in class or looked to the syllabus, is going to get a reply as soon as I’m free, I stay up late; I’m not going to stand on ceremony and refuse to answer because it happens to be after 5. i do explicitly refuse to answer non-technical questions about papers after 5 the day before the paper is due, because asking me “is this a good thesis” at the last minute a) means you expect me to be on call for you, and while I commit to answering e-mails within 24 hours, I don’t promise to be available on any given evening, and b) because if you don’t have a good thesis, you aren’t likely to have time to make the necessary changes anyway.</p>
<p>I don’t really think much about the parents, and don’t think of my students as my customers - but I do feel a strong sense of obligation to them. It is my job to give them a quality education and treat them fairly and with respect. It isn’t my job to satisfy them, which is why I make that distinction. </p>
<p>All these businesspersons and doctors who are answering e-mails at any hour of day of night are doing it because they have a customer who will give them more money if they do. The student is not the customer of the professor, and part of the professor’s job is help the student form some semblance of independence and ability to plan ahead. Maybe these kids will join the army and send midnight emails to the drill sergeant asking if there is a route march the next day.</p>
<p>For those asking about Professor Evaluations, there are only two types:
- Student checks Outstanding for every question. Then adds comments “She is the most wonderful…wish she taught everything…”
- Student checks Unacceptable for every question except ones pertaining to classroom safety and the textbook. Adds no comment.</p>
<p>Guess which students know they aren’t going to pass?</p>
<p>I feel like apprenceticeprof; if I’m awake, I’ll respond. My son was always a TA with another student. Each held office hours. I suspect they made the professor’s life easier by handling many of the routine e-mails.</p>
<p>I answer e-mails and phone calls in early evenings and weekends, but definitely sift through. Like PG’s example of her DH getting calls about diarrhea, I’ve gotten 2 a.m. calls about not sleeping. I was having dinner with a g/f, an endocrinologist, and a patient’s call was put though. The emergency? The patient with diabetes was having trouble deciding what to order from a menu. Sorghum, doctors do not get paid for these calls.</p>
<p>One patient would call 20 times over a weekend and leave messages calling me awful names and threatening to contact the professional Board. These adult patients with no sense of boundaries were college students once, and I have no doubt they acted inappropriately back then. </p>
<p>I posted this before, but in my early days of teaching, I had 6 or 7 students asking for postponements of final paper because of a death in the family. I was told to ask the student for proof, e.g. a newspaper clipping about a funeral.</p>
<p>One positive remark. In son’s early years at grad school, he had an incident with a professor that would change the direction of his studies. He called me in the middle of the night. I probably made many ludicrous suggestions, but one gem was to contact the Dean. I think my son had only met him once, but sometime after 3 a.m., son e-mailed the Dean to schedule a meeting. The Dean saw my son at 9 a.m. that morning!!! (& truly helped).</p>
<p>sorry to ramble so. </p>
<p>Get a grip, sorghum. I was not talking about expecting a prof to answer immediately. I was talking about the stupidity of responding just to say you’re not going to engage. Then you’re better off not responding at all. </p>
<p>I just handled a UK client’s request at 4:45 am before I got up to go to the gym. He probably isn’t even thinking that it’s that time for me. I answered what I could and told him i’d answer the rest when I get to the office. I don’t "get extra"for this. It’s just client service. My H doesn’t get “paid extra” for middle if the night phone calls. </p>
<p>It’s a long way back, but in post #63, PG, did you really say that you have to stay up till 1 am to get everything done 5 nights out of a year?</p>
<p>^No, QM, I believe she was referring to a previous post where a teacher might have to stay up late on nights where there were parent conferences (4-5 times a year?). </p>
<p>
As a single incidence, that might be true, PG, but if she makes it clear that she doesn’t respond on weekends, that (maybe) discourages that student from trying again on another weekend. If she uses that same time to respond instead, the message is that she’s available on weekends and he will feel free to repeat the behavior. </p>
<p>I have pulled three all-nighters in the past three weeks. This weekend, I worked 17.9 hours on Saturday and 17.5 hours on Sunday. I get paid hourly, but have to stay within a budget and don’t get anything extra for overtime.</p>