Required Office Hours Don't Result in Contact

While other schools may question Harvard's professorial contact with students, Harvard administrators often point to the required Faculty office hours as evidence that Faculty and undergraduates do interact.

Office hours are intended to set up a situation in which students can meet their professors face-to-face, outside of the often intimidating lecture setting.

But students say they rarely, if ever, take the opportunity to seek out professors.

"I've had a couple classes where it seems like it's this token thing [professors] have to do," says Elizabeth R. Beasley '98, a social studies concentrator.

Beasley says her professors appeared to be reluctant to spend time with students.

"It seemed inconvenient for them and like they were doing me a big favor," she says. "They were interested in answering my question and ushering me out of their office."

In addition, some students say professors are not only disinterested in students, but also intimidating.

"I feel like I have to have something really intelligent to say [to go to office hours]," says Elizabeth A. Flanagan '97.

Echoing a familiar complaint on campus, Flanagan says she felt uncomfortable going to a professor's office hours without a specific, course-related question.

Former dean of Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buell, a strong proponent of smaller, professor-taught courses, says he is concerned that many classes are becoming more oriented toward instruction by graduate students.

"We need to worry if we are relying on graduate students too much as a prosthesis to buffer ourselves from contact with undergraduates," Buell says.

But other administrators and Faculty members say that e-mail is having an increasingly large impact on the professor-student relationship, in some ways replacing office hours as the most useful form of interaction.

"My ability to e-mail has had a big effect on students' ability to ask questions," says Ford Professor of the Social Sciences David A. Pilbeam, the dean of Undergraduate Education.

Pilbeam, who teaches in the Anthropology department, says e-mail has increased his interactions with students.

"Some people worry that it reduces the contact of students and Faculty, but I disagree," he says. "If you strike up a relationship in cyberspace, you can possibly lure the student into coming in in person."