Come To Cc: Me During Office Hours

Students who check their e-mail every five minutes might be surprised to discover that their professors do, too.

Professors say that their in-boxes are increasingly being flooded with e-mail, not from friends or colleagues—but from students.

Whether asking questions about assignments, scheduling appointments or just making conversation, many say that e-mail has relaxed the relationship between professors and students by facilitating communication between them.

Lecturer on the Modern West Brian Palmer, who teaches Religion 1529, “Personal Choice and Global Transformation,” says he sends two to three humor-filled e-mail updates to the class weekly, and he receives some student replies written in a similar tone.

Palmer says he averages about 30 to 60 student e-mails a day, and as many as 100 daily at the beginning of a semester.

He says he believes that the humor of his e-mail leads his students to be similarly casual.

When he sends out e-mail messages in the early hours of the morning, Palmer says he often receives immediate responses from students.

“They ask ‘What are you still doing up at four?’” Palmer says.

In addition, Palmer says that students often include him on mass e-mail messages about their personal lives.

“There’s a space for playfulness peculiar to the medium,” Palmer says.

Tamar Abramov, a teaching fellow for Moral Reasoning 22, “Justice,” says she uses e-mail for informal interactions with her students.

“I don’t like formality very much. I’m pretty informal myself,” she wrote in an e-mail. “I encourage them to send me whatever they have in mind, and if ever I get formal on e-mail it means I’m really angry with the particular student.”

But not all teachers believe that lighthearted e-mails between students and faculty members are appropriate.

Professor of Anthropology Michael Herzfeld says he does not encourage professors to send their students funny e-mails, or vice versa.

He says he feels that e-mails create the possibility for professors to misinterpret a student’s tone and to make light of a serious problem unintentionally.

THE PROFESSOR IS IN

The relaxed nature of e-mail is just one aspect of the medium that has eased student-faculty interaction.

E-mail has also made addressing logistical questions easier and, for some faculty members, has changed the types of discussions they have in face-to-face meetings with students.

According to Palmer, e-mail helps students communicate with their professors outside the classroom.

“It’s an around-the-clock system...part of a society of 24-hour work, where none of us are away from obligations for very long,” Palmer says.

But professors say e-mail has not directly replaced office hours and that the two can serve different functions.

Pope Professor of the Latin Language and Literature Richard J. Tarrant, who teaches Literature and Arts C-61, “The Rome of Augustus,” says e-mail has not reduced the number of students who attend his office hours and that some students send e-mails in addition to going to office hours.

“Many students seem to feel that they should have a serious issue or a whole series of questions before coming to office hours,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Professor Andrew D. Gordon, who teaches Historical Studies A-14, “Japan: Tradition and Transformation,” says that he has not seen a noticeable change in attendance at his office hours despite an increase in e-mail use.

“I do think there’s a local campus culture that office hours are not heavily utilized,” he says.

Professor Mikael Adolphson, who also teaches Historical Studies A-14 wrote in an e-mail that visits to office hours “are usually prompted by more complex questions” that are difficult to resolve over e-mail.

“Those who come to my office usually ask more personal and more over-arching questions about their own academic careers,” he added.

For Music department Chair Thomas F. Kelly, who teaches Literature and Arts B-51, “First Nights: Five Performance Premieres,” meeting with students is one of the perks of being a professor.

“I like when people come to shoot the breeze,” he says. “A lot of people don’t believe that. Sometimes it is nice to have friends, actual human beings, out there [in lecture].”

But several professors say that even with the regularity of office hour attendance, for many students e-mail is the correspondence medium of choice.

Dean for the Humanities Maria Tatar says that at least 10 students e-mail her for every one who comes to her office hours.

“E-mail—and to me this is completely counter-intuitive—can be very effective when it comes to brainstorming for papers and exchanging ideas-—it is a medium that promotes a certain kind of intellectual focus that can be very productive,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Tarrant says that e-mail has encouraged students to speak up with their questions.

“I think it is now much more likely that a student who has a question or an idea will mention it in an e-mail rather than letting it drop,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Tatar says, however, that office hours and e-mail are not the only way for students and professors to communicate.

“What students seem to enjoy more than a visit to an office hour is lunch at the Faculty Club in groups of three or four, where we get a chance to talk about the course and about all kinds of other things going on in their lives,” Tatar says.

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.