TRANSCRIPT: Improving Student-Faculty Relationships

Speaker: Dr. Saundra Yancy McGuire

Improving Student-Faculty Relationships

Hello, I'm Dr. Saundra Yancy McGuire, and I'm Assistant Vice Chancellor and Professor of Chemistry at Louisiana State University. I'm also a past Director of the University Learning Center, the Center for Academic Success. And today we're going to talk a little bit about some of the things that you can do to ensure that you have great relationships with your faculty.

Over the years, I've noticed that several students don't do as well as they possibly could do because they haven't developed relationships with faculty that will allow them to get great letters of recommend or even get research appointments in faculty laboratories or just get recommendations for jobs. And so we're going to talk about the kinds of things you can do to make sure that you build those relationships that will allow you to be most successful.

And so I'd like to start by asking you a reflection question. I want you to think about a faculty member, a professor or one of your former teachers even in high school, who you thought was a great teacher that you had a great relationship with. And I want you to think about what were the characteristics of that individual that allowed you to develop such a great relationship with them and jot some of those things down.

Faculty Characteristics

I bet you thought about quite a few characteristics that allowed you to develop that great relationship. When we asked students this question about what kinds of characteristics do you want to see in your faculty, they come up with some great suggestions. For one they say they want to see someone who's enthusiastic about what they're doing; and they want to see someone who is very knowledgeable of the subject matter. They want to see someone who is very concerned about student learning. They want to see someone who is compassionate and someone who's fair, who's very consistent in their grading policies and someone who's respectful of students, someone who is not sarcastically answering questions or someone who exhibits the attitude that they think they're far superior to their students. And I bet those were some of the same characteristics you came up with.

Well, now I'm going to ask you another question. I want you to think about what characteristics do you think faculty like to see in students. And so I'm going to give you a few minutes to jot some of those things down.

Student Characteristics

Did you get some things jotted down? It turns out that the characteristics that faculty like to see in students are enthusiasm for the course, knowledge of the subject matter, concern about learning and not just making grades or passing the tests, also students who are respectful of faculty time and other commitments, and students who are consistent in their attendance in class and the quality of work that they perform, and someone who really acts like they are very interested in doing very well.

So did you notice any similarities? Did you notice that the characteristics that faculty like to see in students and the characteristics that students like to see in faculty are really very, very similar? And so what we're going to do is talk about some strategies that you can use to exhibit to your faculty the kinds of characteristics that they want to see in you, and that's going to go a long way toward your being able to develop great relationships with your faculty.

Enthusiasm (Before and during class…)

So let's talk about how we can demonstrate to faculty that we have those characteristics that they're looking for. So I'll start with showing enthusiasm. How can you show your faculty member that you're enthusiastic about the subject matter, the course they're teaching, and you're really focused on learning? Well, the first way is to make sure that you come to class, come to every class, come on time and come prepared. And you can come prepared by previewing the information that's going to be covered in class before you get to class. So when the professor asks questions or if there's a discussion, you can actively participate in that discussion.

And your placement, where you sit in class, believe it or not makes a big difference. So in class, try to sit near the front or in the center so that you can make eye contact with the professor. You can have a pleasant expression on your face. You can kind of lean in to show that you're really interested in what that professor is doing. And you want to make sure that your cell phone is silent. And actually, I recommend to students that you turn off your cell phone because even if you have it in silent mode and it buzzes, then typically you're going to look down at it and you're going to be distracted from the class. So make sure you turn off your cell phone and at the very least silence it.

And also refrain from talking. I've sat in so many lectures where the professor is trying to have a discussion with students and students are talking among themselves. And that is the ultimate sign of disrespect and lack of enthusiasm for the course material. So make sure that you are attentive and you're not involved in side conversations with other students.

Enthusiasm (Outside of class…)

Now, we've talked about coming to class prepared. We've talked about the behaviors to exhibit in class. So let's talk a little bit about out of class behavior. It starts with immediately after the lecture is over or the discussion is over. If you have questions, if the professor stays around after class, then go up and engage the professor in discussion; ask any questions about the lecture that you might not have understood; or if you want to go a little bit deeper into the material, that's a good way to connect with the faculty member right after class.

Also make sure you visit their office hours during the office hour time period so that you can have a more in-depth discussion. And in office hours, you can really get to know the professor a lot better. They'll find out individual characteristics about you; you can find out a little bit more about them because it's going to be a much smaller interaction, just one-on-one; and typically you'll have more time with the professor to yourself. So make sure you visit office hours.

You also want to make sure that you turn in any homework on time and do your best work because that's also the way that you're connecting with the faculty member there, really paying attention to, "Does this person put a lot of time and effort into their work? Are they enthusiastic about what they're presenting to me?" And make sure that you go a cut above the rest and try to distinguish yourself so that you can show the professor that you are not a mediocre student, you're not an average student, but you're an outstanding student. And you will get the respect and admiration of the faculty.

Focus On Learning

Now that we've shown the professor that we're enthusiastic about the course and the information, how do you now demonstrate that your focus is on learning and not just on making good grades? Well, the best way to do that, again, is to consistently attend class and go to office hours and actually discuss some of the homework problems with the professor in class so that they will see the kind of energy and effort that you have put into the homework and that you're really interested in understanding concepts and not just memorizing information. One student indicated to me once that he found it very important to focus not just on the what's that a class was emphasizing, but on the why's, the how's, and the what if's.

And so if you go to a professor's office hours and you want to go a little bit deeper into the information asking them, "Well, why might this be the case?" or "What if we changed it and looked at it a different way?" they will see that you're just not in it for the grade, that you really want to understand very deeply. And one of the best pieces of advice I think I can give you is to refrain from asking the question that most faculty get a lot and are very offended by. And that question, you might have guessed it already is, "Is this going to be on the test?" So often professors get that question, and it demonstrates that this student is only concerned about learning just what's going to be on the test. So you don't want to ask that question, but there are other ways to get at the same information.

You might ask the faculty member, "How deeply should I go into learning this information?" or "What advice might you have if I make a study guide for this chapter? How might you tell me that I can make the best study guide possible?" And so you're still getting the same information, but you're asking it in a way that's not going to be offensive to your faculty.

Respect

Now let's talk a little bit about how you can show that you have respect for your professor. And we've talked about some of these things already. One of the ones is to come to class on time. When you walk in class five or even ten minutes late, even if you have a legitimate reason for being late, the professor gets the signal that this person really doesn't care about this class; they don't care when they show up. And so it's very important that if you know that you're to be late for a class, inform the professor that that's going to happen. Or if something came up and you didn't know you were going to be late, after class go up and apologize to the professor and explain to them why you were late because that makes a big difference.

And also we talked about not talking with other students in class while the professor is giving the lecture. Make sure that you are attentive to the professor. And then there are two other ways, and we're going to talk a little bit more in detail about each one of these. One of these is in the emails that you send to your professor. There is an email etiquette that it's very important to adhere to, and we're also going to talk about voicemails. We'll start with emails.

Email Etiquette

So let's talk about email etiquette. Most of you will be in courses where there is a course website. It might be Moodle, it might be Blackboard; but there will be opportunities for you to email the professor. And even if your course doesn't have that kind of system, you will still have the professor's email address; and he or she will encourage you to email. So there are some certain guidelines that you want to make sure that you adhere to so that you can show that you have respect for the professor.

The first one is to use your campus email address if at all possible. Most faculty will send emails to students using the campus address and not another address that you might have on a Gmail account or a Yahoo! account. And so if you have one of those other accounts, make sure that you have your campus email forwarded to that account so that you won't miss any emails that you are sent. But also be very mindful if you do send emails to the professor from your other account, be mindful of the email address that you have because email addresses like boozer@yahoo.com or hotmama@gmail.com really are not engendering respect for you from the professor. And they take it as a sign of disrespect that you would send them an email from an account with those kinds of names.

And when you send the email, always include a greeting – Dear Professor Smith. Don't just say, "Hey!" And believe it or not, I've gotten emails from students that just said, "Hey!" So you want to have a respectful greeting. You want to make sure that you call the professor by the name that they want to be called – if it's Dr. Smith or Professor Smith. Or sometimes professors invite students to call them by their first name, but make sure that you address the professor the way they want to be addressed.

And also don't ask questions in your email that you could easily find the answer to by looking at the course syllabus or looking at the course website or looking in the notes that you were given in class. So you don't want to waste the professor's time having to answer questions that you already have the information available for. And also don't ask for special favors in an email. Don't ask, "Well, can I have extension on the paper?" if the professor has already said, "This is the due date, and I will not be able to grant any extensions," because they won't grant you an extension; but it also shows that you really were not respectful of the professor's rules and regulations.

And then one of the things that is really important, don't use text language in an email to the professor. So no "pls" for please or "ty" for thank you. Spell out every word, and that shows that you are very mindful of the -mail etiquette when you correspond with your professors. They will respect you for that because you have shown that you respect them.

Find The Errors

Now that we've gone over proper email etiquette, let's analyze an email. On the screen before you, you see an actual email; and there are at least five things in that email that do not adhere to the proper email etiquette that we've just talked about. So take a few minutes and analyze that email, and see if you can come up with five things that are not adhering to the general rules that we talked about.

Email

That was a pretty crazy email, wasn't it? Yes. And so let's just look at what the five errors were. First of all, if you look at the email address, that's not exactly one that would make your professor think that you are a very studious student. And then the second, if you see that the professor was not greeted respectfully – Hey, Charles – using the professor's first name is not going to be accurate or adequate.

And then the next situation was the text language. Did you notice the abbreviations in there? That really grates on professors' nerves because that's not formal language at all. And then the fifth one was the question that was asked, "How much of the course is going to be covered on this next exam?" That will be in the syllabus. You want to make sure that you don't ask those questions that obviously you could get the answers yourself from the syllabus.

And so now taking into consideration what all of those etiquette breaches are, if we fix those things then this is what the revised email would look like. And can you see that there's a huge difference in not just the tone but the affect of those two. The emotional reaction that will be engendered when they read the second one will be much, much different than when they read the first one. So be very careful of the kinds of emails you send to your faculty.

Voicemail

So we've talked about one way that you would probably communicate with your faculty, and that's by emailing. But often faculty will give their phone numbers; and you may call, and the voicemail comes on and so you have to leave a message. And so there are also some general guidelines for leaving respectful voicemails. The first is to identify yourself and the course that you are in because faculty have lots of students in different courses. If you just give your name but don't tell them the course, they won't know who you are. So give them the name and the course, and speak slowly so that can understand exactly what you're saying. Make sure that you ask your question as succinctly as possible. And when you give them the information to return your call, give them the phone number and also give them your email address. Repeat those a second time because occasionally cell phones will kind of fade in and out; and if they missed a digit, then they won't be able to return your call. So make sure when you give your phone number, you repeat a second time and the same thing with your email.

Try to limit the hours within which you will make your call. Try not to call them before eight o'clock in the morning or after 5:00 p.m., unless they've specifically told you that it's fine to call them after hours in the evening. If they haven't said that, then try to limit your calls to between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.

Also, if they're going to call you back, make sure that the greeting on your voicemail is something that's appropriate. You don't want to have a voicemail that says something like, "Yo, yo, yo, you know what to do at the beep." That is not what they're going to leave a message after, and so you want to have a very professional sounding greeting on your voicemail. And also, you don't want to have a greeting that has three minutes of either heavy metal or rap music before they get a chance to leave a message because their time is very valuable, and they'll just hang up. They won't be able to sit through all of that music. So if you use those general rules for voicemails, you will find that your faculty will get back to you in a prompt manner and give you the information that you need.

Other Tips

So we've talked about how to show respect. We've talked about how to show you're interested in learning and not just grades. We've talked about how to show your enthusiasm for the course. There are just a couple of other tips that I want to leave with you. One is, make sure that you know your professor's name and you know how to spell their name and you know how they want to be addressed. One of the mistakes that students often make, especially at the college level because they are used to calling their professors Mr. Smith or Ms. Smith in high school, and they get to college. And even though the faculty member has a Ph.D., they will call them Ms. Carter instead of Dr. Carter.

The student doesn't realize that that's kind of a big deal to faculty, but for many faculty members it is. So you want to pay very close attention to how the faculty member identifies him or herself. And if they say, "This is Dr. McGuire," then you want to make sure that you address them by that name. Also, I cannot overemphasize the importance of going to the office and making individual contact with the faculty member so that they know specifically who you are and that you are serious about this course and that you are willing to work hard to learn the information so that you will perform very well.

Use Resources

Now let me tell you one thing about faculty that students may not be aware of. Faculty have so many demands on their time. They're not only teaching classes, but they're doing research; they're writing proposals; they are engaged in committees. So they really have a limited amount of time. But there are other great resources available to you. For example, they are great technology resources. There are great websites that are going to be on the Innovative Educators website. There are going to be places that you can go to get blogs, information about how to study more, or even sites that have specific information about subjects – for example, history or chemistry or biology. And so you want to use those resources in addition to your faculty; and not just the technology resources that are online, but your campus will have other resources. If there's a Writing Center on campus, you want to make sure you use that – or a Tutorial Center.

What Not To Do

You want to really make sure that you get the most that you can get on your own. Be very proactive so that you can help yourself as much as possible, but still use the professor for those things that you are not able to do on your own. You're going to be building great relationships, and also the faculty will appreciate the fact that you're someone who is proactive and demonstrating that you're an independent, self-directed learner who needs guidance but who doesn't have to be led through the course.

So far we've talked about a lot of things that you can do to build great relationships with your faculty. Now I want to spend just a little bit of time talking about some behaviors that you should avoid at all costs. The first one is being absent without notice. If you know that you have to miss a class because there is a sporting event that you've got to attend or if there's a family activity going on, then email your professor ahead of time and let the professor know that you're not going to be there but that you're going to get the work from someone else in class or you'll visit their office hours.

Or if you have to be absent for a reason that you couldn't predict -- for example, you wake up and you've got a tension headache or a migraine and you just can't get to class but you didn't know ahead of time -- then as soon as you can, email the professor; apologize for being absent; let them know the reason and, again, let them know that you're going to make up the work because this sends the message that this is not someone who may decide just not to show up. They know that you're serious about attending class.

Another great tip is to – we talked about emails – do not send any inappropriate emails. Also you want to make very sure that you are not texting when you are in conversation with faculty in their office. Now, this might seem kind of obvious; but I actually have, on several occasions, had a student talking to me in the office and they are texting, thinking that I was not really noticing that they were texting – but it is very evident to your faculty that you are.

Now, also, try not to go to the office if you don't have an appointment if it's outside of office hours. Professors tend to really try to structure their time. And if it's outside of office hours, you can certainly make an appointment. But don't go if you have don't have an appointment, unless the professor has already said, "I have an open door policy, just drop by at any time." Otherwise, make sure you go during office hours or if you have an appointment.

And at all costs, do not turn in sloppy work because that says to a professor more than anything else that you don't care about your work; and you don't want to send that message.

Now What?

Now that we've talked about all of these different tips and ways that we can build great relationships with our faculty, let's make a plan. What do you think you could do first? One suggestion might be to think of a faculty member that you don't really know very well or this faculty member doesn't know you, and decide specifically on how you might get to know them better and have them know you better. So you might visit the office and ask questions about the course. You might ask them about how they got interested in doing the kind of work that they do or if they have any suggestions about how you might study for this course to really master the material in a deeper way than is obvious. Faculty love to have these kinds of discussions with students who are obviously interested in the course.

So if you do all of these things, you are going to build great relationships with faculty. And when it's time to ask for letters of recommendation or get a job placement, you will have many faculty who will be more than happy to write stellar letters of recommendation for you.

And enjoy your professors because they're people too.