Contact with Faculty Members

One quick news item before we begin today. We sent out messages to P’26 and transfer families yesterday about RSVPing for certain Orientation activities. Some of you who RSVPd right away ran into an issue trying to RSVP for the 8/18 What to Know Before You Go program (you got a blank screen at the end and no confirmation email saying you were successfully registered). The good news is all those registrations did come through on our system side, so if you got that blank screen this yesterday up to maybe 7 pm when you tried to register, know that those RSVPs WERE received. Please do not try to re-register. I got the glitch fixed right around 7 pm, so everyone from then on out should be fine.

One more quick point about RSVPs I should have mentioned (and forgot to!): please talk to your spouse/partner/student to see if they have already RSVPd for your family – we are trying to avoid duplicate RSVPs. So please do not RSVP to any events below unless/until you have confirmed that your spouse/partner/student has not already RSVPd for your family. Thank you for your help on that.

Now to today’s main focus: faculty contact. As we get close to the start of the fall semester, I like to share some of the unspoken norms of college life. Sometimes a parent or family member will ask me how to get in touch with their student’s faculty member, because they want to discuss their student’s progress, why they aren’t doing well, etc. Contact with faculty members is something we strongly advise against. Let me give you the background and my perspective on why that is.

While family members talking to teachers might have been a routine occurrence at the K-12 level, it is something that is just not done at the college level. There are many reasons for that, not the least of which is that faculty will assume and expect that if there are issues with a student’s learning or understanding, the student will be the one to initiate that discussion. If a family member is the one trying to talk to the faculty member (rather than the student), it can actually hamper the student’s relationship with faculty, rather than help. A faculty member might wonder why the student is making their family member advocate for them, which can reflect poorly on the student.

Some of the important out-of-the-classroom learning opportunities of college are for students to learn to have difficult conversations, advocate for themselves, etc. Students need to be able to practice those skills independently. So it is not in a student’s best interest for families to have contact with their faculty members.

Typically when I hear from family members asking for faculty email addresses or contacts, it is because their student is not performing well in a class. You should know that there are lots of free resources available for students who are struggling. The Center for Learning, Access, and Success (CLASS) has individual peer tutoring and also academic coaching. There is also a Chemistry Center, Computer Science Center, Math and Stats Center, and Writing Center with free assistance for students in those areas. These services can be accessed from the start of the semester.

Another great resource students should take advantage of is faculty office hours. Office hours are set times each week that the faculty member makes themselves available for drop in questions or assistance. In the event office hours conflict with a student’s class time, they can contact the faculty to set up a meeting at a convenient time for both parties. When a student shows up in their faculty member’s office, it can signal that they are really trying to master the material/get their questions answered/put in the necessary work.

So in the event your student is struggling in a class this fall and has issues, your best course of action is not to have contact with the faculty member. Contacting the professor will not likely have the impact you want, and could even be counterproductive. Instead, prompt your student with some questions that might spur some action:

Didn’t I read somewhere that there is free tutoring on campus? 

What has your faculty member said when you talked to them about it?

Would your RA be a potential resource to help you think through available resources?

Is this something your academic adviser or the staff in the Office of Academic Advising might be able to help you with?

So give your students some suggestions on how to get started, then stand back and let them do the rest.

— by Betsy Chapman, Ph.D. (’92, MA ’94)

July 28, 2022