Maximizing Interactions with Faculty

By Margaret Whitt

As students become more familiar with the rigors of collegelevel academics, it is important that they maximize their interactions with faculty. Positive student-faculty interactions lead to more than just good grades—those interactions can help students identify and develop mentor relationships and explore possible majors and career paths.

Parents should encourage their students to make use of a professor’s office hours for help, for clarity with assignments or information, and for make-up work when needed. E-mail may be the best mode of initial contact with professors. When students use their cell phones to call faculty, sometimes they do not remember that a return call may mean a long distance charge. Many faculty respond to a cell phone call by e-mail, unless it is a local number.

Parents should encourage their students to be focused about office visits. Students should know what they want, why they have come, and what they hope to have accomplishedby the time they leave. This way, the time spent is more productive for both student and faculty, and the professor is always glad to see a student.

Parents should encourage their students to use good manners in their interactions with professors. Many of the questions faculty often hear would not arise if students remembered what they have been taught at home.

Is this going to be on the test? This question suggests you are only interested in being responsible or accountable for the information you will be tested on. The committed students bring to class an intellectual curiosity, realizing that every text has a context. Try substituting, Why is that? How does this make a difference? Or even, Would you repeat that point with a different example?

Sorry I missed class. Did anything important happen? Such a comment invites a smug reply, which most professors will refrain from delivering. Try to see such a comment as this one as rather thoughtless—it places the speaker at the center of the world, suggesting that because of his or her absence nothing at all went on in class. This is an insult to both your peers and your professor. Try substituting, Sorry I missed class. I will take responsibility and get notes from one of my classmates.

Your student will do well in his or her interactions with professors if your student makes a point to visit a professor’s office, know what he or she wants to ask once there, and usegood manners in each transaction. At DU, we have a happy student body for the most part. Students are glad to be here and the relationships between faculty and students are warm and caring. As a parent, you can offer subtle suggestions to follow these tips.

FOR MORE EXAMPLES of positive student-faculty interactions, visit the Parent Association web site at
http://www.du.edu/studentlife/parents/.