Back when I was trying to decide what to have my students call me (or more specifically, how to sign my emails), I asked my department chair what she does and/or what the culture here is. She said that she is always Dr. X. She has students doing research with her, and she runs a program for science students from underrepresented groups. I asked if any of them call her by her first name, and she said no. It seemed a little bit strange to me that she gets to know some of these students really well on a personal level and still goes by Dr. X. (Keep in mind that this is a small school and a small community.) She said that it is a sign of their respect for her. Ok, I get that.
So, there is a girl who is in Dr. X's underrepresented students program who wants to major in astronomy and actually go to grad school in astronomy (shall I scare her away now? :)). Obviously Dr. X has recommended that she work with me, and yesterday she brought her by my office to introduce us (introducing me as Dr. F, of course). Toward the end of the conversation Dr. X said to the student that she was sorry we were chatting so much because the student has a class shortly and probably wants to go to it. The student said yes, and that she actually has a test in that class. Dr. X and I were surprised, and Dr. X hugged her! Seriously? You don't let her call you by your first name, but you hug her over a test? Am I the only person who thinks that's weird?
This has me thinking about gender roles a bit. I am pretty sure that a male professor would absolutely never hug a student. They certainly couldn't hug a female student, and I don't see them hugging a male student either. Is it normal for female professors to hug students? Again, not a good idea to hug a male student. Maybe it's because females in power are mother figures? The only time I ever hugged a student was when I had a girl who kept leaving lab to go to the bathroom and kept coming back looking like she had been crying. She finally came up to me crying and said that she just found out that her mom has cancer. My first reaction was to hug her. (I then sent her home.) Even still I immediately wondered if it had been appropriate.
And with the names, I think that the informal way for students to call their professor something is to typically use just the last name, without a prefix. For those of you who went to UT, there are tons of examples: Lambert, Kormendy, Scalo, Jaffe, Shapiro, etc. But you wouldn't ever do the same with the female professors - Harriet, Shardha, Anita, Mary Kay, not Dinerstein, Jogee, Cochran, or Hemenway. Is it really a gender thing? Maybe Dr. X was on to something by demanding a respectful name from her students.
We wouldn't have called those male professors by their last names to their face, though. Even in grad school, I think I called some of those "Dr. X" when speaking to them, if it wasn't someone I worked with and was close to. Or I just avoided trying to address them by name at all. Because it is SO AWKWARD, just like with in-laws. I still feel so awkward calling my in-laws ANYTHING AT ALL, even after 7 years of marriage. I have sort of settled on first names, but it feels so weird.
ReplyDeleteI am with your Dr. X and think it is good to use your title. I mean, I don't remember correcting students who used something else, but in signing emails, introducing myself, etc I felt it was more appropriate.
i think as an undergrad, i used my (physics) professors last names while i was taking their classes, and then switched to their first name afterwards.
ReplyDeletei dont think i ever referred to gary as dr. hill. i cant even remember him being referred to as that out loud in any context! ha!
About the Male vs Female, First vs. Last names: it's not clear if it's entirely a gender thing. I think it might be influenced by the fact that a lot of the men happen to have the same name, i.e. John Kormendy, John Lacy, John Scalo. I never heard anyone call my advisor by his last name, and there were no other Neal's in the Department. Although, everyone called the Director by his last name, even though there were no other David's around. Maybe because he always seemed so formal in general. But I am curious what students would call women astronomers in the same dept if they had the same first name, but I'm pretty sure that is not likely to happen at UT anytime soon. We'll have to find a bigger astro dept with many women in order to conduct the experiment, so we'll have to wait about 100 years or so....
ReplyDeleteOn another note, this reminds me of how all the profs would get us A's (Amy, Amanda, Andrea) mixed up all the time. Maybe they couldn't remember more than one A-name at a time. Which would explain why they all have the same first name. Something to think about....
It's funny, I have never women being addressed by their last name, but with men it is a mixed bag. If they are laid back, regardless of age, then the first name seems to work, and the last name is added only to break a degeneracy (Neal, Karl, John Lacy). I also did very stupid tricks to avoid ever calling Lambert anything, I just could never get out a "David".
ReplyDeleteBy now I am comfortable calling my in-laws by their first name, but it took a long time to get used to it. Funny social habits.