Breaking the tyranny of office hours: Overcoming professor avoidance

ABSTRACT

Studies have found that Faculty–Student Interaction (FSI) has many positive benefits for students including academic support, professional development, mentoring, and career planning. Research-intensive universities exhibit the lowest levels of faculty–student interaction within higher education. This article utilises qualitative methods to explore faculty, student, and staff perceptions of faculty–student interactions, particularly those that take place out of the classroom, at a research-intensive public U.S. university. We identify social distance between faculty and students based on unequal status within a rigid, hierarchically-organised culture as a key barrier to FSI. We then discuss methods that some of the faculty in our study used to mitigate their social distance with students in an effort to increase FSI.

KEYWORDS:

• Faculty-student interaction
• social status
• social distance
• organizational culture
• office hours
• academic support

Acknowledgements

We thank all of our study participants for their willingness to offer their time and perspectives. We are grateful for the feedback from colleagues and journal reviewers whose input helped to strengthen the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth K. Briody, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist and founder of Cultural Keys LLC, consulting practice that helps organisations understand and transform their culture. She is working on a 5-year NSF RED grant (Revolutionising Engineering Departments) with Purdue. Her recent books include Cultural Change from a Business Anthropology Perspective, 2018, with Maryann McCabe, and The Cultural Dimension of Global Business, 8^thed., 2017, with Gary Ferraro. She is currently Secretary of the American Anthropological Association.

Elizabeth Wirtz is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University. A cultural anthropologist, her research centres on: refugees/forced migration, reproductive/maternal health, fertility, sexual and gender-based violence, structural violence, humanitarianism in development/relief, organisational anthropology, human centred design in technology and engineering, and STEM higher education. She serves as a co-chair of the Gender Based Violence Topical Interest Group of the Society for Applied Anthropology and as the Special Interest Group Membership Coordinator for the Society for Medical Anthropology.

Angela Goldenstein is the Managing Director of MEERCat and comes to Purdue University with a decade of experience in the technology industry working for Google & Cisco. She has a BBA from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and is an MBA Candidate at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She excels at leading cross-functional projects, and on MEERCat, she drives the Centre’s overall strategy, operations, and research-to-practice initiatives. At Purdue, Angela’s passionate about driving change in the School of Mechanical Engineering and making the experience even better for future students.

Edward Berger is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education and Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, joining Purdue in August 2014. He has been teaching mechanics for over 20 years, and has worked extensively on the integration and assessment of specific technology interventions in mechanics classes. He was one of the co-leaders in 2013–2014 of the ASEE Virtual Community of Practice (VCP) for mechanics educators across the country. His current research focuses on student problem-solving processes and use of worked examples, change models and evidence-based teaching practices in engineering curricula, and the role of non-cognitive and affective factors in student academic outcomes and overall success.

ORCID

Edward J. Berger http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0337-7607

Notes

1 All names appearing in this article are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This research is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number DUE-1519412. This RED grant’s focus is ‘Revolutionizing Engineering Departments’ through significant sustainable changes (e.g. departmental culture, pedagogy, student professionalisation skills). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.