Time, place, and manner restriction

Professor Robert Kaster and his colleagues in the classics department have a "door code." They keep their doors open when they're in their offices and happy to meet with students and other faculty.

When their doors are closed almost all the way, but not shut, that means to knock: they're busy, but might still be able to meet with people. And when their doors are closed, that means they're either not in or are preoccupied with research.

But most of the time, the doors in the department are open. Even though he holds official office hours twice a week, classics professor Josh Katz said that he really has office hours much of the day because he keeps his door open and is usually accessible to students seven to eight hours a day outside of class.

Because of Princeton's emphasis on undergraduate education — the University requires most faculty members to teach each year — professors here are usually in their offices at least four days a week, with some present as many as seven days a week.

But this isn't the case at Boston University, which is currently weathering a storm instigated by a proposal requiring professors to be on campus at least four days a week. The recommendation — proposed by a faculty panel appointed by the university provost — targets professors who choose to be on campus only two or three days a week, preferring to complete their research either at home or in libraries and museums.

Professors at BU charge the proposal is an inappropriate effort to weaken tenure and complain that the requirement would rob them of the flexibility needed for their research. At Princeton, many faculty members said they believe such a requirement is unnecessary.

"Princeton has a strong commitment to student-faculty interaction. This is the only research institution with junior independent work and senior theses for everyone," noted economics professor Elizabeth Bogan. "I think that the atmosphere encourages faculty interactions with students."

Electrical engineering professor Vincent Poor agreed that Princeton fosters an atmosphere where faculty members are eager to work with students.

"Most faculty, in my view, enjoy being in their office with their students more than any part of their jobs," he said. "Most faculty consider things that require them to be away from their offices to be nuisances."

While Bogan and Poor noted they enjoyed meeting with students during office hours, others expressed reservations about requiring faculty to be in their offices a certain number of days. Currently, the only notable regulation at Princeton limits faculty to one day a week of outside activities, such as consulting.

Economics professor Bo Honore — who taught approximately 135 students last semester in ECO 300 — said in an e-mail, "I had office hours twice a week, and I would say that nobody showed up approximately half the time.

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"Some people might interpret that as the students not making good use of my office hours. I don't," he noted. "It just illustrates that there is no need for rules that force faculty to have more office hours."

Other professors pointed out that students tend to attend office hours at varying times throughout the semester. Economics professor Robert Shimer said that except for students who were deciding whether to take his courses, students generally didn't show up at the beginning of the semester.

He also noted that because problem sets for his class were due on Thursday, students tended to come to his Tuesday office hours more than on Thursday.

Bogan explained that formal rules regarding office hours might inhibit professors from performing their work. "There's a time conflict between spending time with students and doing a lot of publishable research," she said.

"Some faculty do need to go to Washington, D.C. and to conferences around the world. And it's good for students that faculty are connected to the real world," Bogan noted.

Poor added that research helps professors stay on top of new developments in their fields and enlivens their teaching efforts. "Teaching would become very stale if faculty weren't doing research," he explained.

Efforts to regulate faculty members' work days would hamper research efforts, explained Paul Krugman, economics and Wilson school. "While it's good for faculty to be around, a rigid four-day schedule would be very discouraging and would make it impossible to recruit top faculty," said Krugman, who noted that he works at home most Fridays and many other days.

Like most Princeton professors, though he isn't in on the "door code" in the classics department, Poor keeps his door open when he is in his office and available to students. But he can't always guarantee that he will be in his office outside of office hours — he must attend faculty meetings and meet other demands.

"My official office hours are when I guarantee that I'll be in," Poor explained.