E-mail puts professors @ students' fingertips

"I just found out my best friend's dad is going to be in Princeton for an hour this afternoon," Sarah Peteraf '09 recently wrote in an email to her Spanish lecturer, Holly Brown. "I know this isn't really a legitimate excuse for missing class, but I thought I should let you know why I won't be there."

A decade ago, a message of this type would probably not have reached a professor. Either the student would have skipped the class without notifying the professor or would have felt compelled to attend class anyway.

As email use has risen, though, the social barrier between students and professors has disappeared. Under the veil of email, students are less shy about approaching their professors or telling them personal details about their lives.

Though this informal communication can be a nuisance for professors, it also has its advantages. At a university that prides itself on its low student-to-faculty ratio, email makes it even easier for students to contact professors.

"Email's a great way to break that initial ice," Maryam Khan '08 said. "Once you start interacting with [professors], I think there's always potential for a great relationship on an intellectual and personal level."

Alec Dun, a history lecturer, said he is in favor of emails because they enhance his relationships with students. He cautions students, though, to read over emails before sending them.

"Firing off email is a dangerous move for anybody," Dun said.

Alissa Dubnicki '09 said she has a tendency to approach email casually.

"I proofread once, but I don't spend that much time on them," she said. "I'm not really intimidated by my professors, but I guess if I were more so, I would spend more time on it."

Conventions surrounding email are more casual than other forms of communication, English professor John Fleming GS '63 noted, leading students to make typographical and grammatical errors.

"Now and again you get a really annoying email that is the product of thoughtlessness and discourtesy, but the same sort of thing happens in ordinary speech," Fleming said.

One of professors' pet peeves is receiving an email asking for lecture notes when the student did not attend class.

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"From the student's point of view, what the student is doing is look, 'I'm showing you that I didn't come to class. I'm sorry. I'm showing you that I'm interested,' "Fleming said. "He or she is not thinking, 'Oh wait a minute, what I'm asking this person to do is give another lecture.' "

At Princeton, though, informality does not appear to be that big a problem. Students interviewed said that they try to be respectful of their professors and email mainly academic or administrative questions.

They also treat emailing a professor of a big lecture differently than emailing a preceptor or a professor of a small seminar-style class. Peteraf, who skipped class to meet her friend's dad, said this factor influenced her decision to email her Spanish professor.

"It was for a language class, which is smaller and more intimate," she said. "We call our professor by her first name so things are less formal. I think it's more responsible to explain the reason I was skipping class than to just not show up."

Several professors encourage their students to email them and try to be as available as possible. Khan said that several of her professors have even given her their home phone numbers.

English professor Jeff Nunokawa said he is a huge advocate of email. "Short of taking an advertisement out in the 'Prince,' I have done everything in my powers to encourage such communication," he said.

Professors now appear to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through cyber space. Email has created a sense of immediacy and students sometimes complain if their professors do not get back to them right away.

"I decided a catastrophe had taken place when a professor I correspond with very frequently took more than 24 hours to write back," Khan said. "And even that was long. I was more used to two or three hours at most."

Just because professors can be contacted does not mean they feel the need to respond right away.

"I answer it if I want to answer it or if I think it needs answering," Fleming said.

Nunokawa said that the around-the-clock nature of email opens up new possibilities for intellectual debate.

"I look at the times that I receive emails, and I think, wow, this is really great," Nunokawa said. "We have a medium now that allows for people to send out their thoughts when they are ready to send them out, which may or may not be during the period of the precept or office hours, but rather at 3 a.m. on Wednesday, or 11 p.m. on Saturday."