College Student Questions Answered: What am I supposed to call my professor?

Guest post by Dr. Steven Tolman, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Georgia Southern University The transition from high school to college brings many exciting adventures, yet it also poses a new environment with unfamiliar or unspoken expectations. With the imminent beginning of the new semester, a question on the minds of many new college students is, “What do I call my college professor?” Let’s begin by better understanding the type of faculty you’ll have in college. Typically, there are three types of faculty you will have as an undergraduate student, though their official titles may differ slightly:

• Tenured/Tenure Track Faculty – These faculty tend to make up your largest number of professors. While there are exceptions, tenure typically offers faculty who have it job security in their position and grants them additional academic freedom within their research and teaching (i.e. think of faculty who may teach sensitive subjects or conduct controversial research). In general, a new faculty member is hired into the college as a tenure track faculty member as an Assistant Professor. That individual has around 5-7 years to demonstrate excellence in teaching, research, and professional service to be promoted to the level of tenured Associate Professor. From there, Associate Professors have the option to seek further promotion and in doing so demonstrate the highest levels of success in teaching, research, and professional service to be promoted to Professor, which is the highest honor/title that can be bestowed upon a college faculty member.
• Lecturers/Instructors – There are good number of full-time faculty at colleges and universities who have renewable yearly contracts to teach up to 4-5 courses a semester yet do not have tenure nor are pursuing it. These faculty members often have a multiyear contract that is reviewed regularly and hopefully renewed for another period in time. While tenured/tenure track faculty focus heavily on all three areas of the faculty role of teaching/research/service, lecturers/instructors often do not have research expectations and typically focus their efforts primarily on teaching and/or service.
• Adjunct/Part-time faculty – This type of faculty can make up a significant number of college instructors. These individuals are often full-time practitioners and offer their expertise through part-time instruction. They may simply teach a one-time course or could be in a regular rotation to teach a course(s) each semester. However, they tend to not teach more than 1-2 courses a semester and there’s no guarantee that courses will be available for them each semester/year. These adjunct/part-time faculty typically focus solely on teaching the courses they’re assigned to and have little to no commitments for research/service beyond.

Now that you better understand the types of faculty you’ll have in college, what is the etiquette for how you address them in class or emails? Do you call them Dr.? Mr./Mrs./Ms.? Professor? First name? Unfortunately, the answer is not as obvious as you would like. In high school it was more common for you to refer to your teachers by Mr./Mrs./Ms. or their first name, however in the college setting there tend to be more formal expectations of how to address your faculty to show a level of respect. Students tend to default calling their faculty “Dr.”. While many of your faculty will indeed hold doctorates (Ph.D., Ed.D., J.D., M.D., etc.) and warrant being addressed as Dr., some will not, so this assumption could actually be considered disrespectful. In addition, regardless of their earned title, there will be faculty who want you to refer to them as Mr./Mrs./Ms. or by their first name. While the salutation of “professor” may seem the safest of these options, remember that the title of Professor connotes the highest achievement/promotion a tenured faculty member can receive. So, what do you call the faculty member teaching your class?  First and foremost, you will address them however they asked to be addressed (i.e. Professor Tolman, Dr. Tolman, Mr. Tolman, Steven). Professors will often share with you on the first day of class of how to address them. Should they not do so, you could look in the syllabus/information provided about the faculty member to see if they are listed as holding a doctorate (i.e. Ph.D., Ed.D., M.D. next to their name), and if so, it’s a safe bet to call them Dr. If that is not the case, you should feel comfortable in calling them professor. If they prefer to be addressed in another way, they’ll then let you know.  From my experience, as long as you’re genuinely respectful in how you address them, it will be well-received and your faculty will appreciate the respect you are showing them. Lastly, you can ALWAYS simply ask them how they prefer to be addressed and take the guessing game out of this!