From time to time, I become obsessed with names and titles. My first big research project as an undergraduate was about name magic in the fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin." As an assistant professor, I learned about the scholarly field of toponymy when I wrote an article about a 19-year legal battle over the name of a Chicago street.
I avidly read articles, advice columns, and Internet discussions about married women's choices for their names and college instructors' preferences for how they want to be addressed by students.
A conversation with my grandfather in my early 20s had a profound effect on my thinking about names and titles. In my family, we always called my grandparents "Fred and Norma." When I finally asked Fred about the origins of that unusual practice, he explained that they wanted us to respect them for what they offered us in our lives, not for their status as grandparents (as it turned out, my grandmother was not on board with this decision, and my younger cousin learned to refer to "Fred and Grandma").
Fred's comments spilled directly over into my teaching. I wanted students to respect me for what I could teach them, not because I was in a formal position of authority or had more degrees than they had.
I was also influenced by my mother, who had attended Bryn Mawr College where, as is the case at many elite institutions, the professors all had Ph.D.'s but were always called "Miss" or "Mr.," never "Dr." Decades later, my mother still refers to the Greek professor after whom I was named as "Miss Lang."
From those familial influences, I concluded that the only people who really needed courtesy titles other than Mr. and Ms. were those who worked in life-or-death situations: medical professionals and members of the military. I could see nothing in academic life that demanded the instant recognition of the teacher's authority via a title.
With that combination of small "d" democracy and academic reverse snobbery in my background, I resolved that I would always invite my students to call me Amanda or, if they did not want to be on a first-name basis, Ms. Seligman. Under no circumstances should they need to call me Professor Seligman or Doctor Seligman. In the spirit of symmetry, of course, I would call my students by their first names.
In all of my teaching -- from my first stint as a teaching assistant through my first few years as a tenured associate professor -- I followed through on that resolution.
And it worked fine while I was a teaching assistant. Even when I taught as an adjunct, my relative youthfulness stimulated the students to address me as Amanda (or sometimes by no name at all). You might think that was a risky move for a young female scholar. But I did not notice any adverse consequences. For reasons that elude me, students rarely challenge my authority directly or write whiny, disrespectful evaluations at the end of the semester.
Now that I am an associate professor, however, it has become harder and harder for me to win my students' cooperation in building my ideal egalitarian classroom. Few undergraduates or graduate students seem comfortable calling me Amanda. Most ignore my invitation, and opt to call me "Professor" or "Doctor Seligman." I once choked on a pretzel when a graduate student walked into the lunchroom and greeted me with a cheery, "Good afternoon, Doctor!"
I teach at an urban public university with a mix of students who, no doubt, have varied reasons for feeling uncomfortable with my informality. Some of my students come from cultural backgrounds that make it unthinkably rude to address a professor informally, even at her request. I am sure that others regard my invitation as irreconcilable with my apparently intimidating classroom mien. Perhaps for some of the graduate students, my stated preference undermines their own aspirations to the title of doctor.
And, of course, I am only getting older than my traditional college-aged students. As I reach the point at which I could be their mother, I seem less and less like someone they would ever call by a first name.
Then there are the many students who are older than I am; old enough, in fact, to be my parents, people whom I would normally address by a courtesy title and their last names, rather than their first names.
In reading various articles and online discussions about academic titles, I also discovered how unusual my preferences were among my peers. Some Ph.D.'s insist that their years of hard work and tuition bills have earned them the title of doctor, and that students who ignore that status are rude. Others take the position that anyone who teaches in a college is a professor and deserves the title, even if their rank is adjunct or instructor.
Female faculty members seem especially sensitive about titles, noticing the disrespect that seems implied when they are called Ms. (or even worse, Miss or Mrs.), while the same students address male professors as Doctor or Professor.
Shouldn't I show solidarity with my colleagues, especially those who are not as advantageously situated as I am?
But the real breaking point for me lay in the fact that students mostly address me formally -- whatever I call them and whatever I ask them to call me.
Given that reality, it seemed imbalanced to continue to address them by their first names. So starting last fall, I changed my practice. Instead of inviting undergraduates to call me by my first name, I simply addressed them all by their last names, with "Ms." or "Mr." attached, and without specifying my own preferences.
That resulted in some humorous teaching moments. Once I accidentally called a student by her first name in class, and, without thinking, apologized to her for that. Another student sitting nearby asked incredulously, "Did you just apologize for calling her by her first name?" I had, and I'm still not sure why.
Students often start an e-mail message to me by writing, "This is Jane Smith, in your history-methods class. ..." But this year, I received an e-mail message that began, "This is Ms. Smith, or Jane Smith, from your history-methods class."
I have also noticed some more serious effects, ones that make me question whether my change in practice is a good idea. At our largely commuter campus, students have little opportunity to really get to know one another. I worry they may feel even more disconnected when they follow my example and address one another formally (which they have to do, because I have not dropped their first names into class discussion).
Two of my students reported the awkwardness (and humor) of running into each other at a Milwaukee Admirals' hockey game and stumbling over their mutual greeting. Could it be that they are less friendly outside of class because they do not know one another's first names?
In class, when I asked for their opinion, my students expressed mixed responses to my experiment. A young man asserted adamantly that he valued being treated as a professional in the classroom and was more motivated to participate. But a young woman expressed her discomfort that my formality made her feel more like an adult than she was ready to be. Two of the 15 course evaluations responded to the question of "How could the professor improve this course?" with a plea for me to call them by their first names.
After that discussion, I was touched that a few students began to call me Amanda and invited me to call them by their first names.
My own feelings about students seem to have changed, too, since I started treating my relationships more formally. At the beginning of the semester, I've noticed, it takes me longer to learn their names. And at the end of the semester, their names disappear from my memory more quickly than they used to, an unsettling consequence for a name-conscious person.
Just recently, I was thinking about my most talkative student from a fall-semester class, a young woman whom I must have called on about five times every class period for months -- always by her last name. But for the life of me I could not remember either her first or last name until I looked it up in my grade book.
And I suspect that fewer students who talk to me in my office hours are mentioning personal problems or other aspects of their lives that make them seem to me more fully human, people whom I care about rather than simply students whom I teach.
When I next enter a classroom of new faces, I am not sure what I will call the students. Despite my proclivities, the growing gap between our ages and status suggests that my success in persuading them to call me Amanda will only decrease. Will I accept the asymmetry of our relationships but encourage myself to recognize the students as memorable people by calling them by their first names, or will I continue to act as though our relationships are only temporary and public?
None of the students questioned my right to set the terms for how I would be addressed -- no matter how I tried to level the field. Perhaps I should just make peace with my authority.
