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What's In a Name?: Professor Names and Titles

The summer before I enrolled in my PhD program, I worked in Academic Affairs at another institution. I had previously worked in the office, and I was happy to return. It was a wonderful insight into the backstage of academia: I organized credential files for faculty members, sent out salary letters, and observed the comings-and-goings of the university. Perhaps most importantly, however, I had a front row seat to watch four powerful women.


You see, at this university, every single associate provost was a woman. They came from the math department, the political science department, and--yes--the English department. They flew in and out of the office to meetings, classes, campus events, and so on. They published, taught, advocated, and worked hard as hell. And they knew that I wanted to be a professor and that I was just starting my career.


One day, one of the provosts approached my desk and began speaking with me about my impending graduate program and whether I’d be teaching. When I told her that yes, I would be teaching my own classes, she immediately responded, “Don’t you dare correct your students when they call you Professor. I worked too hard for my students to think they are supposed to call me Mrs.”


I know that some people may find that snobby or overly particular. You might even feel like it would have been dishonest of me--a graduate student--to not correct the students I taught. But let me assure you that this mandate emerged from much different motivations.


As a woman of color, she had to constantly struggle to be recognized as an authority, as an expert, as a professor. When she walked into a classroom, her students did not always recognize her as the instructor. She told me that her students entered college assuming all women were “Mrs” or “Miss,” and if I corrected them, I’d be furthering that assumption. I would not only be telling them that I was not a professor but that women--particularly black and brown women--were not professors. I needed to leverage the privilege I had as a white woman to help shift perspectives of power and expertise.



For the past few decades, we have been struggling as a culture to define or redefine what it means to be an authority. Many of our students have a particular image of a professor in their minds. This image might include a tweed blazer with elbow patches. It may include liberal bumper stickers. It may even include a brown leather jacket and a long whip--wait, no, that’s just Indiana Jones. But generally speaking, their image of a professor is white, male, middle-aged, heterosexual, and a little rich. To many students, that is the definition of an authority and of an expert. We need to change the visualization of a professor and help our students see and recognize the wide range of expertise.


And that doesn’t even begin to account for the students who want to see you as an authority figure!


When I first began teaching, I was 24 and fresh from my MA program. Half of my students were over the age of 40. Many of them were older than my parents. I didn’t feel comfortable acting as though I had any sort of authority over them. In an attempt to mitigate my discomfort and to make myself more approachable as an instructor, I introduced myself as Margaret.


My students never once called me Margaret. I was called “Miss,” “Professor,” and “Excuse Me,” for an entire semester. My students wanted to see me as an authority figure and they wanted to treat me as one. By introducing myself to them as my first name, I had made it impossible. By trying to make them more comfortable with me, I had made them less comfortable (this was also due to me trying to perform a role that was likely not authentic for me. See more about teaching performances here).


When I embrace my name--Dr. Mauk--I am embracing my public role as an authority and try and expert. I’m embracing professional and personal boundaries. I’m embracing potentially outdated models of classroom hierarchies. I know that there are reasons other professors, instructors, and teachers may resist that name and that there are many other names suitable to lead a class. That’s fine. You have to do what is right for you, for your pedagogy, and for your students.


What do you go by in the classroom? How does that name help establish a relationship with your students? What advice have you received in the past about your “classroom name”? Share your experiences and questions in the comments below!


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