authority
Back in spring I joined an "Academic Mamas" group on FB, and it's been quite interesting. One thing that has recently come to the fore, in many different threads, is what students should call their teachers. There are a lot of people in the group who are very exercised by ensuring that their students call them "Prof. X" or "Dr. X" and not "hey [
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For example, I've noticed something among social groups of women that I interact with that I don't notice among mixed social groups or ones that are primarily men: people who take a strong position that people with a PhD (as opposed to MD) who use the address "Dr" are viewed as being pretentious and stuck-up and think they're better than anyone else. This is the sort of gendered aspect I'm talking about. In a context like that, a female PhD can find herself in the no-win position of either declining to claim her hard-won status or of being sneered at for doing so, in an atmosphere where a male PhD using the title of Dr is treated as a neutral act.
When I attended UC Berkeley, the title culture that I encountered was both entirely unofficial and fairly rigidly adhered to: undergrads always addressed PhDs as Dr or Professor (as appropriate -- not all the PhDs on staff were professors); grad students addressed PhDs/professors by first name; but when grad students were talking to undergrads *about* a PhD/professor they used the title.
Since I'm not in academia, the question doesn't come up as often for me, but if I am required to provide a form of address (e.g., on a form) or if someone uses a form of address to me in anything but the most passing interaction, I will insist on Dr. The issue *does* come up occasionally at work, because many people with science PhDs explicitly include Dr (or a post-posed "PhD") in their e-mail ID blocks, and these sometimes get wielded as status weapons. So I've occasionally made a point of doing the same. But the practices are fall less standardized than they were at UCB.
I'm a bit curious why you feel that using a professional title is "holding students at arms length". Or why the existence of a formal distance between professor and student would be a detriment to teaching. (It reminds me a little of the people who want their children and their children's friends to address them by first name because they want to be "the cool parent".) University is an inherently structured and hierarchical institution. You aren't you're students' friend, you're their teacher.
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This is definitely a My Personal Experience thing: I don't like being Dr. Uckelman or Prof. Uckelman to my students because I'm not entirely sure who that person is and I am not entirely comfortable being that person, and I feel awkward trying to teach while being that person and thus I don't teach as well.
As for formal distance between professor and student -- I don't think it has to be detrimental. But again, I think it is detrimental for me and my teaching. This has a big part to do with why I went into teaching in the first place: The pastoral side of things. There are many aspects of being a university student in the 21st C that are already hard enough, and I don't want "an uncomfortable distance between you and the person who could help you" to be another barrier. What level of distance is "uncomfortable" goes both ways; I am more comfortable as 'Sara', so that is what I prefer/promote, but if the student is more comfortable with Dr. Uckelman, then I am fine with that (while continually making it clear that if they would be more comfortable with 'Sara' then I am okay with that). I have had some students in my office telling me of really sad and scary things, but what I find hardest about these encounters is how scared they sometimes are of telling these things and asking for help, even if it's just a week's deadline extension. I want whatever distance is between me and my students to be small enough that when they ARE in this position, they feel they can come to me for fair treatment and no judgement.
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