Dress in Academia

[Academic2]

[...] I don't think it's appropriate to teach adults in shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt. It just doesn't seem professional to me; yes, I know that makes me sound like a grumpy old man, but I've thought that since I got in the higher education sphere at 29 (and when I started my career as a primary/elementary school teacher at 21).

Unless I was teaching in, say, the Bahamas I would agree.

As a purely practical matter of pedagogy, I think it's important to be consistent in the signals we are sending students. If we want them to take what we do seriously, and by extension take seriously their own education and the idea of the university, then it seems to me we should dress in a way that communicates that seriousness of purpose.

It's a bit like an orchestral conductor wearing a tailcoat. It won't make one a better conductor, but it's a cultural cue which says to the audience, "This is serious. Pay attention."

Cheers,

Ac

 

[Academic2]

To amplify a bit on my opening remarks about the complexity of the university environment, here’s an idealized model of the chronological path from undergraduate student to tenured faculty member. It’s based on the structure of the American university, so things will be different, or at least differently named, in other countries. As one would expect, an individual’s dress usually changes as he progresses from stage to stage, but the various social pressures which engender that change are so various as to make prediction or even generalization difficult.

(I) undergraduate student
(IIa) graduate student
(IIb) graduate teaching assistant
(III) non-tenure-track temporary teaching position (ten years ago I might not have included this, but as even top universities rely more and more on the exploitation of recently minted Ph.D.s in what are more often than not dead-end jobs this category is now an almost standard step in the path, much to the shame of the American university system in my opinion)
(IV) tenure-track untenured teaching position
(V) tenured teaching position

For other purposes one would want this sequence to be partitioned more finely than I have done here (entering freshmen, for example, are still essentially high school students, whereas graduating seniors, one hopes, have been transformed to some degree by their undergraduate experience), but this should suffice for now to prompt some discussion if anyone is interested.

Certain of the transitions between stages are by tradition culturally significant in ways which transcend the rest of the hierarchy. In particular, graduation from college has for centuries been understood as marking the transition to adulthood, and the graduate is assumed to be prepared to comport himself appropriately in his country’s civic culture and participate responsibly in its political discourses. In many cultures important transitional events, such as the entry into adulthood, are marked by changes in dress.

A few remarks:

(1) Relevant to the hierarchies I mentioned in my first post (which were touched upon as well in the quoted excerpt from Pannapacker’s essay) is the fact that ascending the ladder is correlated not only with increased age and rank but also with increased academic specialization. Freshman dress usually says little about what discipline the student has chosen (if indeed one has been chose at that point), but a tenured professor in a law school may very well dress differently than a tenured professor in, say, the theater department.

(2) The age range in each category gets larger as one progresses up the ladder: most entering freshman are 17-19, while tenured faculty can be anywhere from early 30s to late 90s. Put differently, the higher one is on the larger the more diverse in age one’s peer group. Other factors being equal one would expect the shared discipline to promote uniformity in dress and the age differences to promote diversity.

(3) 3B, the graduate teaching assistant, is the bridge category: one is simultaneously a student and a teacher. If the end of the undergraduate stage marks the entrance into adulthood, the assistantship marks the entrance into the profession.

All this of course barely scratches the surface of the hierarchies involved, but it does give some indication the complexity of the situation and the difficulty of decoding the messages being sent by any individual’s choice of dress at any particular moment.

Cheers,

Ac

 

[Academic2]

(1) Looking back over my own academic career, I have tried to remember at what point my motivation for dressing the way I did transcended the usual adolescent mandate to leave one’s family and bond with one’s current peer group and began to be more future-oriented, taking into account the next step on the path. I’m pretty sure that for me it was graduate school. Anyone else remember this point in their lives?

(2) Sometimes getting tenure has no effect on dress, and sometimes it has a significant effect. Anyone have any experiences on this point you’d be willing to share?

Cheers,

Ac

 

[TweedyProf]

As a purely practical matter of pedagogy, I think it's important to be consistent in the signals we are sending students. If we want them to take what we do seriously, and by extension take seriously their own education and the idea of the university, then it seems to me we should dress in a way that communicates that seriousness of purpose.

A few quick thoughts (please read this in inner voice with professorial tone...I have a deep voice):

The reason AC states above is largely why I began wearing an odd jacket and tie when teaching. I was tired of the closing gap between student and teacher wrt formality (e.g. evidenced by emails addressing my by my first name "hey X", the occasional simple "hey" or "hey dude, where's the final"). Putting on the "uniform" emphasized the formality of my role as teacher. I'm not their friend nor do I have any intention to be.

At this point, I also dress for the pleasure of dressing well. I enjoy wearing the uniform even on non-teaching days. Indeed, I continue to do so in the summer, though this will force me to get more summer appropriate coats (ah, the tragedy).

I have wondered, however, whether I should advise my untenured colleagues to not dress like me (specifically, donning a pocket square). White linen square aside, there's something "peacocky" about the look especially when one's colleagues barely dress differently from preppy students. Anything that might drive your senior colleagues to take you less seriously is, perhaps, something to avoid. Fortunately, this has not been an issue locally: no colleague's dress requires the admonition. I suppose I'm not having the sartorial influence I hoped I would have.

 

[AlexE]

My academic experience lies within engineering departments of research universities in the U.S. and Germany with occasional excursions into the adjacent business schools. While one could observe changes as people moved from undergraduate to graduate studies (most engineering grad students work as research assistants from the beginning to completion of their graduate studies) and on to scientific staff positions (post-docs and research engineers ... the direct path from graduate student to assistant professor does not really seem to exist in engineering) and finally to the tenure track, the more pronounced differences seem to exist between disciplines and countries.

For instance, within engineering schools in the U.S. the evolution of dress is fairly limited and remains pretty much informal across all ranks. There is very little difference between undergrad and grad students (sneakers/flip-flops in combination with shorts/jeans and T-shirts/sweaters) at the staff level flip-flops and shorts will get rare and the occasional dress shirt or chino will appear. Professors will often be seen in chinos, dress shirt and some sort of dress shoe, but also here sneakers, jeans and T-shirts are present whereas suits are rare.
Similar patterns can be seen for engineering undergraduate students and Master students in Germany, PhD student, however, are typically employed in staff positions at the university and, hence, dress will be a bit more formal meaning dress shirts or polo shirts are combined with chinos which is also typical for other scientific staff. Professors will more often than not show up in suits or at least in odd jackets on days they teach classes or interact with external research partners such as companies or research institutes like the Fraunhofer Society (which happens very frequently). I assume this is driven by the role a professor plays in both systems: Independent researcher and teacher mainly interacting with other academics in the U.S. versus research institute manager with frequent interaction with the corporate world in Germany.
Dress at U.S. business schools also appears more formal on average than in the tech environment. Smart casual seems to dominate among MBA students and faculty is dressed at least business casual if not in suit and tie. My exposure here was limited, but I could see two main differences to engineering schools. Firstly, professors are much more exposed to corporations and hence have to match formality of clothing expected in this non-academic environment. Secondly, MBA students usually have several years of working experience in companies and hence have been accustomed for example to reserving the flip-flops for the weekends.

 

[Academic2]

[...]
I have wondered, however, whether I should advise my untenured colleagues to not dress like me (specifically, donning a pocket square). White linen square aside, there's something "peacocky" about the look especially when one's colleagues barely dress differently from preppy students. Anything that might drive your senior colleagues to take you less seriously is, perhaps, something to avoid. Fortunately, this has not been an issue locally: no colleague's dress requires the admonition. I suppose I'm not having the sartorial influence I hoped I would have.

Sorry for the delay. I'm trying to catch up.

Though I often get asked for advice by junior colleagues preparing their tenure case, no-one has ever asked me anything about dress. Like you, I’ve never encountered anyone departing sufficiently from local custom as to warrant a private word with them.

I suspect that like many people they’re not deeply aware of who dresses how, or why, or the implications of it—they simply follow the model set by their peers.

This is speculative on my part, since I’ve never discussed dress with any of my current colleagues, junior or senior. To the best of my memory the only time any of them have brought up the subject is simply, on occasion, to say something nice about what I’m wearing.

I have students mention my dress on three occasions in their anonymous course evaluations, however. The first was many years ago when one remarked that “he needs a new sport coat”; he or she was right about that. Much more recently two have commented that they like my three-piece suits.

Cheers,

Ac

 

[Academic2]

Quote:
Good for you. Seriously.

In my experience it does no-one any good—least of all the student—to pretend that we’re all peers. People aren’t born knowing about the hierarchy of expertise and accomplishment upon which the university depends (and upon which most of the rest of life depends too, for that matter), and it’s up to the faculty to impart this knowledge to the students. Not to do this is to fail in our role as mentors, in my opinion.

In the past decade or so I’ve seen some untenured faculty have difficulty making the transition between being a student and being a faculty member, and it’s by no means limited to dress, which, as you say, is a symbol of the thing and not the thing itself. The increasing reliance upon student course evaluations in the making of hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions contributes to the problem. Untenured or temporary faculty live in fear of these evaluations, and not without reason: they’ve come to believe that if the students don’t think of them as friends their jobs will be in jeopardy (and it can be). The system can have an infantilizing effect on the junior professoriate, trapping many in a role they should have progressed beyond.

But I digress.

Cheers,

Ac

 

[philosophe]

Some thoughts.

1. Having taught at private and public institutions, I'd say that public institutions are less formal.

2. Having taught at rural and urban institutions, I'd say that rural institutions are less formal.

3. Having lectured at many places, I'd say that dress in the northeastern US is more formal than elsewhere. There are exceptions; every campus has its aging hippies.

4. Young faculty are faced with the challenge of establishing authority in the classroom. This used to be primarily a problem for young women, but it has become a problem for young men as well. Once we have enough gray hair, this problem just evaporates--and we have to adjust to being seen as old(er) by students.

5. In my experience, formal dress is a plus with students and colleagues, but I've seen more than a few very casually dressed colleagues succeed. Perhaps the message is that those of us who perform in the classroom need to feel comfortable with what we're wearing. People with charisma can wear whatever they please.

6. In fields with more women, everyone dresses better. Just compare a visit to the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association with a visit to the meetings of the American Philosophical Association.

 

[philosophe]

Agree 100% with Ac's comments on student course evaluations. Students' narrative comments can be helpful, but those scantron evals aren't worth much.

 

[WhereNext]

Wow, some great stuff over the last few posts. I'm just going to dive in:
1) The "hierarchy" of steps at the top of the page is interesting. I do wonder how this reflects for people who have gone through each of these steps in that process. I have skipped some of those and also got into academia basically by accident, so I didn't get exposed (or just think about) many of the clues that would likely have been shown in those steps.
2) Student evaluations have great potential, but are often used poorly, both by students and by the university/college.
3) I don't want to be friends with the students, but I do think that I need to be open and welcoming (so, perhaps, "friendly"?) if I am going to be as impactful as possible in helping them learn (not just "teaching").
4) My formal way of dressing (always with a jacket and tie and pocket square, can be a suit or a 3 piece suit as well) often signals formality, so it can be a mixed message for some students: very formal dress, accessible demeanor. It's interesting to see how some students deal with this apparent dichotomy.
5) Having regularly changed jobs in higher education, I was struck by the idea of my dress in respect to promotion and/or tenure. I got one of my promotions by taking a job at another university. I have also been bumped up from academic to senior administrative roles in-house several times. Having not stayed at a single institution long enough to be eligible for academic promotion (by choice!), I would be interested to hear if any of you who have sat directly on a Tenure and Promotion panel have heard any mention of dress in those discussions.

 

[TweedyProf]

On junior colleagues, my concern would be with their establishing authority both within the classroom but also within their own departments. In the contexts I am familiar with, dressing in coat and tie stands out, but on teaching days, I think many faculty colleagues would appreciate the effort as a sign of seriousness. That is a good thing. But if my senior colleagues were to constantly comment on my dress, even if in seemingly positive terms, as a junior colleague, it might give me pause. Certainly, they should be making more frequent (positive) comments on what I actually do. There's no easy advice except to establish authority and seriousness in one's research and in contribution to departmental life. For jr. colleagues, comments on one's dress should invite a moment of reflection: how do my colleagues perceive me?

On teaching evaluations: I hate that teaching evaluations are used in P&T, where evaluations are the standard internet, rate on a scale, add a few comments. I would have no problem with a department using the data to provide one of many streams of feedback on a faculty's teaching, but that's about it. After that, it should be discarded. We all know how those scales can be manipulated. More useful are detailed letters from students (as my university requests, during tenure evaluation) and better, detailed assessments from a teaching evaluator (we have a unit on campus) where someone sits in on the class or runs a discussion group with students, moderating and asking directed questions. Those can provide helpful information on the quality of teaching.

On friendly demeanor etc.: speaking in respect of teaching undergraduates, maybe as I get older, my tolerance for the ready casualness of my interactions with them is evaporating. I do want my students to remember that a classroom is where they come to learn, to be challenged, and to be assessed. They have specific goals, which are set out in the syllabus. My job is to get them to achieve those goals. When they walked into the classroom, students are best advised to treat it like an actual job [e.g. doing Facebook or SF on your laptop is not something you should be doing on the job...ahem]. More substantive, collegial interactions are to be earned. At that point, later stage students who have taken many classes with you, written an honors thesis, etc. might have earned a certain standing, something more akin to being a graduate student. Then the rules change somewhat: they are closer to being colleagues.

This is not to say that we should put on a stern face, demeanor, rendering ourselves inaccessible. We should act in ways to promote learning and, I think, their maturing into adult, professional life (please don't ask where the final is being given just like you shouldn't ask your boss again when the monthly team meeting is). Being accessible, intellectually, is part of this. There are official outlets for their dealing with personal matters. In general, I think undergraduates are best served when they remember that I, like many others in their future, stand as an authority relative to them.

Graduate students, of course, bring in different rules, but enough of my musings.

 

[SeaJen]

I've served on half a dozen P&T committees at different levels and I have never heard anyone reference a candidate's appearance. Indeed, while the threat of capricious decisions and personal agendas is always perceived by junior faculty, I have never witnessed it. The closest was when two professors in a complimentary disciple to the candidate questioned whether she was really qualified to research her chosen theme; one more usually seen in their discipline than the candidate's. It smacked, at the time, as a personal issue the professors had with the theories to which the candidate espoused (like physicists who disagree with string theory suggesting a colleague should not be conducting research in it).

I think it's fair to say that we all hate the role students evals play in annual reviews and p&t, but I would say that peer evals are quite pointless. I've read hundreds of them and can't recall any that really criticised the instructor and very few that really offered meaningful developmental advice either. I chaired the Senate's faculty affairs committee recently to develop new processes and guidelines for peer reviews for online teaching and feel we made great strides, but now we have to address the f2f process, which we be someone else's burden.

 

[Claghorn]

I would love to have access to Earlham's student body for a study of power distance. Everyone from the president down is on a first name basis with students due to the school's Quaker background. Nobody is called "Dr" or "professor" just "Bill" or "Francis"

 

[unbelragazzo]

The hardest thing for me to get used to when I started teaching was signing my emails to them "Professor _______." Like I remember just sitting paralyzed in front of the keyboard, unable to refer to myself that way. I eventually just gave up. Now I usually sign my emails with my initials, occasionally just my first name. When teaching grad students, I always use just my first name.

 

[TweedyProf]

To be clear, I wasn't talking about dress coming up in P&T meetings where in almost all cases, I suspect, it would be inappropriate. Rather it was about the many subtle things that can, for good or ill, influence how you are perceived by your colleagues. Saying no too much as a junior faculty to service would be ill-advised; being know for being a bit of a dandy at the expense of being perceived as serious in Research, etc. my advice is to pick up on such signs.

Teaching evaluation is difficult. Having thought a lot about my teaching over the years, I feel I could write a useful summary but I don't have the time to do this. We have a teaching excellence unit on campus that will give instructors helpful feedback, but they, rightly, want to not be part of P&T. But if departments really value teaching as a criterion for promotion/tenure, as they should, universities cannot hand the job of assessment off to the students.