by Stephen Z. Goldberg

All faculty are expected to keep a regular schedule of office hours and the fact that the faculty is available to students is one of the strong points of Adelphi. Students who choose to avail themselves of faculty office hours are taking an advantage of a resource unique to universities such as Adelphi. One of my strongest recollections of my undergraduate years, at a university that I love where I got what I believe to have been an excellent education, was timidly going to a professor's office to ask if he would endorse a recommendation written by a graduate teaching assistant. I knew that the professor had no idea who I was.

During my many years at Adelphi I have had a variety of experiences with office hours. Some of the good ones have been real high points in my teaching experience; some of the bad experiences have been among the most depressing.

For many of us, office hours represent a time to return phone calls, read mail or journals, or do other academic work. Sometimes, when they are scheduled right after a class they are a chance to unwind after an intense experience in the classroom. Of course, none of these activities are what office hours are designed for, but it is an inescapable fact that most students do not actually take advantage of the opportunities office hours provide. I should add that I recognize that for some students office hours are not at convenient time, even if a faculty member has scheduled those hours at a variety of different times. My personal strategy is to schedule hours before and/or after a scheduled class and at a number of other times as well, trying as best I can to avoid times when I know students to be in another class.

Probably the biggest obstacle for students coming to my office hours is their fear that they will show their lack of understanding of material I have covered. Of course, this is exactly why a student should come to office hours, but human nature being what it is, I am not surprised. I think it is exactly for this reason that faculty should encourage students to utilize all manner of academic support, especially peer tutoring which is beneficial to both the tutor and the person being tutored.

I am probably perceived as having a rather strict classroom demeanor, although I try to sprinkle jokes and stories into the class period to give students a chance to relax their brain cells for at least a little bit of time. I also try to convey to students that I do not consider any question to be silly or stupid. Any student who asks a question is seeking knowledge and should be encouraged, although in many cases class time can not or should not be devoted to the answer. I encourage students to pursue these questions during office hours. Perhaps my classroom persona discourages students from coming to my office, but I think that students who do come find me concerned with their specific questions and issues. Office hours give the faculty member important, albeit limited, feedback about the students' understanding of material presented. Students usually come with very specific questions, and a careful hearing of those questions can not only indicate the concerns of that specific student but often cause me to reiterate a point, in a new way, to the entire class.

So now on to some of the highs and the lows. Clearly the most exciting office hour experiences are when a student comes in to discuss material and the student has attained a high level of mastery which enables the discussion to move beyond what was presented. Is this common? Most certainly not, but it does happen on occasion. More commonly good students come in when they are stuck on a specific point and it is relatively easy to work with such students to clarify the point of confusion or misconception. One of my best experiences with office hours was a few years ago in the chemistry course for nursing students when a group of three students who were friends all turned up each week. They always had a variety of questions and I think the small group environment was beneficial to all of us. In a sense they had the benefit of asking questions directly to me, but also of essentially doing peer tutoring for each other as they explained answers among themselves. I would say that these students, who were by no means the top students in the class, each improved her performance by a full grade. In this case the improvement was truly performance based.

Since we are all human and want to know that students have some interest in doing well in our courses, another important case is that of the mediocre student who makes a real effort to try to improve by utilizing office hours. Clearly, especially in a quantitative subject like chemistry, we are not in the business of confusing effort for performance. However all of us have encountered a student where the grade could be either, for example a C+ or B-. The hard working student, who has made the effort to come to office hours and has clearly devoted time to the course is much more likely to get that B-, at least from me.

So what are some of the low points associated with office hours. Clearly the worst situation is when students come in to discuss their failing performance on an exam. One wonders where they were when they could have come in to ask questions which might have helped them learn the material. How many times have we heard a failing student ask, "what must I get on the next exam to get an A in this course?" Closely related is the situation when a student does come in and it is clear that his/her level of comprehension is extremely low. Here, I believe honesty and sympathetic counciling is most important. In my own field I encounter many students who think they want (or their parents pressure them) to be doctors, despite the fact that they have either poor records or no background in science from high school. In these cases a sympathetic ear and encouragement that different people have different strengths is important.

Moving down through the low points we arrive at the student whose only question is "will this be on the exam?" Perhaps this is not as bad a question as it strikes me. It is certainly legitimate from the student's point of view to try to optimize the effectiveness of his/her study time, but I must confess that I am still put off by the question since to me it reflects a lack of interest in the material itself.

My worst experience was with a student in Fall 2002. He was a transfer student from another four year college who was enrolled in Chemistry 111. After a disastrous performance on the first exam he came to me with some questions about the homework assignments related to material on the second exam. Basically, his questions were, "how do you do these problems?" When I asked him what he had tried he replied that he hadn't looked at the problems at all, he just wanted me to tell him how to do them. After a bit of discussion I tried again with a new set of problems, which I discovered he had also not ever attempted. Again he simply wanted me to do the problems for him. When I explained that he had to play an active role in the process he stormed out of my office. Given his attitude he should have withdrawn from the class, but simply stopped coming and ultimately got an F in the course.

Of course such narratives should never end on a down note, so I want to mention one of the really true high points of office hours. This is the ability to interact with students on a personal basis independent of the course and course material. In Fall 1983 I returned from a sabbatical in Israel and began sprinkling my lectures with anecdotes and stories about my experiences. Some years later there was an Egyptian woman in one of my classes. She came to my office to talk simply because she recognized from my stories that I might have some understanding of her difficulties being away from her family and alone in a new culture so different from her own. The fact that she viewed me as a sympathetic person (and a male no less) to whom she could talk is a memory which I treasure. When she had trouble getting a flight home for the intersession break she came to me and I was very pleased that I was able, as a result of my own frequent flying experience on a certain airline, to contact the airline and successfully negotiate for her.

So, office hours can be good, bad, and sometimes ugly. But office hours ultimately can be one of the most important venues for interactions between faculty and students.