Is there anything wrong with faculty socializing with grad students?

Question

I was a little bit surprised to read this comment thread on the Chronicle of Higher Education, which suggests (among other things) that faculty shouldn't fraternize with grad students. I think this site has a different slant than CHE, so I thought I would bring up the question here. Is there anything wrong with faculty socializing with grad students?

I agree that professors should definitely avoid getting romantically involved with grad students, or getting drunk with them. Moreover, I agree that a heightened sense of boundaries is important.

But is there any reason for a professor, who would otherwise be interested, to decline offers to attend parties thrown by grad students, or to go hiking with them, or to play soccer with them, or to go to bar trivia with them? I've observed this to be common in math departments, and appreciated by faculty and students alike.

Answer 1

I suppose it depends on whether one views grad students as hoi polloi who need to be kept on the other side of a "class boundary" (as the CHE comment put it), or whether one views them as colleagues who just happen to not be as far along on their academic journeys. I prefer to see them as colleagues.

For what it's worth, when I was a grad student my advisor often had us (his research group) over to his house for dinners and drinks, and I'd often play racquetball with one of my dissertation committee members. This made us feel appreciated and made it much more palatable to put in crazy hours when needed to meet a proposal or paper submission deadline. And now, as a tenured faculty member, I take my students out to lunches and dinners and beers and hiking trips (alas, I'm too old for racquetball now). I enjoy getting to know my students as whole individuals, and find that the socialization engenders a sense of community that makes things more pleasant for everyone.

Socializing with students is very different from being "buddies" with them: the relationship between a professor and an advisee is very different than that between friends. But IMHO this is no different than any other professional relationship with any other colleague: there are some things that are fine to share and others that are best left unexplored.

Answer 2

In answer to your main question: NO

Depending on the rules of the faculty, there is nothing particularly wrong with academics interacting with grad students, particularly if the boundaries you suggested are adhered to.

I am fortunate enough to see this from the perspective of being a high school teacher and as a grad (PhD) student - in the grad-professor interactions, both parties are adults, professionals in their fields and are largely working together on the project. The supervisors/advisors are not teachers in the traditional sense, but as their role states - advisors (supervisors in Australia) - often as co-authors of mutual papers, effectively a colleague.

Answer 3

Just know the boundary between "socializing" and "fraternizing" and you should be fine. I've seen a few examples where crossing this boundary was rather detrimental to the PhD advising process (though nobody got fired or expelled; it just got very difficult to force the student to meet her obligations and to carry out the required assignments because the student got an idea that she had a right to argue with and to question everything she was told to do). However, I don't think that maintaining some "class hierarchy" makes much sense at the PhD student level or even during extracurricular undergraduate activities like Putnam training, etc. though I'm all for it in the low level undergraduate classes ever since the time I was being kept on teaching nothing higher than engineering calculus for four years in a row, and the idea of introducing some kind of "faculty uniform" like in the military is not altogether alien to my mind.

One thing to remember however is that no matter how friendly you are with your students outside the classroom, when you are lecturing, you are the boss and they are subordinates. The joint soccer game or beer jug yesterday should not become an excuse for not turning in the homework today. If this principle is understood and followed by both parties, I guess that's all "hierarchy at the graduate level" we need.

As to the journal article in question, it was written by an administrator, albeit a clever one. Most advices he gave are excellent but at some places you certainly get the feeling I had some twenty years ago when I was pulled over for speeding by a policeman, asked him what would be the maximal speed they would allow in that state (North Dakota), and got the reply "Sorry son, but all I can tell is that if you go under the posted limit, we won't bother you").

Answer 4

A rather emphatic "No!"

I socialize and have socialized with my advisers and other related professors many times. In fact, its rather encouraged in our department.

We have an informal departmental event almost every week called HBI (Human Beer Interaction - yes, rather cheesy given the HCI focus of our department) where graduate students and faculty in the past have been known to hang out and talk about different things.

Different professors socialize differently. Some professors have movie nights with their lab. Others organize dinners/lunches/pizza making sessions at their houses. Its a great opportunity to meet their better halves and families. Its also really great to go to the major conferences (CHI/CSCW) in our areas and hobnob with the professors there. I found the linked article to be rather out of sync - at least as far as our department of information science is concerned.

Anecdotally, I know that in other departments in our university, there have been co-ed professor-student intramural soccer/softball teams, ice cream sessions, beers, dinners etc.

Answer 5

Answering as a student: No.

My teachers and the students at my institute (Life sciences, for reference) socialize a lot. We have a yearly volleyball tournament in which my teachers participate, have drinks with them sometimes, are allowed to call them by their first name and I had dinner at their house for an article in the school newspaper. You could almost describe the relation between the two groups as informal. This isn't always the case at the other institutes at my university.

My point is that socializing helps a lot with the work ethic and morale. Because we know our teachers and professors better, it's easier to have meetings and productive discussions. We also tend to work together as a team more (where the professor has the lead obviously). We're all adults after all.
An important factor is that we never forget the professional distance between us. They are the professors/teachers and we are students. At the end of the day, the faculty still has the lead and determines what goes down. There's nothing wrong with students and professors getting to know each other a little better but that barrier must be crystal clear.

Answer 6

One of the issues I have encountered is that PhD students and even professors sometimes like to use their positions as a weapon to prey on younger students, especially the females. For this reason, it is better safe than sorry for anyone older than 30 to keep away from the younger students.

Answer 7

There might be a problem here. Now this is somewhat related to what happens in corporate . If the student is a brown -noser then that is ok. He might be doing this(socializing ,which often leads to doing personal favors for adviser) to further his career. But if he is a backstabber ,he might get away with that crap , because he is close to that adviser and adviser completely trusts him.

I have personally seen cases where the grad student would go to an adviser's home ,babysit her kids , do her some personal chores and then speak crap about other students .And since the adviser thought this student was sincere, she would believe in whatever he said sans verification.

It is always better to have a friendly relationship with peers but with an Adviser you should be a friendly acquaintance ,but not a friend . A manager (in this case an adviser or mostly lab supervisor) should always keep his distance from his student.