Communicating Effectively With Professors: Email

The professors who teach your college or university classes are almost guaranteed to be very busy people who often wish they could clone themselves to get everything they need to get done accomplished. That's why it is sometimes best to communicate with your professors via email. They are more likely to have the time to give you a well-thought out answer to your question while sitting in front of their computer in their offices or at home than when they are flying out the door to get to their next class or meeting. Keep in mind that it's quite common for higher education classes to be taught by adjunct faculty who often have teaching obligations at multiple colleges and universities and often have to be at multiple campuses on the same day, so giving them a little more breathing room to answer your questions or address your concerns via email is an appreciated courtesy you can extend to them.

Here's a few common sense tips I give to my students to make communicating with your professors by email more effective.

• Please make sure that each email includes your name, the class name, and the days and time your class meets. We often teach multiple sections of the same class at the same time. For instance, if I received an email from a student who only told me "I'm in your general psychology class," that could be someone from any of four different classes at three different campuses. 
• It's a good idea to use your campus email account for contacting faculty because it's pretty common for accounts from Yahoo, Gmail, etc. to be automatically sorted into the spam folder by campus computing systems.
• The more specific you are about who you are and what help you need from us, the better we can help you.
• Please do, however, check the syllabus, assignment instructions, or any other resources before emailing us. You will often find that your answer is already available to you. 

Here's also another set of tips about sending effective emails to professors written by a college student.

8 Tips on Writing a Professional Email

I hope you find this information helpful. Happy communicating!