E-mail helps student-teacher relationship

Sending an e-mail to a professor asking for an extension is never the best idea -- especially if the paper was already due.

College juniors Lev Gottlieb and Seth Shapiro learned that the hard way last year in their "Ancient Greece" course.

When they arrived to class one day, Classical Studies professor Jeremy McInerney announced that the first paper, worth 10 percent of their grade, was due at the end of lecture.

Gottlieb and Shapiro, not knowing a paper had been assigned, rushed home to crank out five-page papers. They made it back to class two minutes after class had ended, and McInerney refused to accept the papers.

They then sent an e-mail that made them famous -- at least among the several hundred students taking "Ancient Greece."

"We wrote that we did not know about the assignment, and that this was not typical of us," Gottlieb said.

They also happened to include the fact that they had very high GPAs, something that Gottlieb admits "we probably should not have done."

McInerney's response came in the form of an e-mail to the entire class listserv in which he included Gottlieb and Shapiro's original e-mail.

"He made us look like idiots," Gottlieb said.

Shapiro and Gottlieb promptly dropped the course, and so ended their e-mail horror story.

Last Sunday, The New York Times published an article that used other such stories to illustrate that e-mail is destroying the student-professor relationship.

And based on Shapiro and Gottlieb's story, one might arrive at that conclusion.

But on the whole, the advent of e-mail has enhanced virtually every facet of the student-professor relationship.

English professor Paul Hendrickson, who teaches two upper-level writing seminars, sends at least one weekly e-mail to his class as well as personal e-mails to many of his students.

"I have purposely tried to be open to students with e-mail ... because it further establishes a close working relationship," he said.

But not all professors are as accessible online as Hendrickson is.

Political Science professor John DiIulio plans to retire as "the last dinosaur."

Translation: He does not allow students to e-mail him.

"I prefer face-to-face contact with students," he said.

DiIulio is not the norm at Penn, though.

"I think today's technological environment ... makes more effective teaching and learning possible," College of Arts and Sciences Dean Dennis DeTurck said.

And while Hendrickson's experiences have been "far more positive than negative," he believes that, "like so many things in life, it comes down to boundaries."

Just last week, a prospective transfer student e-mailed Hendrickson a laundry list of questions about his documentary course. He responded with a terse note providing a link to the English Department Web site.

Clearly, e-mail is not a perfect tool. When a prospective student expects a response from a National Book Award winner -- at a school he doesn't even attend -- there is definitely a problem.

But such cases are few and far between.

And while DiIluio prefers face-to-face contact with students, Political Science professor Avery Goldstein -- who has taught at Penn since 1985 -- has not seen a drop-off in the number of students who attend his office hours since e-mail became popular.

"Some students have actually dropped by [for office hours] because their interest in a topic has been provoked by an e-mail relevant to course material."

There are always going to be extreme examples of misuse when it comes to e-mail -- be it inaccessible professors or disrespectful students.

But on the whole, most Penn community members appreciate the enormous benefits that e-mail has added to the learning process. It makes communication between students and professors more convenient, and it also allows professors such as Goldstein to send relevant news stories to his class -- the list goes on.

And for Gottlieb and Shapiro, well, they now have a story to tell their grandchildren.

Josh Pollick is a senior political science major from Los Angeles. On Point appears on Mondays.

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