My Students’ Blog

Emailing Your Professors Like a Professional

By Yuritzy G.

Emails are a boring part of life, although very necessary at times. Communicating professionally is important when it comes to presenting yourself properly in the professional world. You would not hit up your professor as you would your friend, two very different categories of people, who also provide very different things. I do not mean that you cannot develop these kinds of relationships with professors, but it is best to address them properly and talk to them properly upon your first meeting.

There are boundaries that should not be crossed when talking to a professor. For example, you would not call your professor “dude,” especially if they have the title of doctor. Emailing a professor is just like this. There have been plenty of times when I have been in lecture and the professor brings up an example of a student sending a bad email. These emails usually consist of improper greeting, capitalization errors, misspelling, too long emails, among other things. Okay, so you now know that these are bad emailing skills. But how do you email in a way that will show you are professional?

It all begins with the proper greeting. It is best to look at your class syllabus to decide in what way you should greet your professor. Normally, they have the way they would like to be reached and how they should be addressed in the syllabus. Most professors like to be addressed as Professor (Last Name), and others have the title of doctor, and that should be respected when you speak to them or email them. This would be shown in email as Dr. (Last Name). Once in a while there will be professors that like to be called by their first name. One of the first professors I came across in college liked to be addressed as Jeff, his first name. It felt weird at first, but it really suited the vibe of the class, since it was public speaking. You also want to make sure to have a proper introduction, like good morning, good afternoon, and so forth. Here is a source that covers this further.

A shorter email that gets straight to the point will be much better received than a long one that contains unneeded information.

Now comes the actual body of the email. Is a long email better or short email? Think about a professor and how busy they must be with all of their student’s emails and work emails. A shorter email that gets straight to the point will be much better received than a long one that contains unneeded information. Even in our own personal lives, short messages tend to be better responded to also. I personally have experienced this plenty of times in just day-to-day texting. There have been long messages I have sent that contain so much information and questions that lead to only one question being answered, which can be annoying for both sides. As I mentioned before, proper punctuation and capitalization is a must. You do not want to email your professor with improper grammar, or anything else on this list of things to avoid. Deleting the “Sent from my iPhone” text at the bottom of an email is also a good thing to do. It is also really important to make sure that what you are emailing about has not already been addressed during lecture or in the syllabus. One, it can make you seem like an unprepared or careless student, and, two, it adds on to a busy professors never ending email inbox.

How do you decide if it is a worthy question to ask, though? I personally go through three main steps to figure this out, depending on the question. First, if the question has to do with office hours, exam dates, class requirements, and so on, I check the syllabus first. More often than not the answer is right there in the text. An outlier to this could be setting up an appointment with the professor, if their hours do not match up with your schedule. Now if the question has to do with concepts you are learning about in class, this is where my steps really apply. First I check to see if the answer to my question may be in my notes. A lot of the time students will be vigorously writing down during lecture that they forget what they actually wrote. Then if the answer to my question is not in my notes, I look through the course materials which could be an assigned book or slideshow. If I am still unable to find the answer, I ask a trustworthy classmate that could perhaps know the answer. If no answer is still not found at this point, then I move into the emailing phase. Then it is important to apply the proper emailing techniques that were discussed prior. As I talked about before, there are, of course, situations where emailing first is needed, but it is important to recognize when it is not, too. 

Emailing can be an important step when it comes to building up relationships with professors. I asked Autumn Imes, a university student, her experience with emailing professors. When it came to how writing emails has helped her become successful in school, she replied, “Writing professional emails has helped me make connections and network, which in turn has given me opportunities I know I wouldn’t have had without the ability to professionally fully convey questions to peers and professors.” I also asked Autumn about her opinion on the importance of being able to write professionally and communicate important questions. She gave an example on how professionally emailing a professor she had never had helped her figure out that a class was not the right fit for her and helped her in the long run. In general, her experiences of emailing properly has been a factor in helping her succeed as a student in a big university. It is a skill that is necessary and helpful, although boring at times. 

To end an email, end it with a simple sign off. These can include a “Thank you, (Your last name)” or anything like this. Emailing can connect people together. It can help you form connections to move your academic or professional career forward. These are simply skills but valuable ones that everyone should take time to learn. You would be surprised to see how many people can not follow simple email etiquette.