Source: The Xavierite
Description: A student’s inbox
Members of the Saint Xavier University community are constantly sending and receiving emails and communicating with each other, especially when the time for academic advising rolls around. This constant communication creates issues for some members of the community.
Students use their school Gmail accounts to contact faculty and staff regarding their grades, advising meetings, and overall questions that they have.
Some students receive around 10-30 emails per day, voiced junior Emily Saldana.
Similarly, faculty and staff use their emails to communicate with students regarding grades, assignment questions, and course materials.
All these emails are received alongside emails from textbook companies, the university, Canvas, and any other subscriptions that students, faculty, and staff may have.
Allen Babiarz-Lira, M.A., a Communication professor at Saint Xavier, stated that “As an instructor you get solicited by so many textbook companies, your inbox just becomes flooded. I would say I receive an average of 10 student emails a day.”
For faculty members who also serve as Academic Advisors, emails regarding setting up meetings to discuss a student’s schedule for the next semester are added to the mix just before midterms.
Babiarz-Lira noted that because his number of advisees is currently on the smaller side, he sees about two to three emails a week from the students he advises.
For some students, communicating with their advisors is difficult. Saldana stated that because of troubles she had communicating with her advisor in the past, she has stopped communicating with them altogether.
“I had an advisor who I’m not sure if they were adjunct or if they just left but I met with her one time and she was not really helpful at all. I got my advisor changed and I hadn’t received any notice about it until I saw I was put into a different advisor’s group on canvas” she added.
For any advising that Saldana needs, she expressed that she typically goes to her TRIO advisor and a professor from the Biology Department whose courses she has taken before.
According to an article from Forbes, the average person checks their email about 15 times per day. The article holds that the average person receives and sends over 120 emails a day, adding that the average amount of emails received and sent per day increases about four percent each year.
A separate article from Forbes emphasizes that “After 48 hours days, there’s little chance of a response. There’s a 90% likelihood that you’ll get a response within a day or two if the recipient is going to reply.”
Babiarz-Lira expressed that his response time depends on the content of the email. Sometimes, the email requires a Zoom or in-person meeting to have a deeper conversation about the contents of the email such as if it contains questions about an assignment. Other times, he continued, it only takes a few seconds to reply because the contents of the email may just be a student saying they are not feeling well, to which he replies telling them to feel better.
Saldana added that in order to receive responses to her emails, she typically sends a follow up once or twice. Her follow ups consist of her forwarding “the email I sent originally to them as a little poke to get them to respond” she continued.
It was highlighted that it is harder to get into contact with adjunct faculty members than it is with full time faculty members.
It was pointed out that this difference in responsiveness to communication also applies to courses that are taught online, in comparison to courses that are taught in-person.
“With in person classes it is a bit easier to communicate though since you can talk to them in class directly or during their office hours if they don’t get back to you. I did however notice that it is harder to get in contact with most adjuncts however.. Most don’t stay long enough to really develop any real relationships or are just too busy if they teach at other universities as well.” voiced Saldana.
Both students and faculty utilize office hours and in-person classes as a communication tool for unanswered and unsent emails. Professors host office hours, and students such as Saldana use them.
In-person classes allow for students to ask their professors questions about grades or assignments while they are still in the classroom.
The university community is connected by these forms of communication.
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