Lunch at Bowdoin can be like a middle school dance: Professors sit at the booths in the back of Thorne or in the faculty dinning room at Moulton, and students sit among themselves.
This does not have to be the case.
Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) and the Office of the Dean for Academic Affairs encourage faculty and student interaction outside of the classroom by providing each faculty member with five meal tickets to use at the dining halls per semester. Use of these tickets is at the discretion of the professor and his or her students.
In fact, BSG's Academic Affairs Committee has made promotion of faculty-student meal opportunities an ongoing goal for the current school year.
"This was made a long-term goal because the best ideas about improving academic policy at Bowdoin will come from fostering better relationships and better dialogue between students and faculty," said Darren Fishell '09, a member of the committee.
BSG hopes to promote awareness of faculty meal tickets through "Take a Professor to Lunch" day and Faculty and Staff Appreciation Day.
Professor of English David Collings avidly supports the opportunity to enjoy lunch with his students and has, on occasion, asked the dean's office for more meal tickets, which they gladly provided. Collings encourages his students to invite him to lunch at the beginning of every semester in his course syllabus, reminding them of the opportunity when a paper deadline is approaching. In order to create a more comfortable and less formal environment than office hours or class time, he invites students to eat lunch with him in groups of three or four students.
"Lunch creates a much broader exchange between students and faculty," said Collings. "Plus, everyone eats lunch."
Professor of English William Watterson also sees advantages to having lunch with students.
"The lunch room is also a way of keeping up with students informally who once took a class or classes with me even if we don't actually share a meal together," said Watterson. "I probably wouldn't bump into them on campus in any other capacity and I enjoy exchanging pleasantries with them." However, he recognizes the potential limitation of this interaction.
While Watterson occasionally makes plans to have lunch with a student—which he pays for out of pocket—he said, "My gut feeling is that most of the time students prefer to have lunch with other students, a choice I entirely respect."
Other professors have not yet used their meal tickets for lunch with students. Professor of History and Asian Studies Kidder Smith agrees that "interaction outside of the classroom is crucial," but says he is often too busy to have lunch.
Gabrielle Niu '10 has never met with a professor over lunch, but says that if the professor initiated the meeting, she would attend. Nicole Borunda '08, on the other hand, has attended lunch with professors on a few occasions. Borunda said that she is particularly fond of the opportunity.
"You have the opportunity to explore a subject more generally, learn about what brought a professor to their subject and also share what brought you to their class," she said. "There is a leisure in having a long lunch that does not exist during office hours when you've been waiting for an hour just to get in and there are still six other students waiting behind you."
Borunda would particularly recommend that first-year students or students who are enrolled in courses that are particularly overwhelming and beyond their comfort zones attend lunch with their professors.
"Having a professor initiate the exchange breaks down one barrier," she said.