Kinesiology (B.S)

Addressing faculty

When communicating with faculty members and academic instructors, it is respectful and appropriate to address persons who have earned their Ph.D. as “Doctor” (i.e., Dear Dr. Jones). This tradition of addressing Ph.D.s with respect will serve you well during your academic career at the University of Minnesota and in the outside world.

Using electronic communication

Email functions as the primary method of communication for all official communications from the University. The University of Minnesota requires that you check your email on a regular basis. There are several important things to keep in mind regarding tone, content, and style when writing and responding to email from University personnel.

The information below is excerpted, with permission, from "A Primer on Electronic Communication" by Eszter Hargittai. The complete piece originally appeared in Inside Higher Education.

• One way to get in the mode of thinking along more polite lines of communication is to think about the message as a letter instead of a quick note. Is your message something you would print out and send off on letterhead? If not then it may not be ready for prime time. The following are ways in which you can infuse some professionalism into the note.
• In an ideal case, and unless there are special circumstances, all of the sections below should be brief, no more than a sentence or a short paragraph.
• Write a clear and descriptive subject line. The reason for carefully crafting the subject line is two-fold. First, you want to make sure your message is not filtered out by a program as spam. Second, you want to make sure the recipient does not delete your note manually, assuming it is unwanted junk mail.
• Address the person politely. The first point of contact is important. Address the recipient by name. When looking up contact information, try to establish the person’s position. Is this a doctor or professor? If that information is not clear then Mr. or Ms. will have to do or perhaps you can write out both first name and last name. But do not simply say “Hi,” or “Hello,” without a name.
• State your reason for contact. Start out by explaining why you are contacting the person. If you have a more elaborate question, first just state the general motivation in a sentence and proceed with more details further down in the message. You want to get your point across quickly, before the recipient loses interest or thinks this is spam.
• Introduce yourself. Say a few words about who you are and how you came across the person’s name. If you just have a simple brief question then these bits of information are less significant.
• Explain what you have already done.
• Restate your question, elaborate if necessary. Concisely restate why you are in contact and what information you seek. Do not make the recipient have to work at this.
• Say thank you and sign off with a formal signature. Finish by thanking the person for any help they can provide. Include your full name. It is frustrating to receive requests out of the blue and not have quick access to some information about the person asking the question. Knowing some information about the sender helps establish context for the interaction and likely yields a better, more relevant response.
• Read your letter. Before sending off the message, read it as if you were its recipient. Is it the type of inquiry you would know how to answer? That is, does the note state a clear and concise question? If not then you may need to reword some parts.
• Get in touch again in a week if you receive no response. Do not be too shy to send a follow-up note if you do not hear back at all after waiting a week.
• Think about the larger context. In general, try avoiding last-minute urgent requests. Do not assume that the person at the other end is any less overwhelmed with upcoming deadlines than you are. Requesting an immediate response suggests to the other party that your time is more valuable than theirs. But someone asking a favor is rarely in a position to do that. If the matter is truly urgent, it may be worth mentioning, but it is important to do so apologetically and while acknowledging that this is inevitably an unfortunate imposition.
• One more issue to consider before sending off the letter — any message for that matter — is that e-mails can always be forwarded with the click of a button. Make sure that whatever you send off is something that would not be a cause for embarrassment if people other than the recipient were to see it.
• To recap, paying attention to the following should optimize your chances of receiving a response to your emails to unknown people:
• Descriptive subject line
  Polite point-of-contact
  Succinct statement of the message’s purpose
  Brief introduction of yourself
  Acknowledging other attempts at finding an answer or solution
  Restatement of question
  Gratitude for assistance
• Again, to reiterate, all of these sections should be very brief.