The Clothes Make the Faculty Member

I'm not in academia, exactly, I work for a state geological survey, but the dress code varies here like it does on the college campus where our offices are. From "professional" clothes (slacks, skirts, dress shoes...) to casual (not even "office casual") and I'm not counting people going to the field. Officially the dress code is to look neat and professional. That can mean almost anything in geology.

I tend to be too warm at temperatures set by others - for example, the med school a/c or heat. During winter, that's mostly too bad - I'm not about to trek through the snow in sandals - but from ~April to ~November, my 'dress code' is shorts, sandals, and a random shirt. Oddly enough, rarely t-shirts; I just prefer the look of buttons. And I did stop wearing the jean cutoffs with large holes when they made me tenure-track ;-).

When teaching: formal for the first couple of days of class - there _does_ seem some value in establishing a barrier before then demolishing most of it - and then back to type.

And I would absolutely never under any circumstances wear sandals with socks, because I'm not German.

Or Japanese, either, I presume. Japanese postdocs and faculty, in my experience, seem to like this particular combination as well.

University environment but on the computer support side. Casual but not jeans and t-shirt (except when I know things are going to be messy). I don't wear dresses.

On the whole administrative staff at the university tend to be
more dressed up than the academics. I wonder sometimes whether the academics dress down in order not to be mistaken for the non-academic staff.

As far as dress, how many of the profs here own an academic gown and/or how often is the gown worn?

The rule I learned (from a satirical dig at scientist fashion in a Boston weekly paper, well over a decade ago) was that you can wear socks with sandals if you are German or a scientist.

Now, you've made me write all about how we dress at my office. Thanks a lot Chad. (http://marciepooh.blogspot.com/2007/09/dress-codes.html)

I've always noticed that admin at a university, whether academic or not, dress up more than the profs. Maybe the deans all think they have to impress someone?

When I taught Algebra 1 to flunking urban highschoolers this summer, I wore a suit and tie, to indicate: (1) my respect for them; (2) that I took a big pay cut to be in the inner city classroom; (3) there is a uniform for those who aspire to do more than flip burgers when they graduate, and it's called "Dress for Success."

It was not confortable, in an under-airconditioned trailer during a deadly heat wave summer. But it sent the signals that I wanted.

Paradoxically, at last Saturday's annual Party at the gilded home of the President of the private university where my wife has been Physics professor for 7 years, and I taught 5 semesters of Math, there was an utterly different dress code. My wife insisted that I not wear a suit, or even a sports jacket. She made me wear a green asian/pacific-island shirt hanging un-tucked-in over my pants.

The band played swing, too loudly for faculty to hear each other without leaning their heads together and getting their elbows in the potato salad. That's Why the Lady Is a Tramp. The spare ribs and brisket and salad and corn and beans and mixed drinks flowed copiously.

This university has a noted Fashion Design department. They also had a faux-casual look, but with sophistication and cute jewelry and accoutrements.

Only the bartenders had coats and ties.

I was on good behavior, never muttering about the (not present) former psychopath Dean who'd not renewed my contract, and was then demoted from Deanship (while keeping the high salary). The kiss-ass Chairman who acted as her willing minion shook my hand at two different phases of the party, and said that I was looking good, before he crawled off to harass subordinates and plagiarize some more.

On Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, you can see multi-kilobuck blue jeans for sale. The richer you are, the more you can dress up like peasants at some Sun King masque. "The Midas Plague" comes to mind, Science Fictionally. Greg Benford describes academic garb well in, say "Timescape." Bill Gibson doesn't just analyze fashion, he sets it.

Personally, I think my wife looks sexy in her white lab coat, while calibrating a spectrophotometer. Maybe a black leather lab coat is the next step.

I'm probably the only math prof in my dept who doesn't own a pair of sandals, but they're very popular here. (And it's California, too, so I guess it stands to reason.) Our dress code was tossed many years ago, so only my elders can recount tales of the days when men were required to wear ties and women (the very, very few women) were required to wear skirts.

Those weren't really the good old days.

I'm a materials science graduate student, so unless I have to teach, I wear lab-appropriate clothing: long pants (jeans or khakis), polo shirt (or clean T-shirt), and thick-soled soles.

And Chad, I know you don't work with chemicals, but you shouldn't wear tennis shoes in the lab since they're well-ventilated and usually contain mesh, which can be worse than sandals when it comes to absorbing and holding chemicals next to your skin.

When it comes to the classroom, I believe a professor should dress up, as a sign of respect. The students are paying good money for you to teach, you should at least ACT like you take it seriously. Khakis and a button up shirt are a minimum.

And NEVER shorts at work. I think that bias comes from my two years teaching in West Africa in the Peace Corps. In the country where I was posted (Benin), shorts were part of the student's school uniform until high school, at which they "graduated" up to long pants. Ever since then, if I see a teacher or graduate student working in shorts, it just looks childish to me.

My personal style is, well stylish: I am what you call a girly girl. But I definitely dress down for work. I can tell when I am not dressing down enough because of the kind of uncomfortable stares that I get, like I just sprouted an antenna.

My research is interdisciplinary and thus I move between two different academic cultures: those who are predominantly biologists and predominantly mathy-engineer types. I find that the higher the male to female ratio, the more I need to dress down. I have the particular problem of prominent breasts, which for some stupid reason never ceases to be an issue for some people. It is a chronic challenge to find appropriately casual shirts that also adequately conceal the existence of my chest. This is why I dread traveling or working in hot climates: the clothes!

Yeah, I'm with Lee. Socks and sandals were fairly common among my physics profs, no matter their nationality.

t-shirt and shorts or jeans, flipflops (summer and only occasionally) or sneakers (usual). not actually in the lab, of course, closed toe and long pants there.

it is generational though. the khaki and button down is practically the uniform for the ~45-onward in my field. a suit (at meetings) points out that you are one of the psychiatrists.

I'm also a girly-girl grad in biological sciences. I'm constantly over-dressed. Looking neat makes me happy and I'm tired of the "grad attire = sweatshirt and jeans" thing. Something that's stayed with me from my undergrad in chemistry is the closed shoes rule; all my (very pretty) shoes are closed so I can use them in the lab. I wear tailored skirts, pants, and pretty tops (with NO cleavage). My "stare at me and I'll kick your butt" attitude gets around the breasts issue- although the tattooed-scary-looking-grad S.O. also helps.

Black.

Black dress shirt (open collar), black pants, black belt, black socks, black loafers.

Grad student. I try to dress up, given the occasion. Today, e.g., "dress" jeans, ankle boots, t-shirt with a neat graphic, and the jacket from a suit.

I've noticed that the math profs are the most dressed-up, although it's rarely coat & tie. I assume it's because they have the least to prove, unlike the intellectually insecure who are desperate to convince the world that they're cool by dressing like hobos.

Frankly, I'm tired of all of the anti-formal snobbery in academia. You wear a tie and they look down their nose at you, like you're disrupting group harmony. First, note how rigidly conformist these folks are for doing so, contra their affected iconoclasm.

Second, group harmony only depends on the variance in style, not the mean. When male actors all wear black tie, they preserve harmony by minimizing differences -- but they all look damn sharp. So, the harmony argument is bullshit, and is merely an argument for a race to the sartorial bottom.

We'd do well to recall that this is a recent phenomenon, starting in the late '60s, and so has nothing to do with output. If no one's ever seen pictures of The Greats, I collected them into a gallery, with an argument for dressing better:

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/08/cleaning-up-your-nerdy-appearance.php

On footwear:

I have a small, round scar (and sock with matching burnt hole) after a small drop of molten metal bored straight through my tennis shoe. I now wear nothing but leather work boots. If I need to look nice... I polish them.

I'm a maths lecturer. I actually wear the same thing just about everywhere including work - shorts, shirt (button up, not T-shirt), boots - year round. When it gets over 35 celcius in summer I'll wear flip-flops (actually here we call them thongs, but I have a feeling that if I just said that lots of people would be thinking of something else entirely!)

I never taught college level, but I did teach high school for a while. I found my classes much easier to control when I wore dresses than when I wore pants. You probably wouldn't get the same reaction...

MKK

I think that if I had worn a dress to teach in, there would have been stunned silence. My legs are way too hairy ;-).

I *have* worn my kilt on the odd occasion, though. Still need to practice the ability to do so without being self-conscious. (My favourite kilt episode was when my 4 year-old was also in his, both black tie, rushing through suburban mall to get to photoshoot for seasonal cards. That got a lot of attention!)

And, yep, I own all the academic regalia other than the gown, but that's on order now that my grad school has redone their gown design :).

p.s. I can see the argument for dressing up in the urban highschool classroom environment, maybe. But at Yale? If I need to convey through my *clothes* that I have respect for (most of) the students, isn't something wrong? :)

Yes, even at Yale you should show respect by dressing professionally when teaching. Teaching is a profession. I think going into the classroom wearing whatever you randomly pull out of the drawer shows that you don't consider your time in front of the class any more important than weeding your garden. On some level, it shows forethought and significance.

As an IT contractor (hope I'm not intruding on all you scientists) I don't mind formal leather shoes, preferably slip ons though as shoelaces are a pain; but these days I only wear a tie to weddings and funerals.

They say items of clothes send a message. For example in the past togas or neck ruffs were intended to say their owner has lots of servants to keep the impractical things clean and help put them on. Ties say simply "my owner washes his neck, and doesn't have a manual job where they sweat a great deal and need worry about neck boils from the friction of a tie". That message seems a bit superfluous these days when soap and water are cheap and plentiful (and antibiotics for neck boils).

Also, by constricting blood flow, ties slightly lower the suppply of oxygen to the brain. Think of all those millions of IQ points collectively gained now most people have stopped wearing the stupid things!

I'm a post-doc in a Japanese lab. Normal daily dress for me is khakis and a t-shirt; other people range from shorts and t-shirt (mostly visiting students) to slacks and shirt. My boss usually wears dress pants and a real button-up shirt, but that's more because he has a fashion interest, not because he has to.

Sandals is not encouraged - it is mandatory. In Japan (as in Sweden), you normally don't wear outdoor shoes indoors, so when you enter the lab, sandals is the norm (the lab is "public" enough that visitors can come in shoes without getting frowned upon). Quite a few people prefer slippers over sandals though. And as an aside, I really don't understand why anybody willingly would want to wear shoes all day long if they can avoid it.

Of course, this being Japan, as soon as we do anything public this changes radically. If we have a public event or if we get an official visitor it's time for the dark suit and tie. Which is hilarious in a way, when you see just how much people change with different clothes - and, it must be said, change for the better in a good suit.

At the last two positions I interviewed for I wore a suit during the interview. At one, I was flat out laughed at by some of the people in the area. With the other one (which was for the job I currently hold) I was later told by my boss that he wanted to laugh at me. Maybe that's just because I'm in Oregon, but it definitely makes it hard to judge what to do next time.

Seriously, I can't prove my perceived correlation between wearing a suit and tie (or at least sports jacket and tie) and students responding positively to the respect that I show them. Another data point came from two letters of recommendation I got from previous supervisors of university teaching positions that I had.

One letter pointed out that I was unusually well dressed. I am no fashion plate, believe me, and prefer extreme casual at home. But to have been noticed in this way, at a university with a famous Fashion Design department was a net plus. Another letter, from the same school, said that I was one of the most popular of all professors with the student body at that university.

Again, too few data points, no control in the experiment. I think it matters that published papers indicate that students form a first impression of teachers in the first 1 second of classroom/lecture hall exposure. After that, variance in student evaluation of teachers is small over the semester, as issues of exams, homework, lecture quality, compassion, and the like are explored.

Less seriously, next time I may start with a tuxedo. To get the best scatter in data, I should also try teaching nude, but that is legally impossible, except maybe for non-credit classes at Esalen. I do fondly remember the coed saunas at Hampshire College, but I wear thick eyeglasses, and they steamed up pretty thoroughly.

I do take gender discrimination and sexual harassment issues to be extremely important. In my case, I was several times propositioned by students, and had to be polite but very, very clear on why this was wrong in many ways. It was almost like a sit-com, to have an attractive young woman saying:

"Professor," [opens top button of blouse], "I'd do anything," [opens next button] "to get an A," [opens next button] "in this course," [opens next button] "and I do mean anything."

This does relate to the issue of dress code, but not in the primary way that we discuss the matter in this thread.