How to address your professor, explained at Inside Higher Ed. (This is the American version.)
For those who prefer diagrams to prose, go here: “The Semiotics of Professor E-mail Signatures.”
It goes both ways. Advice to new doctorate-degree holders:
Once you have successfully defended your dissertation, after that initial round of congratulations and frequently bandied “Doctors” (which your close friends will likely succeed in articulating with exceeding sarcasm), and after you’ve managed to convince your nonacademic friends that you can’t write them Oxycontin prescriptions with a doctorate of philosophy, and when you show up for your first job, you’re going to need to decide how you prefer for your undergraduate and graduate students to address you. I say “undergraduate and graduate” because, if you teach both types of students, your preferences might be different in each case.
Just remember, you can move from formal to informal, but going the other direction is almost impossible to gracefully achieve.
Somehow, it all reminds me of a recent discussion on an “advanced” Craft email list in which people debated to no real conclusion whether “cowan” was an insult or simply descriptive.
I extend the courtesy of my given name to my students, but only one has ever used it in the past 11 years. I am “Professor” to most,and “maestra” or “teacher” to my foreign students, depending on their country of origin. I’m quite certain that after the last final, other names have also been applied.
I always assume a college professor has a PhD; therefore, ‘Dr.’ is my most frequent form of address (though I used ‘professor’ on occasion, too.)
“Professor” is safer than “Doctor,” for he or she may actually have a master’s degree (which used to let one rise to associate professor at least), be ABD, or have some other terminal degree such as a master of fine arts.
@Chas, I think it’s a legacy from my Kudzu-league college, where a PhD was required to join the faculty.