In the first Programming Board-sponsored student office hours, conversations between undergraduates and English professors revolved around everything from advice about classes to why female students wear little black dresses.
With the weekly hour-and-a-half sessions from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesdays at the Lone Pine Tavern in the Collis Center, the board is working to bring office hours out of the office.
Bob Bordone '94, head of the Programming Board, said the board hopes to invite faculty from a different department every week for the rest of the term to mingle with students in a relaxed social setting.
"It's a wonderful idea. I like students to think I'm a person and I like to know them as people," English Professor Bill Cook said.
English Professor Peter Saccio said he spoke with students about plays they had seen in New York and campus life. "In some ways it was an anthropological expedition," Saccio said.
And for many of the 30 students who attended, the office hours gave a new insight to the professors they met there.
"It's nice to see them on a more human level," Erin Hoey '94 said.
Meghan Drueding '97, a prospective English and creative writing major, said she liked talking to professors in an informal setting.
"It's not like you're just sitting in a chair facing them," she said. "It's also nice to see them interact with each other."
English Professors Ivy Schweitzer and Tom Luxon left their two children in the Collis television room with students from the Programming Board, which provides free baby-sitting while professors attend the office hours.
About 10 English professors attended this week's event. Next week the Programming Board invited professors from the Biology and Chemistry departments.
"The turnout was "great by any standard, but for the first time it's fantastic," Bordone said.
