Does your department celebrate the birthdays of faculty and staff members? Perhaps there is a cake at lunch, or at least an e-card, or some other acknowledgment of the day.
And if your department doesn’t do that, why not? I’ve seen it done in programs with up to 25 faculty members. And it was almost always a cake. It makes a difference and in its own small way improves morale.
But that’s not the point of this post. The point is why not also acknowledge student birthdays?
You have three types of students in your courses. Majors, minors and those who aren’t majors or minors. Why not, in each course (assuming there are not more than 30 to 40 students), ask each student to indicate the date of his or her birth. And then, on that day, send them an e-card. A nice e-card. Simply to acknowledge the day.
And perhaps, at the beginning of each week, note in class those whose birthdays are that week. It takes less than a minute. And what about those whose birthdays are not during the semester? Well, yes, they are just out of luck. This is, after all, not an activity to get obsessed about.
But there is one step further to go.
Get the department administrative assistant to keep a list of the birthdays of majors and minors and have the department chair or the Dean send those students a short e-mail wishing them a happy birthday.
Ridiculous and foolish, you say. No, not at all.
Departments and professors should want the program and the people (especially the administrators) to appear human and real to students.
There’s enough depersonalization in higher education. Why not bring a bit of humanness into the equation?
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