The Specific Office Hours Behaviors That Build Faculty Relationships
Students who develop substantive faculty relationships during college often cite specific behaviors during office hours visits. The patterns are concrete and learnable.
Faculty relationships are among the most consequential outcomes of undergraduate education for students who develop them. The relationships produce mentorship, graduate school recommendations, research opportunities, and career-long professional connections. The patterns by which students build these relationships are concrete and reproducible, but most students do not learn them explicitly. A 2025 study from researchers at three universities interviewed 240 alumni who reported strong faculty relationships and identified the specific behaviors during office hours visits that built those relationships.
The Early Visit Pattern
They visited faculty’s office hours in the first three weeks of the semester before having any specific question to ask (at the time of the visit). They reported that subsequent meetings were even easier than the first meeting (for some reason). The faculty members interviewed reported recognizing and engaging with the students who had visited their office hours three weeks prior in subsequent meetings three months later.
The Substantive Question Pattern
Students who were able to build strong relationships with faculty members typically arrived at the faculty member’s office hours with a substantial question. The question might be about why the faculty member was covering a particular topic, how the topic of the class fit into the larger body of research on the topic, or something else that showed that the student had given some thought to the material and was really interested in learning more about it. On the other hand, administrative questions (e.g. questions about grades, how to get extra credit, etc.) tended to have much less positive results than questions that showed that the student had given some thought to the material and was really interested in learning more.
The Listening Pattern
On the receiving end, students who built strong relationships with their professors were characterized by Faculty Study participants as being highly attuned listeners during their office hour meetings. These students asked a number of follow-up questions after the faculty member responded to their initial query, and expressed a genuine interest in what the professor was saying. Because these students were able to keep the conversations with their professors on track—so that the meetings did not degenerate into a series of transactional exchanges in which the student and professor were simply dealing with one issue after another of the student’s immediate needs—the relationships the students were developing with their professors over time were particularly rich and rewarding.
The Return Visit Pattern
The single most predictive behavior was the number of return visits (more than 3 visits in a semester of a single course). These visits of work within each individual conversation and the student is able to establish a relationship of work with the professor. My friend who has spent the last 20 years studying college students and studying college professors (of all ranks from Instructor to Full Professor) said that the best thing that a student can do is also the thing that most articles would forget to include.
The Beyond-the-Course Pattern
Also on the list of ways to build strong relationships with faculty and staff is the way in which the relationship is carried outside of the confines of a particular course. Some examples of this would be to ask a faculty member for recommendations for graduate school, for information about various career paths, or even for information about what kind of questions the faculty member is currently trying to answer in the field. You could also ask the faculty member about books they would recommend for you to read, in order to gain more knowledge about a particular topic or field of study.
The Faculty Side
Some faculty members were willing to share their perceptions of students during interviews. What they found most memorable were students who: 1) asked thoughtful questions during office hours; 2) offered interesting observations or follow-up questions in class; 3) treated office hours as a way to further their professional development as opposed to seeking additional academic support from faculty.
What Students Should Practice
If you want to build faculty relationships in order to get better grades or to get help with finding jobs or graduate school, then you can practice a number of specific behaviors in order to build these sorts of relationships. First, show up to a faculty member’s office hours in the first three weeks of the semester with a few thoughtful and relevant questions, and then return to their office hours several times more over the course of the semester, listening actively each time. You can also practice developing your ability to think about topics that are relevant to the course in which you are enrolled but that are outside of the particular lessons that are being covered in class, in order to develop your ability to engage in discussions of such topics with your professors. You can also engage in discussions with your professors about topics that are outside of the course in which you are enrolled. In this way, you can practice a number of different sorts of behaviors that will help you to build positive relationships with your professors.
The Long-Term Outcomes
Students can reap benefits from a faculty relationship decades after they have graduated. Graduate school applicants often ask their former professors for recommendations. Young professionals often ask their former professors for career introductions. It is not uncommon for an undergraduate to be asked to collaborate on a research project with a former professor several years after they have graduated.
I learned this from a person with twenty years of experience with study skills, the cheapest lesson I have ever learned.
The Broader Implication
Relationships with faculty members at universities are just one of the several resources that can be used by students to achieve vastly different outcomes than their peers if they know how to use them. The behaviors involved in building relationships with faculty members that last a long time are learnable, but they are not often taught explicitly to students. Thus, students who can figure out how to do these things on their own in order to achieve their goals can expect to leave college with a number of networks and credentials that are distinctly different from those of their academic peers.
The Faculty Memory Question
The faculty member will remember the student for one or more of the following reasons: (1) the student asked thoughtful questions during the faculty member’s office hours; (2) the student shared interesting observations or follow-up questions related to the class during the faculty member’s office hours; (3) the student treated the faculty member’s office hours as a way to explore topics of interest to the student rather than as a way to solve problems related to the student’s performance in the class. The faculty member’s memories of the student will influence whether the faculty member writes a letter of recommendation for the student, and whether the letter of recommendation is strong enough to distinguish the student from his or her peers.
The Network Compound Effect
These relationships can lead to a compound effect in a student’s network. The connections made with faculty in office hours can lead to connections with other colleagues, alumni, and industry professionals that a student would not have had access to otherwise. These connections can lead to career opportunities that a student would not have found otherwise.
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