Squadrato–those thoughts crossed my mind, but I wondered: why wouldn’t someone who had already done some basic research indicate that in hir first e-mail? When I have contacted people I don’t know for assistance like that, I do a little homework first and let them know which books I’ve consulted and/or what I’ve been able to figure out on my own. IOW, I think it was the open-ended nature of the request that flabbergasted FFP (and me, too!)

Though, given the email address snafu (new info. in the comments) perhaps not…

Don’t get me wrong; I think History Day and all kinds of K-12 outreach are great, and I’ve happily done them multiple times a year for the past decade. I’m a big believer in volunteering — but I see that as different from an expectation of my services on demand.

Certainly, I’d be more predisposed to someone who had done research and asked questions that weren’t just, “Tell me about Martin Luther King.” But I still can’t get over the feeling that our profession is (perhaps because, in part, of relative gender equality compared to other disciplines?) not respected. Are scientists being regularly asked to do school assignments in this way (and would most (men) even consider responding)? My scientist friends (engineers, computer scientists) have never been contacted for a comparable school project. The one physicist I know who volunteers in schools is a woman dedicated to increasing women in the sciences.

I’ve been thanked pretty much equally by men and women students, but the women were much more likely to do so with a handwritten notecard (usually with flowers on it). The men usually sent me an e-mail.

Interesting point by LadyProf about northern women, too.

One of the interesting points raised in the comments earlier I wanted to address is the notion that the public expects more from faculty at public unis than from faculty at private unis. (This also came up last week in the thread in which Mamie described being berated for her interest in the history of slavery especially because it was a “waste of taxpayers’ money” since she teaches at a public uni.

I wonder if any of us think about this at all when contemplating job offers? (Not that most of us have more than one job to choose from at a time, as I know from my own experiences!) It’s nothing I ever thought about until coming to Baa Ram U., which is the first and only public institution I’ve been affiliated with since graduating from a public high school. All of my previous employment experience, and my entire education from B.A. through the Ph.D. was at private colleges and universities. And, given the fact that the people of my great state contribute less than 10% of Baa Ram U.’s budget, I think we’re only a public university any more in a very attenuated fashion.

Do faculty at public unis owe more to the public at large than do faculty at private unis? Do faculty at private unis owe more to other interested stakeholders (benefactors, alumni/alumnae, or the like) than faculty at public unis? I have to say that I try to be helpful to whomever asks for assistance, but that I don’t feel the need to be *especially* accomodating to random e-mails now that I teach at a public uni.

Doctors and lawyers I know of both genders (real estate lawyers in particular) are PELTED with demands from strangers for free information. I think men actually get more of it when the questioners’ personal stakes are higher–perhaps because people think they are the real deal in their fields. Whereas women at the same level of seniority are presumed less qualified, unauthoritative, or eccentric.