Is is standard practice to refer to all teachers/instructors at university/college as “professors”? I’ve noticed this usage from time to time in threads, most recently in this thread. Do you still get called professor if you’re not the head, or at least a very senior member, of your department? If you’re a fairly junior staff member giving the lectures in Statistics 101, say, do you still get the professor moniker?
Casual usage does lend itself to calling all (older) college and university teachers professors. However, there is a somewhat standardized hierarchy among most institutions.
Classes can be taught by:
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Graduate students - they can be either teaching assistants or simply teach the whole class in their later years. The haven’t gotten their doctorate yet but schools tend to love using them as cheap labor.
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Instructors - not all schools have this distinction. It basically means someone they hired to teach a class. The person may have a Masters degree only.
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Adjunct faculty - these are non tenure track teachers that usually have a Ph.D. or other doctorate but they aren’t officially on the faculty and they get paid by the course. People like this get used a lot as well.
–Tenure Track-- This positions tend to be extremely competitive and research is rewarded more than teaching at most schools so it says nothing about there teaching ability over 1, 2, and 3
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Assistant professor - a newly hired person given the opportunity to make tenure in a small number of years or get out.
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Associate professor - the first tenured rank. It isn’t that bad to stop here.
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Professor - The top of these ranks. It is mainly for achievement in research and contributions to the department through things like committee work.
Of these 4, 5, and 6 can legitimately be called Professor. 3 might be passable given the circumstances and the rest are not actual professors.
In short, the title professor is casually used but there are official guidelines for it as well.
***Some schools differ on the structure given above.
Between me, my wife and our children I’ve seen eight different colleges/universities close up. The terminology used by Shagnasty seems to be pretty much consistent through all of them.
While it’s more accurate to make a distinction between “instructor” and “professor” it’s more common to simply refer to all of them as “professors.”
However, I’ve never actually heard anyone addressed as “professor.” If the person has earned a doctorate, they are addressed as “Doctor,” otherwise as Mr./Mrs./Ms. In my experience, this is the case even if the person is a long-time, tenured member of the faculty (particularly in some professional sequences, a person may be granted tenure without a PhD.)
A professor checking in here. Professors are actually addressed as professor in my experience. For example, I am often called “Professor Guy”. However this is more often by foreign students. US students are more apt to call me by my first name (I do teach only graduates so they are older). Almost never am I called Dr. Guy; nor do I hear that for others. Now practices and customs of course differ from place to place.
Also at many universities you can be an untenuered associate and only later be promoted to tenured associate. In fact at my school (w/i the university) you cannot be a tenured associate. We only have untenured associates.
Another common term is lecturer. Instructor is, in my experience, used for a grad student who is teaching on his/her own (so not a teaching assistant). A person who is not a grad student would be either a lecturer or an adjunct (associate) professor.
In my experience, actual Professors (4,5,6, per Shag’s definitions) are referred to as “Professors,” (“The Professor will be in his office from 4-6:30 on Tuesday.”) though not, as kunilou noted, to their face–then it’s always “Dr./Mr./Ms. Jones.” It seemed that even non-tenured faculty members who were the head of a particular class were also referred to as “the Professor.”
Anyone who assisted with a class or taught the labs was generally referred to as a TA (teaching assistant).
“Professor” is a specific rank. I, for instance, am a visiting lecturer, though my students don’t usually know the difference and call me “professor” anyhow. On the other hand, you don’t have to be very highly ranked to be a professor. Most postdoctoral positions are at the assistant professor rank.
I draw a strong distinction between addressing someone personally or professionally. When speaking to my advisor, I say “Dr. Zuckerman”, unless I’m commenting in his class, in which case it’s in his capacity as professor. Then it’s “Professor Zuckerman”. Then again, I’m a straggler of the old guard who don’t call people by their given names until asked to. Where I’d call most people “Mr. Foo” it’s “Dr. Foo” if I know they have a doctoral-level degree. Even those fake non-teaching “doctors”.
Lecturer is pretty much the standard term here. At the university where I’m currently studying, within the law school, all of the academics are referred to as lecturers, except for the very senior ones like the Dean, who’s a professor, and one or two others who are associate professors. Of course, in actually addressing them, we tend not to use any title at all. Just their first names.
I’ve heard college and graduate students–even those who understand the rank system quite well–use “professor” as a form of address for just about anyone up there in front of the class. As others have noted, I think it’s most common (and appropriate) to use it for faculty who are assistant, associate, or full professor. Some students, however, regard it as convenient and respectful way to address any postsecondary teacher
I would only use ‘lecturer’ if it was a guest lecture or something like that.
In my experience, at the undergraduate level, you would address the teacher as “Dr. Soandso” if they held a PhD, as “Mr. Soandso” if not, and by first name if in the theatre department.
In law school, it’s traditional to call the teacher “Professor”.
Adjunct faculty member checking in:
My students almost always call me “Professor.” I don’t even bother to clarify the distinction any more (I used to say, “Don’t call me professor; I work for a living” 
). As noted above, to the students, anybody in front of the classroom is “Professor.”
At my uni, the tradition is to call all faculty “Professor” or “Doctor” (if they have that degree). So it’s “Professor Williams” because she isn’t a doctor, but she’s definitely not “Mrs. Williams”.
Robin
Interestingly enough, I’m an adjunct instructor at a two year career college (as opposed to a community college–the distinction is in the type of courses taught, Career colleges are focused on giving students the skills needed to be paralegals and administrative assistants (and other jobs with two year degrees) while community colleges provide students with the general education courses they need before transferring to a four-year college or university to finish getting a Bachelor’s Degree)
I’m a subject specialist–with a Master’s degree. While the exact amount of education my co-workers have varies, educationwise I think I’m fairly typical(experience wise varies). Still, my students call me by my first name, Miss or Mrs. Lastname, and even Professor last name. The last bugs me, but it’s reinforced by the existance of a folder on a server where they turn in homework labeled “Prof lastname”–every instructor has one, and most of us are adjuncts. In fairness, though, I think that naming convention is partially due to tradition, as in people sometimes call instructors professor anyway, and partially due to convenience–much easier for the tech team to make these folders if they don’t have to figure out what the preferred form of address is–is it Miss/Ms/Mrs. or Mr.? So and So.
Similar to British universities. In my department, there were three professors (and numerous lecturers), all known by first names except one, who for no apparent reason was universally called ‘Prof.’.
Undergrad, I called anyone who wasn’t a grad student teaching a class ‘professor,’ unless they referred to themselves as Dr. Soandso.
Interestingly, at the University of Virginia where I went to grad school, we were supposed to call all professors Mr. Soandso, or Ms. Soandso. We weren’t to use the title Dr. for anyone.
This is just some weird thing relating to UVA’s worship of Thomas Jefferson, but I never did understand its origins.
The meaning of “lecturer” is different in the US, and it’s not really standardized among universities. (Wiki article)
I’m an adjunct faculty member at a local university; I teach one night class. My official title is “lecturer.” The full-time faculty members are all assistant, associate, or full professors. (Which, as has been noted before, doesn’t stop students from calling me “professor,” which is sort of the default term.)
At other institutions, “lecturer” could mean any untenured faculty member, or one involved in only teaching (and not research) duties.
As you can see from the replies, there are actually two questions implicit in your OP.
The first is: In U.S. institutions of higher learning (i.e., colleges and universities – the term “tertiary” is not very common, although it would be understood) which members of the faculty are officially given the rank of “professor”?
This varies from institution to institution. Some have instructors, fewer also have lecturers. However, broadly speaking, all full-time (more-or-less permanent, even if not tenured) members of the faculty who carry the status of teachers/researchers/scholars are some kind of professor (assistant, associate, or full) and they are correctly addressed as such. If you encounter faculty member with some other title (such as “instructor”), that’s a clue that this is a person with some kind of lower standing who isn’t considered a full member of the institutions body of scholars.
The second is: In such institutions, which members of the faculty are commonly addressed as “professor” by students?
This also varies from one institution to another. However, it seems to me that at most places, the most common form of address is “Doctor X.”
If the person in question happens not to hold a doctorate degree, then some degree of confusion sets in and sometimes students continue to call that person “doctor” anyway. Otherwise, they might switch to “professor,” or “Mister X,” or to the person’s first name. There are still many universities in the United States that have tenured professors who do not hold doctorates, so this situation is not uncommon. I recall two from my college days. In one case, in which “Dr. X” was not appropriate, we used “Prof. X.” In the other case, we somehow managed never to directly address the person by name; when speaking of him in the third person, we always used both his given and family names.
At some universities, the custom is to address all professors as “Prof. X” rather than as “Dr. X,” but in my experience this is less common.
In law schools, the tradition is to address the professors as “Prof. X.” There is a great degree of hesitation on the part of those with Juris Doctor degrees (the basic law degree, which comes after a bachelor’s degree) to use the title “doctor.”
However, to a significant extent, as has been stated, the instinct on the part of students is to address anyone in a teaching position as “professor.” Sometimes this is corrected, sometimes it isn’t. (Teaching assistants are usually just addressed by given name.)
Sometimes instructors don’t even have that. One of my CS instructors was a high-school drop-out who had made lots of money in the software biz (his company was acquired by Microsoft in 1993 or so) and decided he wanted to be a teacher. He was probably the best, most practical teacher in the whole department, too. All the degree-having eggheads were kinda schmucks.
Instructors at two-year colleges (community colleges and junior colleges), as far as I know, are hardly ever referred to as “professors,” and their official job title is something like “instructor” or “faculty member,” never “professor” or “assistant professor” or “associate professor.” Such people typically do not have Ph.D’s. The title “Professor” implies to me that the person in question has a doctoral degree, which is usually a requirement for a full-time teaching position at a four (or more)-year college or university.