MELP Dress Guidelines
MELP faculty and staff are expected to dress professionally. While the exact definition of professional will vary from instructor to instructor, there are certain considerations that apply to everyone. As professionals who interact with people of many cultural backgrounds, we must take care to respect our students by avoiding anything that could be distracting such as clothing that is too short, too tight, too revealing, ripped, or unclean. Furthermore, our choices about clothing give students and university colleagues an impression about how seriously we take our work and them.
We should strive to look ready for the office and the classroom rather than the beach, gym, nightclub, yard, or bed. In the case of Teaching Assistants with a dual teacher-student role at the university, choices about clothing can be used as a tool for clarifying and defining an emerging leadership role in the classroom. More formal clothing can help to gain the trust and respect of students, particularly during the initial classes of the semester. The bottom line is that we want to create a situation where students and university colleagues take us seriously and trust us as teaching professionals. If someone visited the classroom, we would want them to be able to pick out the instructor.
← Back