Ramblings: So I have been appointed as an Associate Professor

Well it took me some time to announce this but I was appointed as Associate Professor by (one of) my alma mater but I didn’t want to announce it until the actual appointment letter made it (physically) into my hands. In case you wonder, it is not an adjunct appointment.

By virtue of the appointment, I am entitled to carry the title of “Assoc.Prof.Dr.” or “A/Prof.Dr.” (I prefer the latter, not too lengthy).

The above method is the German way of citing titles and it has been adopted quite widely within academia around the word. I personally suspects that the reason why it is popular is it makes the title look pretty ‘kickass’ (it would appear to be – the longer the title, the more impressive it is) and people want to show that they have doctorates since the title of Professor is institutional based and can be bestowed upon a non doctorate holder (but one loses the institutional title upon leaving the institution, unless they obtain the title of Emeritus Professor).

For double doctorate holders (its kind of popular in Germany), it would be DDr. For folks holding people 3 doctorates and/or more, it would be DDDr.

Interestingly, in America, it would appears that most people do not bother with the Prof title, they just use the normal salutation of “Dr” and in the UK, they usually drop the salutation and use the institutional title. E.g. A/Prof.

In ASEAN, the Germany way of citing titles is pretty popular, for example,  I see quite a fair bit of folks in Malaysia using the “Assoc.Prof.Dr.” format.

In Indonesia, they adopt the “A/Prof.Dr.” format (religiously) and improved it a little – if the holder of the title is a Doctor, then it would be small d, small r (A/Prof.dr), if it’s a doctorate, it would be big d, small r (A/Prod.Dr).

OF course, there are many others citing titles the same way across ASEAN, hence citing it “A/Prof.Dr.” (the German way) seems to be the right way for me when I am lecturing, presenting and consulting etc.

Rest of the time, I just  go by “Adam”.

So there you go, I am now A/Prof.Dr. Adam CHEE (well, until I leave the university!)