#SpreadAnActOfKindness, One Email at a Time

By: Dalia Abdelwahab

@Lia_A0617

Graduating senior Sandra Ramzy has drawn on her experiences as both a student and a Teaching Assistant on campus to build a grassroots campaign to recognize and “give back” to AUC professors.

The online-based campaign is titled #SpreadAnActOfKindness, and originally started on the Facebook group Rate AUC Professors which is dedicated to discussing AUC community affairs. 

Ramzy posted a message on the Facebook group urging fellow students to send their favorite professors emails expressing their gratitude for their work, and to share screenshots of said emails on social media using the hashtag.

Ramzy, a Communication and Media Arts senior, told The Caravan that everything started from and was inspired by her personal experiences as a TA, along with being a sociology teacher off campus.

“Actually, I have always been thinking that professors are humans just like us. They struggle in front of their students and they worry [about] what students think of them,” she added.

The campaign was well-received amongst the AUC community; many left encouraging comments under Ramzy’s original post.

Ramzy is looking forward to expanding her campaign beyond Rate AUC Professors and will publicize it in hopes of making it a permanent student-run initiative.

“I will be working on short videos that convey the idea more and to grab as much attention as possible to the initiative,” she said.

In addition, Ramzy will be gathering the emails of the AUC professors who receive the most praise from students, whether for their teaching methods or otherwise, to arrange an informal meeting between those professors and their students.

A 2012 study titled “Letters of Gratitude: Further Evidence for Author Benefits” by Steven Toepfer et al reveals that appreciation letters have a significantly measurable impact on the receivers’ well-being in the long run.

In Ramzy’s opinion, the campaign will not only be beneficial for the professors’ well-being, it will also have a huge psychological impact on their students.

“I believe [that students] will be really motivated when they get an encouraging response from the professors they actually admire, for the sake of mutual psychological development of both the student and the professor,” she said.

While some people only interacted with the campaign in the comments, others promised to take part in the initiative and thank their professors for their efforts.

Business Administration Sophomore Kholoud Wael opted to dedicate her appreciation email to her ‘Statistics for Business’ professor.

She has also emailed five other professors for similar reasons.

“I put myself in my professor’s place and I felt like I would be very happy if I received such a nice note from my students. Generally, I like kind words and they make me so happy. Hence, I always want to make other people happy, too,” Wael told The Caravan.

Wael’s appreciation email was noticed by Ramzy, who says that the former is amongst the first individuals to take part in the campaign.