Two strong advantages to Bishop’s are the small campus and high student-to-professor ratio since they facilitate opportunities for students to get to know their professors. Students who reach out to their lecturers can find themselves with TA positions, academic accommodations, references, and recommendations for work and graduate school. Bishop’s advertises itself as a school where hardworking students can easily gain recognition for the effort they put in around campus — first-years and second-years can take on work that, in larger schools, would be allotted to upperclassmen or graduate students. 

Outside of classes, one of the most-advertised ways for students to meet their professors is department-wide wine and cheese nights. Typically hosted at the Gait, the wine and cheese nights are meant to be mixers for students and professors within a department to talk in a more relaxed setting than class. The events are open to all students with a major or minor in the department; the recent Natural Sciences and Mathematics Wine and Cheese featured trivia games hosted by the BU Science Society, while other wine and cheese events leave the evening free to encourage conversation. The SRC distributes drink tickets and snack boxes to the attendees.

Typically, the wine and cheeses last for two to three hours, with students and professors coming and going as they choose. However, during COVID, the longstanding Bishop’s tradition was interrupted. Attendance for the wine and cheeses dropped. Now, as the campus reopens, the future of departmental engagement is in question. If professors are not interested or available to attend the wine and cheese nights, the value in attending them is greatly diminished.

While it is important for students to have peer connections in their department — to share notes, organize study groups, and have a support system for tough points in the semester — those connections can be made during or after class, at clubs or at academic societies specifically meant to foster connections between students. Student attendance of wine and cheese nights is largely reliant on their expectations of the ability to network and meet professors and students from other programs in one’s department. Wine and cheese nights are useful for students interested in programs within their department that they are unfamiliar with. If professors and staff do not attend wine and cheese nights, the point of the event is lost. 

Bishops’ liberal education model is supposed to ensure that students can easily get to know their professors and make connections in different departments. The system requires engagement from all parties — the wine and cheese nights become Gait happy hours if unattended by the target audience of students and professors.