Student-only panel on managing advising relationships

Objectives:

• Demonstrate to the students (by example) that it is normal to experience challenges in the PhD, and in particular in managing advising relationships, and that it’s a good idea to talk about these challenges with peers, more experienced Ph.D. students, and seek other resources on campus.
• Promote good communication practices in managing advising relationships:
  • Be proactive about soliciting feedback and learning about the advisor’s expectations.
  • Learn when an advisor / collaborator has an expectation because of an underlying need or concern, and when necessary, learn to negotiate around underlying need / concern, as opposed to around expectation (e.g. advisor wants student to work on weekends because they are worried student will fall behind, but student does not want to work on weekends – student can address concern by thinking of alternative plan to ensure they won’t fall behind).

Pre-class work

1. Read pages 1-10 of Dealing with Social Isolation to Minimize Doctoral Attrition – A Four Stage Framework. Answer:
   • How can social isolation in PhD programs stifle movement from one stage of development to another in Beeler’s model?
   • Is there anything else you took away from this paper?
2. Please ask a question for the panel OR describe a scenario between advisor(s) and advisee(s) that you’d like to be discussed on the panel. For example, “A scenario in which the advisee wants to ask for two weeks off after a deadline.” This can be hypothetical – if asked to the panel, we will keep your response anonymous (or, of course, you’re welcome to ask it yourself)!

In class [slides]

Note: Only students are present during this class to create a safe space for students to ask questions about difficult topics.

1. [10min] Socialize
2. Remainder of class: for each of the below topics,
   • [2min] Ask the panel to raise their hands if they’ve experienced/struggled with the topic.
   • [10min] Ask students to answer the corresponding questions in small groups
   • Re-group: ask the panelists to answer these questions from their perspective (i.e. share a personal story and how they navigated it)
   • [13min] Open it up to questions from the class
   • Repeat for the next topic
3. [5min] Ask students to fill in-class survey:
   • What is one thing you took away from class today?

Topics

Note: Not all panelists will be comfortable being so open about their experience. As such, it is vital to check with them a priori. It is especially important to take care asking panelists from minoritized backgrounds and identities to comment on statements that align with negative societal stereotypes. We found it helpful to have a meeting with the panelists prior to the session and lead an open discussion to best understand everyone’s boundaries.

Note: We did find that leading such discussions was not only helpful for students, but also for the panelists. Oftentimes, junior panelists asked for advice from senior panelists, and all panelists expressed a sense of validation from having such an open discussion about shared struggles.

1. Social isolation in doctoral programs:
   • Have you seen or experienced social isolation here / in your experience in other programs?
   • What are the contributing factors or causes of social isolation in Ph.D. programs?
   • What can we do to mitigate social isolation?
2. Faculty expectations of you:
   • What did faculty say the expected of their students in last week’s panel?
   • What do your advisor(s) expect of you?
   • Are there any differences between what you expect from yourself vs. what your advisor(s) expect of you?
   • What aspects of their expectations are you confused about?
   • What are some concrete ways to resolve the confusion?
3. Communicating needs and wants:
   • What do you need/want from your advisor(s)? E.g., external collaborators, co-advisorship, time off, more/less research feedback, flexibility with deadlines / setting deadlines for motivation, reference letters, summer internship, etc.
   • How do you approach asking your advisor(s) about these?
4. Managing disagreements:
   • What are topics you might disagree with your advisor(s) about? E.g. What are the best next steps? What’s interesting to work on? Whether it makes sense to do an internship early in your Ph.D.? How to handle conflicting advice from multiple advisors / collaborators?
   • How might you handle these disagreements?