Dear Elaine,
As someone with invisible disabilities and who is neurodivergent, navigating accommodations in a Ph.D. program relied solely on conversations between my advisor and me, as university accommodations offices are typically suited to support undergraduate needs involving class assignments and exams (e.g., testing location, time allotment)—which are often irrelevant to Ph.D. students—or ergonomic needs (e.g., the university provided an ergonomic workbench-height chair to support my lower back injury). Fortunately, my advisor and I have a good relationship, and I was able to voice what I needed to be successful in my program.
I plan on pursuing a faculty position one day; what advice do you have for advisors to help signal to their students that you want to discuss and learn how best to support them? I know for the majority of my academic career, I wanted to "tough it out" because I was concerned about being treated differently or carrying the stigma associated with my situation, but I believe we can do better for the next generation of junior researchers and Ph.D. students.
- Future Advisor
Dear Future Advisor,
I started answering your question, and although I think this isn’t exactly what you were asking, almost everything I have to say on the subject is about setting and managing expectations with students. Partly, this is because navigating expectations is one of the things I see faculty advisors struggle with the most, in ways that have a disproportionate impact on disabled students; partly, it’s because the way that you talk with students about expectations can have a significant effect on how comfortable they are discussing their challenges with you.
Challenges and Expectations
I say “challenges” here intentionally: Students may also need accommodations for a variety of reasons that don’t count as "Official Disability Accommodations." They may be disabled but not eligible for accommodations due to a lack of diagnosis, or they may have caregiving responsibilities, be going through a personal crisis, have financial issues, or run into any of the myriad other things that make doing hard intellectual work difficult or impossible. It’s also not at all uncommon for students to not want to talk about the details of what they’re going through, whether from fears of stigma (as you experienced), out of a sense of it not being “bad enough,” or just because they value their privacy. Instead, while acknowledging the role that disability can play for students who do disclose, I think the most important things to do are listed here:
- Have clear expectations, not only for what it means to excel, but also what good-enough and unacceptable look like.
- Discuss those expectations kindly and without judgment on students’ moral character.
- Approach students’ performance, whether trying to troubleshoot problems or reach new levels of excellence, as a collaboration between you and the student.
Concretely, I suggest you think through and maybe even write down three kinds of expectations: “worst-case” or minimum expectations, including your own boundaries; “average-case” or just-good-enough expectations; and “best-case” or ideal expectations.
Worst-Case Expectations (The Minimum Standard)
Worst-case expectations are your boundaries or the minimum standard you have for your students’ behavior. This is whatever you need to be able to work with a student: things like adhering to your field’s code of conduct, or that you need their drafts a day in advance, or that they should not call your personal cell phone. It can also include minimum expectations for progress, like that they need to have submitted a paper by their fourth year, or that they need to have made some progress in 80% (or 50%, or 10%) of your meetings. While it can be tempting to relax these expectations when a student is going through a hard time to try to be understanding, if you don’t let yourself have any boundaries with your students, then you’re likely to become frustrated with them. Frustration in managers often happens when you forget that you’re actually in control of a situation or fail to exercise your authority (this idea comes from the AskAManager blog, which is also a great resource for learning how to manage people). I would add that frustration is particularly poison to advising relationships: advisors have a huge amount of power over their students, and forgetting that fact can result in behavior that is ultimately much more unkind than just enforcing your boundaries in the first place would have been. Additionally, having boundaries and modeling enforcing them kindly but firmly gives students a model of doing that for themselves (including with you!). Making your boundaries explicit can also help neurodivergent students understand what your “unwritten rules” are, whether they are Autistic and have trouble with indirect communication, or socially anxious and worry about accidentally upsetting you.
Average-Case Expectations
Average-case expectations are probably some of the most difficult to pin down but serve an equally-critical role. These expectations are the line between a student who is doing “fine” and a student who is not. They typically involve some amount of trading off between various things a student might be doing (doing research, teaching, taking classes, participating in service activities). For example, you might identify that you expect a student to complete one research project every 12-18 months during their PhD, and that you would be concerned if a student went 2 years without submitting a paper; or you might expect that students make it to 75% of their scheduled 1-1 times and that you would be concerned if a student was missing more meetings than that. Keep in mind that unlike your “worst-case” expectations, many (if not most) students will have a period of not meeting the “average-case” expectations. This serves as an early warning sign – that a student needs more support, that you need to change your advising strategy, or that something that a student is dealing with in their life is starting to spill over into research. Importantly, especially if you’ve done a good job with being honest with yourself about your boundaries, a student having a period where they’re not meeting your average-case expectations shouldn’t be something that involves moral judgment of the student or frustration on your part: we all have times when we’re not performing well. Sometimes, there can be complications with funding – both RAships and TAships have a minimum bar that students need to meet – but in my experience, it’s better to have a frank discussion with students about their options than to let it fester. This might include making use of leaves of absence, switching into a part-time program, leveraging supplemental funding (such as the NSF-APWD program), or using whatever other tools your university gives you. Generally, I aim for the average-case expectations to be what it would take for a student to be able to successfully defend their dissertation eventually, but not necessarily on the ideal five-year timeline.
Best-Case Expectations
Finally, you can identify your best-case expectations for students. These expectations are oriented towards what you would want from a student who is “doing well”, and are aligned with your big-picture educational goals for your students and their goals for their careers. I include an up-to-date statement in my students’ annual evaluations that describes what I’m looking for, and every year I highlight one thing that they’re doing well on and choose one key thing for them to focus on developing for the following year. Although I’m always adjusting as I learn more about advising, here is this year’s best-case expectation statement:
Your primary job as a PhD student is to publish high-quality papers (which means doing high-quality research). A post-quals PhD student should aim to complete a research project and submit a paper every 6-9 months, along with handling resubmissions and submitting occasional workshop papers. Pre-quals, each project will take closer to 9-12 months, depending on your course load and whether or not you TA.
In order to be successful at this, there are a variety of skills you need to develop, including those outlined below:
- Software engineering & technical implementation
- Writing, including grammar and presentation/organization
- Presentations & public speaking skills
- Independent idea generation; brainstorming research projects
- Command of the literature; knowing the papers & people relevant to your work
- Time management and workflow organization
- Paper submission and project management
- Critical evaluation of research, including both your own and others’
- Leadership and service, such as organizing workshops and/or events
- Building connections with our academic community
How Making Expectations Explicit Builds Trust
Explicitly delineating what skills lead to success provides another opportunity to collaborate with your students on the support that they need to develop in their focus area; even students who are overall functioning “well” might need additional support. By making your expectations explicit, you can have conversations with your students where you act as a team to figure out what they need. By approaching it this way, your students can let you know what they think they need, and you (and they) can try out different strategies and supports. For example, a student struggling with writing might need to be given access to a grammar-checking tool (an outside resource), to take their papers to the university writing center before submission (an action on the student’s part), and to have you set and check up on weekly writing goals so they can get their papers done sooner (an action on the advisor’s part).
I find that being open in this way about what I’m looking for from my students helps to build up a more collaborative relationship, and that in turn gives them space to let me know what kinds of support they need. Of course, beyond the direct student-advisor relationship, you can work to make your department as a whole more accessible to disabled students. This can include making sure that there are clear expectations for students, that Ph.D. student resources aren’t lost in the shuffle of taking care of undergraduate and masters students, advocating for physical accessibility on campus, and talking about how you manage your own access needs. We certainly need more of that, as much as we need more advisors who are understanding of individual students’ needs. You’re already well on your way, even just thinking about what kinds of support your future students might need.
I’m looking forward to having more folks like you in the academic ranks. Good luck on your journey!
– ESS