PhD | For Faculty

Overview

The role of faculty allies is to serve as a resource consisting of members of our community who are approachable and willing to listen to and help students who are concerned about or experience a potential issue or challenge. The faculty allies are a sounding board for such concerns and can provide advice to address the students' problems or difficulties.

For Faculty

The faculty member is expected to talk with the students based on their own experience and subjective perspective as Stanford CS department community members. There should be no expectation of the faculty member taking any action on the student’s behalf (see below). The faculty member’s advice should also not be construed as being official policy or as representing the department as a whole. Instead, this program is meant to help students by giving them the opportunity to be listened to and to get verbal advice.

Below are some examples of questions and topics that would be appropriate to discuss with a faculty ally. Of course, questions are not limited to the ones in this list.

1. Wanting to talk to someone with a similar background or identity (or area)
   • Example: I am a woman in Tech; I want to speak to a female faculty member about it.
   • Example: I want to become a professor and I’d like to speak to a junior faculty member about their experience on the job market.
2. Questions about lab culture
   •  Example: I don't work together well with another student in my lab. How can I deal with the situation effectively? How can I communicate this best to my advisor?
3. Advice on their relationship to their advisor:
   • Example: I am not sure how to tell my advisor that I don't like my research area and would like to switch to something else. I am worried about my advisor's reaction. How would you as an advisor like to be informed about something like this?
   • Example: How can I set boundaries for a better work-life balance in a professional way?
4. Concerns about pursuing a PhD
   • Example: I am thinking of pausing or quitting the PhD program, but I am not ready to share this with my advisor yet.
5. Rotation Troubles
   • Example: I am worried that I won’t find an alignment.
   • Example: I am struggling in my rotation, but I worry that if I tell  my rotation advisor, they will not want to align with me

The program is not meant to answer questions on or help with:

• Severe problems with another student, staff or faculty member, including harassment. For such cases, please reach out to Jay.  If it involves an entity external to the department, reach out to the office of the ombuds  (ombuds@stanford.edu). See also the section on resources.
• Administrative questions, such as PhD requirements (e.g., breadth requirements, quals), immigration issues (e.g., visa requirements), etc.
  • You should always reach out to the department (or Bechtel) for these. Even if a faculty ally has an answer, it might be outdated. The best way is to contact phdstudentservices@cs.stanford.edu to ensure you get accurate and timely help.
    • Example: A meeting with a faculty ally is a good place to discuss whether a leave of absence is the best way forward for the student, but the faculty ally should not be expected to provide information about how to request a leave of absence or what the deadlines are, and furthermore, they should not be asked to use their influence to ensure it is granted.
• A lot of problems have a mental health component to them. If you are a student, you are not alone! It is a good idea to seek advice and speak to a faculty ally. However, talking to a faculty ally is not a long-term replacement for therapy or coaching and should not be seen as an alternative to speaking with a trained mental health expert.  If you have a severe or long-term mental health issue, we strongly encourage you to reach out to professional mental health resources (see here for a list of free resources).
  • We expect students, on average, to have 1-3 sessions with a faculty ally about the same issue.  They should not expect lengthy or frequently recurring (e.g., weekly) meetings. Faculty allies are expected to set healthy boundaries (see here).
  • Students should remember that faculty members are volunteers and have not received training for solving mental health issues. They offer their time to help students and should never feel pressured to deal with matters they don’t feel comfortable with.

Don’t be shy to reach out. Even if you have a question that seems insignificant, our volunteers love to chat with students. You don’t have to have a big problem to use this program. Everyone is welcome.

Confidentiality

Mutual trust is crucial to ensure that students feel they can open up and faculty feel they can give advice freely. The faculty ally's role is to provide advice for the student's ears and student's benefit. The faculty ally shouldn't share information with third parties, and shouldn't take any action, without the student’s permission. (However, exceptions apply under the law, university policy, and professional ethics, e.g., situations involving child abuse, Title IX, research misconduct, imminent danger, etc.) Similarly, students are encouraged to be circumspect about repeating advice they receive; faculty allies will be more candid (especially when discussing their colleagues) if they believe their comments and views won't be repeated or attributed to them.

Exceptions:

Adults in California (including faculty allies) are required to make a report if they suspect someone is planning to commit a crime. Faculty are also required to report certain kinds of information in their role as mandated reporters and as parties to Title IX policies. Faculty allies may also choose to breach confidentiality in other cases where they feel they have a moral obligation to do so (e.g., reasonable fear of unethical behavior or harm to other people). We explain this further below. Any student or faculty member can reach out to Jay or Omer if they feel they have been harmed as a result of their participation in the program. 

It is important to remember that all faculty members are mandated reporters!

More information: https://sites.google.com/stanford.edu/hr-systems-and-processes/processes/mandated-reporter?authuser=1&pli=1

Additionally, faculty members have to report prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender (sex), including sexual harassment, to the Title IX office. This is required as terms of their employment, and they are not allowed to choose not to report such incidents.  Note that this applies not only to the student meeting with the faculty ally, but to any other student they may speak to the faculty member about. More information is provided below:

• Stanford’s policy regarding harassment: https://adminguide.stanford.edu/chapters/guiding-policies-and-principles/harassment-discrimination/sexual-harassment
• Title IX office: https://share.stanford.edu/
• Free resources available on campus that are exempt from Title IX reporting are included in Resources.

In addition to all legal requirements, faculty allies might also break confidentiality if they have any other strong moral objections.

• Example: Student tells faculty member that they are faking their research results

The faculty ally should not share any information or take any action without the student’s permission unless they are legally obligated or feel morally obligated to do so.

Trust:

These exceptions aside (hopefully, they will arise rarely in practice), both students and faculty should not discuss their meeting unless both parties explicitly consent. Trust is crucial to ensure that students feel they can open up and faculty feel they can give advice freely.

Process

Students can simply reach out and contact any faculty member from the list of faculty allies (see instructions for students). The student and the faculty member will work together to arrange a meeting time and place. If a faculty member does not have the capacity to meet with the student in the near future, they should let the student know in a timely manner, so that the student can reach out to someone else.

On weekends, during university closures, and between quarters, it might take longer to get a reply from faculty. Students should take this into account and reach out to other resources if they have a time-critical issue.

The meeting can be structured any way the parties prefer. We encourage students to not be afraid to ask questions or be vulnerable.

For current faculty allies...

Thank you for agreeing to be a faculty ally! You are providing a great service to the PhD students in this department.

Meeting guidelines:

Before a meeting:

• Make sure you have the time and energy to listen to the student uninterrupted
• If for some reason you are unable to keep an appointment, let the student know as soon as you can!

During the meeting:

• At the beginning:
  • remind the student that you are a mandated reporter and have to report Title IX violations
    • The Resources section has suggestions in case you want to discuss Title IX issues confidentially with someone
  • clarify any other boundaries you want to set (more on that below)
• Listen to the student; be respectful and empathetic. Tell them about your experience and feel free to suggest possible solutions if you feel it would be helpful

At the end:

• ask the student if they want a follow-up meeting
• don’t be disappointed if a student doesn’t follow your advice

Important information:

Your own mental health and capacity comes first! You can only help others if you are in a good place yourself. It is absolutely fine to set boundaries if you don’t have the time for a meeting or feel you cannot be objective. If you become uncomfortable during a meeting, you can always refer the students to the resources at the end of this document and stop the meeting at any time. If you ever need to take a break from the program, let us know.

Remind students that you cannot change the organizational process for them, even if you would like to. If, for example, a deadline to request a leave of absence falls on a certain day, you won’t be able to change it for them.

If a student is having trouble with one of your faculty colleagues, encourage the student to reach out to Jay or Omer. For them, it is important to be able to recognize troubling patterns early, so that proper steps can be taken to prevent the problem from getting worse.

Don’t take any action unless the student wants you to. We know that a lot of faculty members want to do the very best they can to help students, but the student’s consent is very important and must be respected.

A student’s experience might be very different from the experience you had when you were in graduate school. Please try to be open to their perspective and not dismissive or judgemental.

Program Feedback:

If you have feedback on the program in general or on your role in particular (e.g., you are being contacted too frequently or by too many students), please reach out and we will try to help.  We want the program to run smoothly and work well for all participants.

For prospective faculty allies...

Thank you for your interest in volunteering for this program! We are very grateful that you want to help improve PhD students experience in the Stanford CS department. Please read this document to understand the program..

Additionally, please consider the following requirements/information:

• Please only volunteer if you expect to have enough time for it.
  • Since this program is new, it is hard to predict what the expected effort for each faculty ally will be. We expect the workload to be low, but we will reassess over time to ensure that no one is overloaded.
  • We fully understand that some weeks (conference deadlines, grant proposals, finals) are busier than others. It is completely okay to let students know when you do not have the bandwidth to meet with them. We do expect you to read your email regularly and answer students who reach out, even if you are unable to meet with them right away.  Please do not ignore student requests because you are too busy.
• Review the sections about confidentiality. You should adhere to these guidelines and all laws about mandatory reporting while participating in this program.
• Students might have diverse perspectives and backgrounds. Student problems should be taken seriously and treated with respect.

Reach out to Jay and Omer to be added as a volunteer:

• Please indicate how you prefer to be contacted by students to set up a meeting. For example: in person (stop by your office), by phone, by email, using particular keywords in the subject line of an email, etc.
• Think about whether you want to offer meetings in person or zoom. Of course, this can be determined for each specific meeting.
• Include a short paragraph about why you want to volunteer, and mention any specific areas for which you feel you are particularly qualified.
• You will receive emails from time to time asking you to confirm that you still want to be part of this program.