All posts by Anne-Elizabeth Brodsky

NAS rec #5:  Diffuse the hierarchical & dependent relationship between trainees and faculty

equitable policies & practices, Events, Institutional Climate

“The most potent predictor of sexual harassment is organizational climate” (NAS report, x).

Those of us who advise graduate students are powerfully positioned to rethink and reorient our academic organizational climate.

We encourage you to share the notes below with your colleagues and department chair. Also, faculty (all ranks, all genders) are invited to continue the discussion at coffee hour Wed 11/28/18 from 8:30-10:30 at the Hopkins Club.

Related sources (these were on the discussion table at Where We Stand, along with Vision 2020, the 2017 Report Card, and the NAS report):

  1. Lucy Taylor, “Twenty Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started my PhD” (Nature)
  2. Mentoring Grad Students: Advising Statements (Chronicle)
  3. Drew Daniel on vulnerability and responsibility for advisors, particularly in the humanities job market (bullyblogger)
  4. “How a Department Took on the Next Frontier in the #MeToo Movement” (Chronicle)
  5. K.A. Amienne, “Abusers and Enablers in Faculty Culture” (Chronicle)
  6. Andrea Long Chu, “I Worked with Avital Ronell. I Believe her Accuser.” (Chronicle)

Ideas from the DLC and Where We Stand events on how to get this moving at JHU:

Ways to restructure advising/mentoring relationships:

  • Train us on how to advise/mentor
  • In person training (around sexual harassment or discrimination, for example)—not online
  • Provide mentoring committees for people at all stages
  • Set up a peer mentoring network – advanced grad students working with grad students earlier in their careers
  • Offer more money to junior people, like postdocs and grad students, so they depend less on their PI
  • Provide students with mentoring from faculty outside the thesis committee
  • Give PhD candidates not just one but two supervisors; be sure there is more than one person that a grad student or postdoc could go to
  • Create safe harbor committees by discipline
  • Create a department ombundsman to go to, someone who would not be writing letter of rec
  • Think of creative ways to implement accountability for faculty. Take away money in response to bad behavior?
  • Back away to say, this is everybody’s work and everybody’s responsibility

Ways to conduct advising/mentoring relationships:

  • Have open discussions with students during orientation to address certain gender differences between the faculty and student groups
  • Have an open conversation with our advisees about expectations and roles—but not written as a contract. Instead, make it a flexible document to get conversations going
  • Have conversations about roles, typical paths, power dynamics, and so on that normalize the discussion
  • Conduct 360-degree evaluations for faculty
  • Assess mentors/advisors—this is a key part of their job, for which they should be accountable

 

 

 

 

Notes from Where We Stand 2018

collaboration & leadership, equitable policies & practices, Events, Institutional Climate, JHU

At Where We Stand, we always have themed tables with relevant resources, markers, and white butcher paper for notes. This year, with the focus on the NAS report on sexual and gender harassment, each table was focused around one or two of NAS’s 15 recommendations. We combined the NAS findings with JHU data. For example:

With over 50 people participating, the event began with a welcome from John Toscano, Vice Dean for Natural Sciences in the Kreiger School. Next Professor Karen Fleming gave an overview of the NAS report (WhereWeStand_KarenSlidesForDistribution)

Dean Toscano’s remarks: Good evening. As we get ready to discuss the National Academies Report on Sexual Harassment, I’m honored to be here with colleagues ready to engage in what is probably some of our most important work at this juncture: that is, increasing gender equity in all aspects of our academic and work environments here at Johns Hopkins University.

We have made notable progress on some of the goals outlined in the Vision 2020 Report. The new parental leave policy recently put into place will help to enhance work-life balance. Additionally, the provost’s office recently hired a dual career specialist who will focus on providing divisions with resources and services to maximize opportunities to recruit and retain dual career couples.

We have recently implemented two faculty initiatives at Krieger and Whiting – the Launch Program and the Master Mentor Program. Launch committees are designed to provide new junior faculty in STEM fields with advice and mentorship to facilitate early career success. Our Master Mentor program equips senior faculty to be better and more effective mentors for junior faculty, postdocs, and graduate students. While these programs are new, we are excited about their start and we believe that they have the potential to impact important aspects of our climate and culture.

Although we are proud of this progress, we also recognize opportunities for improvement that will better position us for institutional excellence. In order to create new knowledge that offers potential solutions to global and societal problems, it’s critical that everyone has a place at the academic table.

In particular, we must explore ways to expand pathways to leadership for women faculty and staff. One of our goals is to improve our training, hiring, mentoring, and promotion practices. Currently, some of these systems and policies can make it challenging for scholars and academic leaders to fully develop their academic and professional pathways.

We also know from research that the more diverse a team is, the more innovative it is. That means that if we’re not actively solving issues of underrepresentation at all levels, and breaking down barriers, we are losing out on talent and the opportunity to innovate faster and better.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly, we must engage men who are part of the Hopkins community in our efforts towards gender equity. Men, particularly those in leadership positions, play an important role in breaking down barriers and promoting equity. We can’t afford to place the burden solely on women or other underrepresented groups to change the status quo.

In this regard, we want to encourage men to increase awareness of actions and potential biases that impact the career success of women. For example, we encourage men who are chairs of academic departments to initiate discussions on ways to foster collegiality, collaboration, and an inclusive climate in their own departments – to fight what the National Academies Report refers to as “gender harassment” – that is, verbal or nonverbal behavior that conveys hostility, objectification, exclusion, or second-class status toward members of one gender.

As we begin to roll up our sleeves today and dig into this work, I’d like to envision the highest ideal – an environment and launching pad so inclusive that any student, postdoc, staff, or faculty member can reach for their heights without stumbling over barriers of any kind. So, let’s begin to dive into what is needed to get us from here to there.

Thank you.

In the next week or so, we’ll share the resources and the ideas of each of the tables. Until soon–

How UT Austin’s integrative-biology department is addressing gender harassment

equitable policies & practices, Events, Institutional Climate

Below is an excerpt from Lindsay Ellis and Sarah Brown’s 11/9/2018 Chronicle article “How a Department Took On the Next Frontier in the #MeToo Movement.”

For more articles on graduate student advising, look in our file cabinet and scroll down. And we hope Homewood faculty (all ranks, all genders) will join us and Dean Wendland to discuss these issues over coffee at the Hopkins Club Wed, Nov 28, between 8:30-10:30am. coffee cup

From the Chronicle:

After she began her Ph.D. in the fall of 2017, [Julia M.] York learned more about the department’s environment, its quirks, its flaws. She learned about the sorts of challenges that women face in the academy. About rumors that faculty members treated female graduate students differently from the men. About the times when male professors made sexist comments and no one said anything.

And she learned about the whisper network. Older students had a warning: There’s this professor in the department. Don’t work with him. Don’t go anywhere alone with him.

In the meantime, she saw story after story in the news about university employees accused of harassment or inappropriate romantic relationships, some of them at Austin. She came to believe that campus policies aren’t designed to reduce discrimination against women; they’re designed to protect the institution.

Coffee Hour: Grad Student Advising

equitable policies & practices, Events, Institutional Climate, JHU, teaching

coffee cupWe are delighted to invite Homewood faculty of all ranks and all genders to join a coffee hour discussion about graduate student advising! (So far we’ve posted about this topic here and here.)

Please mark your calendars for Wed, Nov 28, 8:30-10:30am – most likely in the Hopkins Club; we’ll confirm with you. Drop in when you can and stay as long as you like. Bring a friend.

Many thanks to Dean Wendland’s office for sponsoring this event!

Garland Hall seeks YOUR feedback on diversity & inclusion

Unconscious Bias

The JHU Office of Diversity and Inclusion is looking for feedback (by Wednesday 11/21, the day before Thanksgiving) on: (1) diversity and inclusion statements and (2) discrimination and harassment policy and procedures.garland hall

Here’s the full text from Office of Diversity & Inclusion:

As we develop or update university-level policies at Johns Hopkins, we work to identify and seek feedback from key stakeholders who may be affected by them. This process includes consultations with faculty and academic leaders, including through academic councils and a new standing committee of vice deans; student groups and governing bodies; and staff and administrators with expertise in related areas, such as student affairs, finance, and human resources.

Key policy issues also benefit enormously from input across the entire university community, so that we are sure to capture as wide a range of views as possible.

To provide feedback by November 21, visit: https://policies.jhu.edu/?event=under-review.