phd advisor bully

Bullying by supervisors is alive and well – now is the time to tackle it

The arrangements that trap PhD students in toxic relationships with abusive supervisors must be reformed – here’s how, says Timothy Ijoyemi

Timothy Ijoyemi

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In recent years, a chorus of former PhD students have broken their silence over abusive behaviour suffered at the hands of their supervisors. Their horrifying accounts variously relate being belittled and humiliated in front of colleagues, having supervisors explode with anger upon hearing of scientific setbacks, even supervisors sullying their students’ reputations in the eyes of prospective employers. The toll of this sustained torment on students’ mental health can be devastating, with reports of anxiety and depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and even suicide having emerged.

Supervisor bullying deters talented students from pursuing academic careers. It can also compromise academic integrity by pressuring students to falsify data to avoid provoking backlash. This is a lose-lose situation for all of academia.

To make matters worse, the unprecedented demands of the Covid-19 pandemic risk diverting attention from nascent efforts to address supervisor bullying precisely when many of the conditions that feed into it, such as work frustration and economic inequality, have worsened. More optimistically, the state of flux created by the pandemic also presents an opportunity to finally get to grips with this issue requiring bold and urgent action.

But why focus on supervisor bullying of PhD students when bullying affects academics at all levels? While all forms of bullying must be eradicated, the power imbalance of the student-supervisor relationship makes students uniquely vulnerable to bullying from superiors who can destroy careers before they’ve even begun.

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Indeed, once a student has progressed to a certain point in their PhD, their supervisor is usually so intertwined with the project that they are virtually indispensable to its completion. Students jumping ship partway through their PhD are likely to lose access to essential resources bound to their existing supervisor, including research funding and access to crucial lab equipment, not to mention their supervisor’s expertise. Any student raising the ire of a malicious supervisor also risks forgoing the glowing reference and authorship credit on papers that could be pivotal to landing their first postdoc. It’s little wonder that so few PhD students report their experiences of bullying.

The arrangements that trap students in toxic relationships with abusive supervisors are something that universities and other stakeholders can and must work together to reform. A key focus must be making it easier for students to change supervisor partway through their projects. Here, funders could make provision for finance allocated to PhD students to be transferred to a new supervisor if bullying has occurred. Where this isn’t possible, universities should have a fund available to plug or mitigate funding shortfalls that accrue to students decoupling from abusive supervisors.

Furthermore, investigative committees should have the power to force offending supervisors to continue providing access to equipment or other resources needed by a targeted student to complete their project, with conditions around this carefully set to eliminate opportunities for reprisal – for example, mandating that the former supervisor be absent during specified access times.

Any effort to ease supervisor transition must be paired with a robust anti-bullying policy that sets out disciplinary action to be taken against supervisors found to have bullied. Consequences for repeat or particularly egregious offenders should be severe, ranging up to dismissal.

Research has found that reporting of academic bullying is low largely because targets doubt that it will lead to meaningful action. To inspire greater confidence, anti-bullying policies must be communicated to incoming PhD students as a prominent part of their induction, with clear definitions given of what constitutes bullying, how complaints will be investigated, what disciplinary actions may result and what measures can be taken to minimise negative impacts on reporting students. To increase confidence further, at least one example should be given of a previous case where a complaint was upheld with a resolution favourable to the targeted student.

Ensuring that investigations are conducted fairly is essential to earning supervisor and student support. As such, investigative committees should be made up of individuals external to an accused supervisor’s department. This would help avert conflicts of interest that could otherwise impel investigators to protect or sabotage an accused colleague.

Beyond the university itself, there’s much that can be done to tackle supervisor bullying. Funding bodies should follow the lead of the Wellcome Trust by attaching conditions to their grants that allow funding to be withdrawn from supervisors found to have bullied. Where this occurs, funding should be transferred to another principal investigator from the same department to reduce impacts on others funded by the same grant. Funders could also collaborate with universities to obtain records of academic bullying by grant applicants and factor these into funding decisions.

Gatekeepers for academic metrics, including those that publish institutional rankings, could also collaborate with universities to incorporate bullying records into their assessment criteria. This would benefit gatekeepers by driving up standards in the institutions on which their existence depends, while those institutions would benefit from outperforming competitors on a metric bound to influence student enrolment. Most important would be the benefit to students now belonging to institutions better incentivised to root out supervisor bullying.

The stories of supervisor bullying that have emerged in recent times are a terrible stain on higher education. It’s past time for the multi-pronged effort needed to reform a system in which bullying has been able to thrive. In the ruins of the pandemic, opportunity for drastic change abounds. It would be grossly unjust to the next generation of PhD students if inaction prevails.

Timothy Ijoyemi has more than 10 years’ experience in higher education. He has a passion for equity, diversity and inclusion, and at UCL School of Management he researches and supports on various projects to improve student and staff experience. 

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Why is Bullying so Frequent in Academia? Diagnostics and Solutions for Bully-Proof Organizations

When I was in graduate school, my fellow students and I often joked about a paradox: How come that our Management departments (employing dozens of faculty experts in human resources, social psychology, and group dynamics) are a breeding ground for bullies?

Indeed, one thing that struck me throughout graduate school was how common bullying was. Over the five years of my PhD, I have been the target and witness of intimidation attempts, threats, and destructive criticism. In contrast, the “supportive environment”, the “emotional safety”, and the “constructive feedback” that management scholars praise as necessary conditions for thriving work environments were rare, if not absent.

In general, horror stories about bullies were widespread in all the departments I visited, and most people around me knew at least one “bully”: A professor regularly engaged in aggressive, hostile, or even destructive behaviors towards PhDs students or colleagues.

What do we mean by bullying?

Bullying can be tricky to define. First, it encompasses a large range of behaviors (e.g., incivility, intimidation, social isolation, humiliation, emotional abuse or physical aggression) in various contexts (school, family, workplace, social media). Second, it is hard to measure: Bullies rarely talk about their bullying behaviors, and victims do not necessarily report them [1-5]. However, there is a consensus that bullying is an aggressive behavior characterized by hostile intent, power imbalance and repetition [6].

A case study in bullying: Academia

Academia provides an interesting setting to understand bullying. Such behaviors appear unfortunately more common in higher education than in other industries: 33% of academics report being victim of bullying (vs. 2% to 20% of people employed in other industries depending on the country considered [2,7]). In particular, bullying behaviors seem particularly frequent in advisor-advisee relationships: The Nature 2019 PhD survey on more than 6300 early career-researchers revealed that 21% of respondents had been bullied during their PhD, and that for 48% of them the perpetrator was their supervisor. In most cases, the victims of bullying felt unable to report these behaviors, for fear of personal repercussions [8]. The qualitative data from the survey also give insights on the specific type of bullying actions advisors engage in, such as acting aggressively or being overly critical.

When do people bully?

Bullying has been connected to some specific personality traits such as aggressiveness, Machiavellianism, or lack of empathy. However, it would be incorrect to reduce bullying to something that “evil people” do: The environment plays a major role, and organizational structures and processes can deter or on the contrary encourage bullying [5]. Academia, for example, has multiple features that can be conducive to bullying:

• A strong power imbalance between advisors and advisees.
• A loose organizational structure, with little oversight.
• An organizational culture in which the end justifies the means.
• An unidimensional hiring and promotion process.

Power imbalance

The strongest power asymmetry in academia is between graduate students and their supervisor. Very early on, PhDs are required to closely work with a supervisor who is supposed to guide them through their PhD journey. Graduate students are highly dependent on their supervisor for access to data, research budget, networking opportunities, recommendation letters… In addition, this relationship is characterized by a certain degree of opacity and informality: Interactions between supervisors and PhDs are rarely monitored or attended by third parties. This dependence and isolation can pave the way for bullying behaviors.

Loose Management

A “laissez-faire” or inadequate leadership can lead to bullying behaviors [9–11]: If figures of authority in the organization are perceived as weak, it is assumed that they will not intervene in bullying situations, which gives free reign to potential bullies to abuse others [5].

Academic departments are organized as “entrepreneurial spaces” in which professors are expected to self-manage most aspects of their work: time management, teaching, research pipeline, collaboration with co-authors, or supervision of graduate students. In addition, most academics dislike interference in what they are doing and how they are doing it: Many acknowledge that they pursued a career in academia precisely because they did not want to have a boss. However, this absence of leadership makes it easier for bullies to engage in abusive behaviors without facing repercussions.

High-Performance Organizational Culture

The academic culture is full of mythologies that justify bullying. It praises values of dominance, competitiveness, and high achievement in which bullying behavior may be perceived as only slightly transgressive, or even as an efficient way to “toughen up” aspiring academics.

The very revealing adage of academia, “publish or perish”, sets the tone of this culture. Publications in top journals define the pecking order among academics, and by the same token, make most behaviors justifiable as long as they can help achieve this goal. This ethos, that makes publishing a matter of survival, legitimizes abusive behaviors.

In addition, many academics rationalize and romanticize their past suffering, and frame it as a necessary condition to success: “Yes, the Ph.D. was tough, but it was a transformative experience, and the thick skin that I developed is now helping me thrive.” Once people hold this view, they are less likely to view bullying as an issue that needs to be solved, and less likely to take the suffering of graduate students seriously. After all, if they complain about bullying, maybe they are not “cut for the job".

This organizational culture makes particularly difficult both for PhD programs to intervene into abusive situations and for PhDs to report the behaviors they are victim of: Once everybody has internalized the idea that suffering is necessary to succeed, there is no more reason to fight against it.

“Brilliant Jerks”

Finally, academics are selected and promoted on their publication records, and much less so on their social skills and emotional intelligence. This may be surprising given that academics manage many different relationships (e.g., supervisor-supervisee, co-authors, authors-reviewers, professor-students…), have a job in which collaborations are frequent and essential, and are expected to mentor the new generations of scholars.

This narrow selection process can have multiple negative effects. It weeds out people who have good social skills but have a weaker publication record, it signals that social skills are not worth developing, and most importantly it legitimizes the stereotype of the “brilliant jerks”: prolific researchers who lack basic social skills (i.e., emotional regulation, self-reflection, and perspective-taking). Indeed, it is not rare to find that departments are willing to recruit, promote or even protect bullies, as long as they have the right number of publications, sending the message that toxic behaviors can be bargained [12].

Building a Bully-Proof Organization

While the economic cost of workplace bullying is difficult to assess, the negative consequences are well-documented. Victims are more likely to suffer from emotional issues, health disorders, extreme stress, feelings of worthlessness and shame [13]. Organizations suffer from an erosion of creativity, a reduced organizational commitment, job dissatisfaction, a decreasing productivity, an increased absenteeism, and a higher turnover rate [14–16]. How can we then avoid these behaviors, and build “bully-proof” organizations, in academia and elsewhere?

1. Not hiring bullies: “the people make the place”

The most obvious solution is not to hire people who are more likely to engage in this type of behavior. This strategy requires that organizations try to screen bullies during the recruitment and promotion process. Research suggests [17–19] that bullies are more likely to exhibit specific personality traits:

• They are aggressive, hostile, competitive, assertive, confrontational, impulsive, and moody.
• They have difficulty to self-analyze, to regulate their emotions and lack empathy.
• On the OCEAN personality inventory, they are typically low in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness and high in Neuroticism and Extraversion.
• They can also be high in narcissism and psychopathy.

However, the diagnostic value of these personality traits is low: Screening on personality alone would exclude many people who are not bullies and let in many others who are bullies.

In addition, organizations should base their recruitment and promotion decisions not only on productivity and achievement, but also on social skills and emotional intelligence. Research suggests that hiring toxic workers can be incredibly costly for companies, even when those toxic workers are high performers [20]: Between hiring a superstar (very high performer) and avoiding a toxic worker, companies are often better off avoiding the toxic worker.

2. Evaluating structural factors that allow bullies to thrive

Another important step is to determine organizational features that might enable bullying. Many aspects of organizational culture may accidentally foster bullying and should therefore be considered carefully:

• The quest for excellence (e.g., top chefs in the kitchen industry) [21]; an organizational culture that celebrates toughness (e.g., army, prisons, firefighters) [22–25].
• A socialization process that features initiation rituals (e.g., hazing) [5,26].
• A large number of informal and casual behaviors that make more difficult for some employees to distinguish “proper and professional” behaviors from “borderline and inappropriate” behaviors [27].

Those features can serve useful purposes. However, when many of them are present, it is important to be mindful that they can facilitate bullying.

3. The “no asshole rule”

On the 20th of January 2021, Joe Biden swore in nearly 1,000 federal employees. During this virtual ceremony, he felt the need to emphasize that under his watch, disrespect and condescendence among his collaborators would not be tolerated. As a leader, publicly and strongly reaffirming that bullying and other destructive behaviors do not have room in the organization can be a very powerful move.

To be effective however, this zero-tolerance policy must be accompanied with effective policies that discourage and punish bullying, and on the contrary reward constructive interactions [28]. If leaders do not walk the talk, they risk promoting a culture of impunity and hypocrisy within the organization.

To go further…

• Woolston, C. PhDs: the tortuous truth. Nature 575, 403–406 (2019).
• Minor, D. & Housman, M. G. Toxic Workers. Acad. Manag. Proc. 2015, 13189 (2015).
• Moss, S. Research is set up for bullies to thrive. Nature 560, 529–529 (2018).
• Breevaart, K., Wisse, B. & Schyns, B. Trapped at Work: The Barriers Model of Abusive Supervision. Acad. Manag. Perspect. (2021)
• Chirila, T. & Constantin, T. Understanding Workplace Bullying Phenomenon through its Concepts: A Literature Review. Procedia - Soc. Behav. Sci. 1175–1179 (2013).
• Keashly, L. & Jagatic, K. North American Perspectives on Hostile Behaviors and Bullying at Work. in Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace: Developments in Theory, Research, and Practice (CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011).
• Keashly, L. & Neuman, J. H. Bullying in higher education: what current research, theorizing, and practice tell us. in Workplace Bullying In Higher Education (Routledge, 2013).
• Randall, P. An overview of adult bullying. in Bullying in Adulthood: Assessing the Bullies and their Victims (Routledge, 2002).
• Salin, D. Ways of explaining workplace bullying: A review of enabling, motivating and precipitating structures and processes in the work environment. Hum. Relat. 56, 1213–1232 (2003).
• Bullying. Wikipedia (2021).
• Rayner, C. & Cooper, C. L. Workplace Bullying. in Handbook of workplace violence 121–145 (Sage Publications, Inc, 2006).
• Einarsen, S., Raknes, B. rn I. & Matthiesen, S. B. Bullying and harassment at work and their relationships to work environment quality: An exploratory study. Eur. J. Work Organ. Psychol. 4, 381–401 (1994).
• Hoel, H. & Cooper, C. L. Destructive conflict and bullying at work. (Manchester School of Management, UMIST Manchester, 2000).
• Leymann, H. The content and development of mobbing at work. Eur. J. Work Organ. Psychol. 5, 165–184 (1996).
• Nelson, E. D. & Lambert, R. D. Sticks, stones and semantics: The ivory tower bully’s vocabulary of motives. Qual. Sociol. 24, 83–106 (2001).
• Workplace Bullying Institute. Results of the 2010 and 2007 WBI US Workplace Bullying Survey. (2010).
• Bryant, M., Buttigieg, D. & Hanley, G. Poor bullying prevention and employee health: some implications. Int. J. Workplace Health Manag. 2, 48–62 (2009).
• Pate, J. & Beaumont, P. Bullying and harassment: a case of success? Empl. Relat. 32, 171–183 (2010).
• Zapf, D. Organisational, work group related and personal causes of mobbing/bullying at work. Int. J. Manpow. 20, 70–85 (1999).
• Jolliffe, D. & Farrington, D. P. Examining the relationship between low empathy and bullying. Aggress. Behav. Off. J. Int. Soc. Res. Aggress. 32, 540–550 (2006).
• Mitsopoulou, E. & Giovazolias, T. Personality traits, empathy and bullying behavior: A meta-analytic approach. Aggress. Violent Behav. 21, 61–72 (2015).
• Seigne, E., Coyne, I., Randall, P. & Parker, J. Personality traits of bullies as a contributory factor in workplace bullying: An exploratory study. Int. J. Organ. Theory Behav. (2007).
• Johns, N. & Menzel, P. J. ‘ If you can’t stand the heat!’… Kitchen violence and culinary art. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. (1999).
• Archer, D. Exploring “bullying” culture in the para‐military organisation. Int. J. Manpow. (1999).
• Ashforth, B. Petty Tyranny in Organizations. Hum. Relat. 47, 755–778 (1994).
• Ireland, J. L. “Bullying” among prisoners: A review of research. Aggress. Violent Behav. 5, 201–215 (2000).
• Neuman, J. H. & Baron, R. A. Workplace Violence and Workplace Aggression: Evidence Concerning Specific Forms, Potential Causes, and Preferred Targets. J. Manag. 24, 391–419 (1998).
• Hoel, H. & Salin, D. 10 Organisational antecedents of workplace bullying. Bullying Emot. Abuse Workplace Int. Perspect. Res. Pract. 203–218 (2003).
• Pearson, C. M., Andersson, L. M. & Porath, C. L. Assessing and attacking workplace incivility. Organ. Dyn. 29, 123–137 (2000).
• Hanson, B. C. Diagnose and Eliminate Workplace Bullying. Harvard Business Review (2011).

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• 28 August 2018

Research is set up for bullies to thrive

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Sherry Moss is a professor of organizational studies at Wake Forest University’s School of Business in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA.

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A young woman contacted me earlier this year to discuss her PhD adviser. He would follow her around the lab, shaming her in others’ presence, yelling that she was incompetent and that her experiments were done incorrectly. She wanted nothing more than to minimize contact with him, but she felt trapped. Starting in another lab would mean losing nearly three years of work.

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Abuse and Exploitation of Doctoral Students: A Conceptual Model for Traversing a Long and Winding Road to Academia

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• Aaron Cohen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8143-2769 1 &
• Yehuda Baruch   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0678-6273 2  

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This paper develops a conceptual model of PhD supervisors’ abuse and exploitation of their students and the outcomes of that abuse. Based on the literature about destructive leadership and the “dark side” of supervision, we theorize about why and how PhD student abuse and exploitation may occur. We offer a novel contribution to the literature by identifying the process through which PhD students experience supervisory abuse and exploitation, the various factors influencing this process, and its outcomes. The proposed model presents the Dark Triad, perceptions of goal blockage, and perceptions of ethical culture as potential characteristics of the PhD supervisor and implies the mediation of the perceptions of power and politics in the relationship between the Dark Triad and student abuse and exploitation. Institutional policies and practices concerning doctoral students and their characteristics are proposed as moderators in such a relationship. Finally, the model suggests that student abuse and exploitation may hinder or even end students’ academic careers. The manuscript discusses the theoretical and practical contributions and managerial implications of the proposed model and recommends further exploration of the dark sides of academia.

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Bullying in higher education: an endemic problem.

We refer to PhDs, but this applies to any doctorate, such as the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) or Doctor of Science (DSc).

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Cohen, A., Baruch, Y. Abuse and Exploitation of Doctoral Students: A Conceptual Model for Traversing a Long and Winding Road to Academia. J Bus Ethics 180 , 505–522 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04905-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04905-1

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Workplace bullying —repetitive abusive, threatening, humiliating and intimidating behaviour—is on the rise globally. And matters are worse in academia. In the UK, for example, up to 42% of academics report being bullied in the workplace while the national average across all professions ranges from just 10-20%.

Why do bullies bully? According to researchers from Brock University in Canada the goals of bullying come from internal motivations and desires, which can be conscious or not. Bullying takes many forms: the malicious mistreatment of someone including persistent criticism, inaccurate accusations, exclusion and ostracism, public humiliation, the spreading of rumors, setting people up to fail, or overloading someone with work. Bullying is different from accidental or reactive aggression, since it is goal-directed meaning that the purpose is to harm someone when there is a power imbalance.

While anyone is at risk of being bullied in academia, research has found that some of us are more vulnerable compared to others. For example, early career researchers (ECRs), including trainees (e.g. graduate students, postdocs), minority groups, adjunct professors, research associates, and untenured professors are at a higher risk to experience bullying. Employees with more years in a job report feeling less bullied than others subordinate to them, meaning that junior members of a research group or Faculty may be at greater risk of bullying.

The existence of sharp power differentials is a major factor in workplace bullying in academia

These specific groups are more vulnerable to bullying in academia than others because of the existence of sharp power differentials , a major contributing factor to bullying in the workplace. For example, men and supervisors of large successful research groups are observed to perpetrate bullying behavior more often than women and other minorities, though exceptions do exist. Other research has shown that the pressure associated with publishing, getting research funding, and lack of leadership and people management training in science may also contribute to bullying.

In some cases , principal investigators (PI) can also experience bullying from students, peers, or administrators. Take the example of one PI who was bullied by an administrator for being too ambitious, making her overly conscious of her success. When she moved to another institution, she did not make collaborations with other researchers in different departments, as she had previously, because she did not want to appear to be too ambitious. This is also an example of the long-term impact bullying can have on future work.

To highlight that bullying can take different forms and occur at all career stages, we include here four anonymous testimonials from victims of academic bullying in the life sciences:

I got pregnant during my PhD and I was told it was not an issue. However, during the course of my pregnancy, I was removed from my projects and left out of discussions about the work that needed to be done. When I asked for an explanation, I was told that science could not wait for me while I was pregnant, even though I was eager to work, and the law permitted me to do so. After my child was born, I was made to return to work after just three weeks, while legally I was permitted up to a year off work. In the lab, I was given bits and pieces of others’ projects and not permitted to work on my own project. I worked without complaining but this took a toll on my emotional health with time. It was after my then-toddler son broke his arm that everything got worse. I needed to take a week off for his hospital stay, but my supervisor called me to his office and told me that I was a useless researcher and that I didn’t belong in science, and then he fired me. I knew it was illegal for him to do so, but I didn’t want to fight him because I was dependent on him to finish my PhD. I met with him after a week and he told me that I could work, but without pay, to make up for the duration of my pregnancy when I was paid. I did as I was told for the next six months, and somehow with the support of my husband and my best friend, was able to graduate and leave. I now have a permanent faculty position at a university in my home country, but my PhD broke me. International Female PhD Student

After I joined the lab, my supervisors told me that they needed to re-apply for funding, and that they were relying on my results for the application. Unfortunately, they wanted to employ a method that they were unfamiliar with, and as a beginner, I had very limited resources. I managed to get help from someone at another department and it took me three months to set up the method in the lab, but it turned out to be unsuitable for our project. My supervisors were unhappy about this and started blaming me for not smart enough to get the results they expected. I was constantly told that things didn’t work in my hands, and that they would need to decide whether to prolong my contract. This threat was dangled in front of me every few months, and it scared me. I contemplated leaving the lab and moving on, but my supervisors told me that it would look bad for them and offered me another project instead. Things didn’t improve after this either: my project worked fine, but my supervisors continued threatening to terminate my contract. I decided to graduate after three and a half years of enduring this, but my supervisors then threatened to block me from finishing. I was gas lighted throughout my Master’s and never understood what they really wanted. Why did they offer me a position if I wasn’t good enough? I decided to switch fields after my PhD and am much happier now. Male Graduate Student Completing His Graduate Studies in His Home Country

Within 3-weeks of starting a new research associate position, I was asked to lead the writing of a grant. The research focus of the group was beyond my experience, and I had little exposure to the research environment of the group. The PI had not established the big picture of the grant; it was left up to me. Furthermore, he provided little to no guidance with writing the grant (e.g. his expectations, what had previously been done, etc.). It was a very overwhelming experience. When I sent out a draft of the grant, I was pulled into a private meeting with the PI and the co-PI, who both told me that my work was crap and that since I was the highest paid member of the group I should have been producing amazing work. They said that all my responsibilities would be given to someone else in the group. I was given menial tasks like uploading files on the One Drive for several months. Most days, I would not have enough work to do or struggle with the work I was required to do because there was not enough guidance. I have been doing research for 16 years but had never been so bored as I was in this position. A few months later, I was asked to do a few more projects, but again was told my work was not good. The culture in the research group was unforgiving and exclusive. Outside of the job, through my hard work and determination, I obtained another position and was able to leave. When I sent in my resignation, I was even intimidated to leave earlier than I planned because it would cost them less. I stood my ground and left when I planned to. This job increased my imposter syndrome by a hundred-fold. I was convinced that I was the problem and the dumb one. When I told my husband about the interactions with the PI, he would comment on how ridiculous the situation was. When I was in this situation, it was too hard to see how crappy it was. It’s been about a month since I left, and I feel so much better. I have worked hard to combat my imposter syndrome, and this summer I will begin a tenure track position in a STEM field. In 2019, this is so rare, so I celebrate that! Female Research Associate in Home Country

I work as a postdoctoral researcher and my supervisor routinely tells us whom we can talk to, eat our lunch or take coffee breaks with. I recently started collaborating on a project with another postdoctoral researcher in the department but only after discussing it with my supervisor and gaining his approval. We worked on the project part-time for a few months. I approached my supervisor after we had some interesting results, and he suddenly decided that I needed to stop working on it despite the fact that it looked promising. He informed me that he was shocked that I was working on it in the first place and that he didn’t like me to do things behind his back. He also accused me of leaving him out of my activities in the lab. I was also tasked with informing my collaborator, who was livid that we needed to end the project abruptly. However, he understood and let it go, even though it was unfair for him too. My supervisor then blamed my collaborator for inciting me into doing the project in the first place and threatened him too. I do whatever my supervisor asks of me, but I am not sure if that’s the right thing to do. Unfortunately, I feel as though I have no choice since he pays me. International Male Postdoc

The impacts of bullying are manifold. Studies have reported a long-term health effects in bullying victims, such as anxiety, sleep disorders, chronic fatigue, anger, depression, destabilization of identity, aggression, low self-esteem, loss of confidence, and other health problems. Bullying also has an impact on the institutions where the victims work, including negative work environments, absenteeism, lower engagement, higher turnover, and reduced performance.

Recognizing what bullying looks like is just the first step towards tackling it. Many institutions have opted to use a top-down approach to tackle the problem through policies to report bullying via the human resource office or sometimes an ombudsman. Other institutions may not have specific policies to deal with bullying and often victims are not made aware of existing avenues of recourse. Funding agencies may also choose to get involved, for example after being accused of bullying by her colleagues in 2018 Professor Nazneem Rahman lost 3.5 million GBP in funding from the Wellcome Trust in the UK. In addition to what is currently being done at research institutions and funding agencies, legislation should be put into place by the government to ensure that victims are heard and that there are consequences for the perpetrators.

Apart from institutional actions, bottom-up approaches are also available, such as overcoming the bystander effect. The bystander effect is when individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present. Research since the 60s has shown that the presence of other people will inhibit one’s own intention to help and overcoming this effect could be an effective way to mitigate bullying in academia.

A study of whistleblowers found that 71% of employees tend not to directly report wrongdoing as the perceived personal cost is higher than the perceived reward. People tend to feel that personal costs may be higher if reporting happens through face-to-face meetings with authorities. Hence, anonymous reporting channels are needed.

Bullying is an entrenched problem in academia, supported by workplaces with power differentials. Combating bullying is a challenging task at multiple levels and over the next year a group of us eLife Community Ambassadors will embark on an initiative to shine a light on the problem, investigate its root causes and eventually formulate a set of universal measures to tackle bullying in the workplace and give relief to its victims. Stay tuned for more on our progress!

by Nafisa M. Jadavji, Emily Furlong, Pawel Grzechnik, Małgorzata Anna Gazda, Sarah Hainer, Juniper Kiss, Renuka Kudva, Samantha Seah, Huanan Shi

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From Lone Wolf to Pack Power: Empowering Early-Career Researchers through Scientific Communities

Academic unions - Rectifying myths based on frontline experiences

Office of the Graduate Ombudsman  /  Disrupting Academic Bullying  

Strategies For People Experiencing Academic Bullying

Resources for Support

If you wish to tell someone about your experience, or talk with someone about resources and steps you can take, you can click on this link , which will take you the Disrupting Academic Bullying Referral Form .  It is your decision to include as little or as much identifying information about yourself and/or the parties involved as you wish.  The information is confidential and will be sent to the Graduate Student Ombudsperson . If you include contact information, he will email you to see if you would like to set up a confidential and informal meeting to discuss your experience further.  If you do not wish to meet with him, he will not take any further action, and your report will be used anonymously to track general trends.

Below are suggestions for things you can potentially do to help lessen the negative impacts of bullying on your quality of life regardless of whether or not you choose to go through other channels to resolve your issues. The video is an excerpt from a presentation done by Ombudsperson Bryan Hanson that provides a quick overview of strategies, while more detail is available in the drop downs below.

Your browser does not support iframes. Link to iframe content: https://www.youtube.com/embed/vn4kWuvT2h4

Know Resources for Support

If you are being bullied, you are not alone. There are people in the Virginia Tech community here to help you. The Support Resources page has information about places you can go for help outside your department.

However, help may be closer at hand.

Talk to your advisor If your advisor is not your bully, they could be a good person to talk to about what you are going through. Below are some actions they could potentially take.  Whether they do or not is up to them, but these are some of the options available to them to help you deal with the problem.

• Listen to your experience and concerns.
• Provide some context to your experiences and give you their perspective on whether what you are experiencing is normal for graduate school or not.
• Depending on who is bullying you and the power relationships involved, your advisor may be able to talk to the bully and ask what their perception is of the situation, and potentially mediate some sort of resolution.
• Your advisor might be able to bring the issue up the ladder to the department head, program director or the dean of your college and potentially advocate for you if that is something you are comfortable with.

These are also actions that a faculty member who is not your advisor may be able to take if you have a close relationship with them.

Talk to your committee

If your advisor is bullying you, you could potentially talk to another member of your committee, your program director, or department head.

Other members of your committee might be able to listen to you, provide some context to your experiences, and potentially talk to your advisor.  However, many faculty are reluctant to get involved in the relationships between their colleague and a student.

Yet one advantage of talking to members of your committee is to have them hear your perspective.  It may be that they are only hearing your advisor’s side of the story and that may be affecting how they consider and/or treat you and your work.  Sharing your perspective with them may give them a better understanding of the situation that changes how they interact with you.

Talk to your Program Director or Department Head

If switching advisors is a step that is necessary, your program director and/or department head can help with the logistics.

One issue to keep in mind about approaching people in your department is that they are not confidential .  You don’t have much control over what they do with the information you give them or what next steps they take. Ideally, they would defer to you as to what you were comfortable with them sharing or doing next, but this may not always be the case.  

Talk to the Ombudsperson

Another option is to go to the Ombudsperson .  He is a confidential resource and will not discuss your situation with anyone else unless you give him permission.   Therefore, he can provide a good sounding board to talk about your experiences and get some feedback on what your options are going forward.  He can talk you through the next steps that are available and discuss the potential outcomes for different actions.  He can point you to different resources to help you meet your needs or resolve your issues.  He can coach you in communication strategies to help you approach situations or meetings with more clarity and confidence.  He can also facilitate meetings between you and someone with whom you are having difficulties if that is a step you want to take.

Seek Out Allies

Being bullied can make you feel isolated, alone, and create the impression that no one supports you.  Reaching out to  friends and colleagues you trust can help lessen those feelings. Being bullied doesn’t make you weak or undeserving of support and help.

Bullying doesn’t always happen in isolation, it is possible that others have been or are currently being bullied by the same person.  If other students are experiencing or witnessing similar behavior, you may be able to work together to bring your concerns to relevant people in the department or university administration.  It is harder to dismiss the concerns of multiple students, especially if they can show it is a pattern of behavior.

Try to identify people in your circles who can offer different types of support.

• Someone who can listen.
• Someone who may be able to offer advice
• Someone who can advocate for you
• Someone who can problem solve.

One person may be able to take on multiple roles, but it is unlikely one person will be able to do all of these things for you. Having a support network is helpful, as you can access more people to potentially fulfill these roles.

Finding people to help isn’t always easy.  Your advisor may be the best person to approach first as they should be invested in helping you succeed.  If you are being bullied by your advisor, the graduate coordinator in your department, other members of your committee, and/or your department head are options. Outside of your department, the Ombudsperson can help you work through the possible ways of getting help. The Ombudsperson is a confidential resource so he will not take action or talk about your case with others without your permission.  Dr. Aimee Surprenant , the Graduate Dean, is concerned about academic bullying, and is someone you can go to for help.

To schedule one-on-one meetings with the Dean, contact  [email protected]

Bullies thrive on the power gained from causing emotional turmoil for the targets. Eliminating this source of power can be accomplished by confronting the situation and speaking up. Consideration should be made if there are hierarchical sources of power that could compromise the target if they speak up, but if the bully is a peer, the strategy of confronting the bully could eliminate the power gained from bullying behaviors.

Here are some tips to confront a bully constructively:

First, make sure you are adequately centered and you are able to speak from a calm position. Do not engage if you are emotionally charged.

Next, focus on the bullying behavior rather than the individual. For example, try not to lead with, “ John, you are a obnoxious and dismissive jerk that is impossible to work with ” You may find better results with a statement like, “ John, working with you is becoming unproductive. I feel it is difficult to share my ideas when they are flippantly dismissed. I also feel disrespected by not being allowed to speak without interruption. The inability to express my thoughts is compromising our progress and I would like if we could communicate better so I can contribute to the work we are doing. ”

This simple exertion of your understanding of what is happening and your assertion that it is not ok can lead to the end of the behaviors. Bullies know what they are doing, if even on a subconscious level, and this effort may bring to his or her consciousness that it is not going to be effective.

Document Your Experiences

In general, it is a good idea to be mindful and track your interactions with your team members be they supervisors, graduate students, undergraduates, or staff.  It can help make sure all of you are on the same page regarding getting work done, and lessens the chances that something will drop through the cracks.

One strategy is after every meeting with member(s) of your team, send them an email summarizing the main points of the meeting and the things that each of you committed to do going forward.  It can give you a resource to look back on if things are progressing more slowly than expected or if there are questions about work assignments.

Documentation of communication can be especially useful if you are, or think you are, the target of bullying. As we talked about on the main page , some of the ways a bully can target someone are through consistently unrealistic work demands, or work overloading.  They can assign tasks that are ambiguous, contradictory, or that are deprived of purpose. Some may attempt to humiliate their target, sometimes in public. Documenting when and how these behaviors occur can help you figure out whether what you are experiencing is academic bullying.  Keeping track of what work they assign you can help you determine if the workload is unrealistic.  If they use mocking or derogatory language towards you, documenting it can show if it is a one off situation or a pattern of harassment.  Email can be a tangible way to document communications between you and your bully.  Being able to back up your points with documentation can help you have more constructive conversations with your bully and feel more in control.  Documentation can also lead you to a better understanding of how the bully’s behavior would have to change and what boundaries you would need in order to work effectively with them.  This can give you tangible goals when working to resolve your situation.

Find Outlets To Reduce Stress

Being the target of bullying can cause stress related health problems.  There is no one way to reduce stress, but there are resources at the university that can help.

• Cook Counseling offers individual and group counseling sessions free of charge to students who have paid the health fee.
• Exercise facilities are available at McComas and War memorial gyms, as well as group exercise classes, pilates, yoga, and rec sports.
• Finding a new activity or hobby, or taking up one you used to enjoy but dropped in grad school can help reduce stress, give you time focusing on something enjoyable, help you meet people unrelated to your research.  Gobbler Connect can help you find clubs based around your interests.

Expand Your Professional Network

Having a large professional network is helpful in a number of ways. Expanding your network can help you find allies and advocates as well as minimize the impact of the bully on your daily life.

Being bullied can lower self esteem and professional confidence.  Improving your professional skills can help you build peer/support networks at the university and gain proficiency in transferable skills that will help you find a job in or outside of academia. Realizing that you have marketable skills can help you feel independent of the person who is bullying you and that you are not trapped in your situation.

Making connections with people in your field outside of academia can give you access to people to ask for advice and perspective. It can also give you a network that you can tap to find a career outside of academia.

Joining professional or student societies can be a way of building that network. The Graduate School also offers several opportunities for Professional Development and classes and certificates such as Preparing the Future Professoriate , Preparing the Future Professional , and Communicating Science .

Build Identity Outside of Work/Academia

Being bullied at work can be more difficult to deal with if your identity, self-confidence, and sense of worth rests on your work. While it can be hard to push back on the idea that you should give your all to work, having a fulfilling life outside of academia can help ground you when situations at work/school feel out of control. Spending time with family and friends outside of work/school and getting involved with activities unrelated to your research can help bring perspective on the things that are important to you.

If needed, Cook Counseling can help you identify aspects of your life outside of work that are important to you and strategies to achieve work/life balance that improves your quality of life.

Recovering From Bullying

Regardless of how your situation is resolved, recovering from being a target of bullying can be challenging.  This webpage offers some advice and tips that you may find helpful.

More Resources

Blog Post about academic bullying and stress in graduate school by Dean Depauw :

https://graduateschool.vt.edu/content/dam/graduateschool_vt_edu/anti-bullying/academic-bullying-and-grad-ed-kpd.pdf

More experiences with academic bullying:

https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2017/jul/28/not-all-phd-supervisors-are-natural-mentors-some-need-training

Avoiding bullies: Having a bully for a supervisor will negatively affect your graduate experience. This blog post   talks about a toxic mentor and contains some advice on what to keep an eye out for when looking for supervisors.

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Contact: Bryan Hanson, graduate student ombudsperson

Phone: (540) 231-9573

Email:[email protected] or [email protected]

Please call or email for an appointment, or stop by the Student Services Office, Room 120 of the Graduate Life Center

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PhD students: what to do if you don't work well with your supervisor

Supervisors can be enabling and supportive - but they can also be bullies. Gina Wisker offers advice on how to manage this sometimes tricky relationship

• PhD supervisor sadness: the empty nest
• Finishing your PhD thesis: 15 top tips from those in the know
• How to stay sane through a PhD: get survival tips from fellow students
• Five things successful PhD students refuse to do

Some PhD students have positive tales of supervisors who are good managers and become lifelong friends. Others, however, have horror stories. These are the supervisors who do not see students regularly, show little interest in their work, make unrealistic demands on their progress, don’t put them in touch with other students or networks, and provide harsh, confusing or no feedback.

Some PhD students say they never see their supervisor at all, so they just get on with the work themselves.

So, what’s the best way of managing this sometimes tricky relationship? There are three aspects to this: personal, learning and institutional.

Personal: set some ground rules

The supervisor/student relationship is both personal and professional. It can resemble negotiating with a variously supportive, controlling or critical parent (while they might have your best interests at heart, they can be hurtful in their comments or focused somewhere else. But it can also resemble managing a busy, intelligent, sometimes absent and sometimes demanding manager. They too want to get the research project completed but sometimes neither of you quite understand how to work together to do this effectively.

Sometimes students and supervisors simply don’t get on as people. Establishing ground rules about working together, regular supervision meetings, agendas and responsibilities right at the start helps ward off everyday breakdowns.

But some of the breakdowns are more serious, to do with working practices and making progress. Some supervisors give less attention to students who are apparently making good intellectual progress, while others are stressed and pass that on when a student doesn’t make progress.

There are darker stories of selfishness, power and meanness, where supervisors use their students to produce the supervisor’s work, take all the accolades for publications and results, and belittle student’s different approaches.

People in power can be enabling, supportive and developmental, and they can also be bullies . Some research , including my own, has looked at the emotional intelligence and the emotional boundary work involved, as well as how to pick up the pieces if the relationship goes wrong. Supervisors and students report being stressed, surprised, hurt and abandoned when this happens. The emotional breakdown can make both of you ill and prevents the research or writing continuing.

So getting good working practices established from the start, managing expectations and knowing the support structures of the university and its regulations are all important. Make sure there are agreed milestones to take stock of work and the working relationship so far, and make changes if needed.

Learning: ask the right question

Some breakdowns are blocks caused by lack of progress, or by too little or confusing feedback. Students should let the supervisor know they are stuck and ask for advice and guidance about next steps. This could be new experiments, further reading, discussing theoretical perspectives, unpicking confusing feedback for clarity, or finding or building groups with whom to share work.

Breakthrough learning or learning leaps can take place at different stages in the PhD journey, such as finding exactly the right question, seeing where your work is situated in the literature and how you make a contribution to the conversation of learning in your discipline. Asking your supervisor questions, and sharing ideas with other students can nudge this breakthrough in thinking, research and writing.

Institutional: don’t sit and suffer

Establishing ground rules and managed processes of working together and using the regulations and systems for structured, regular progress meetings will help.

You do not need to endure problems with a supervisor, suffer in your work and worry endlessly about what to do next. There is often a director of research or postgraduate student leader you can talk to about issues, and they may offer structured ways forward to deal with problems, including a form of arbitration between supervisor and student, or the further use of other supervisory team members. Do use these – don’t sit and suffer.

If you switch supervisor too often, it will seem to be a problem. Other supervisors may not want to take you on. We all see relationship difficulties from different angles, you need to be clear about the problems, work to fix them offering suggestions about what would work for you in the future.

Develop mutual sensitivity

The supervisor/PhD student relationship can be one of lifelong intellectual friendship, or one of problems that you learn to manage – but mutual sensitivity about working patterns and the emotions tied up with intellectual work is the best basis for good supervisor-student relationships.

Gina Wisker is professor of higher education and contemporary literature and head of the centre for learning and teaching at the University of Brighton.

Enter the Guardian university awards 2015 and join the higher education network for more comment, analysis and job opportunities, direct to your inbox. Follow us on Twitter @gdnhighered .

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Strategies For People Experiencing Academic Bullying

If you wish to tell someone about your experience, or talk with someone about resources and steps you can take, you can click on this link , which will take you the Disrupting Academic Bullying Referral Form .  It is your decision to include as little or as much identifying information about yourself and/or the parties involved as you wish.  The information is confidential and will be sent to the Graduate Student Ombudsperson . If you include contact information, he will email you to see if you would like to set up a confidential and informal meeting to discuss your experience further.  If you do not wish to meet with him, he will not take any further action, and your report will be used anonymously to track general trends.

Below are suggestions for things you can potentially do to help lessen the negative impacts of bullying on your quality of life regardless of whether or not you choose to go through other channels to resolve your issues. The video is an excerpt from a presentation done by Ombudsperson Bryan Hanson that provides a quick overview of strategies, while more detail is available in the drop downs below.

Your browser does not support iframes. Link to iframe content: https://www.youtube.com/embed/vn4kWuvT2h4

Know Resources for Support

If you are being bullied, you are not alone. There are people in the Virginia Tech community here to help you. The Support Resources page has information about places you can go for help outside your department.

However, help may be closer at hand.

Talk to your advisor If your advisor is not your bully, they could be a good person to talk to about what you are going through. Below are some actions they could potentially take.  Whether they do or not is up to them, but these are some of the options available to them to help you deal with the problem.

• Listen to your experience and concerns.
• Provide some context to your experiences and give you their perspective on whether what you are experiencing is normal for graduate school or not.
• Depending on who is bullying you and the power relationships involved, your advisor may be able to talk to the bully and ask what their perception is of the situation, and potentially mediate some sort of resolution.
• Your advisor might be able to bring the issue up the ladder to the department head, program director or the dean of your college and potentially advocate for you if that is something you are comfortable with.

These are also actions that a faculty member who is not your advisor may be able to take if you have a close relationship with them.

Talk to your committee

If your advisor is bullying you, you could potentially talk to another member of your committee, your program director, or department head.

Other members of your committee might be able to listen to you, provide some context to your experiences, and potentially talk to your advisor.  However, many faculty are reluctant to get involved in the relationships between their colleague and a student.

Yet one advantage of talking to members of your committee is to have them hear your perspective.  It may be that they are only hearing your advisor’s side of the story and that may be affecting how they consider and/or treat you and your work.  Sharing your perspective with them may give them a better understanding of the situation that changes how they interact with you.

Talk to your Program Director or Department Head

If switching advisors is a step that is necessary, your program director and/or department head can help with the logistics.

One issue to keep in mind about approaching people in your department is that they are not confidential .  You don’t have much control over what they do with the information you give them or what next steps they take. Ideally, they would defer to you as to what you were comfortable with them sharing or doing next, but this may not always be the case.  

Talk to the Ombudsperson

Another option is to go to the Ombudsperson .  He is a confidential resource and will not discuss your situation with anyone else unless you give him permission.   Therefore, he can provide a good sounding board to talk about your experiences and get some feedback on what your options are going forward.  He can talk you through the next steps that are available and discuss the potential outcomes for different actions.  He can point you to different resources to help you meet your needs or resolve your issues.  He can coach you in communication strategies to help you approach situations or meetings with more clarity and confidence.  He can also facilitate meetings between you and someone with whom you are having difficulties if that is a step you want to take.

Seek Out Allies

Being bullied can make you feel isolated, alone, and create the impression that no one supports you.  Reaching out to  friends and colleagues you trust can help lessen those feelings. Being bullied doesn’t make you weak or undeserving of support and help.

Bullying doesn’t always happen in isolation, it is possible that others have been or are currently being bullied by the same person.  If other students are experiencing or witnessing similar behavior, you may be able to work together to bring your concerns to relevant people in the department or university administration.  It is harder to dismiss the concerns of multiple students, especially if they can show it is a pattern of behavior.

Try to identify people in your circles who can offer different types of support.

• Someone who can listen.
• Someone who may be able to offer advice
• Someone who can advocate for you
• Someone who can problem solve.

One person may be able to take on multiple roles, but it is unlikely one person will be able to do all of these things for you. Having a support network is helpful, as you can access more people to potentially fulfill these roles.

Finding people to help isn’t always easy.  Your advisor may be the best person to approach first as they should be invested in helping you succeed.  If you are being bullied by your advisor, the graduate coordinator in your department, other members of your committee, and/or your department head are options. Outside of your department, the Ombudsperson can help you work through the possible ways of getting help. The Ombudsperson is a confidential resource so he will not take action or talk about your case with others without your permission.  Dr. Aimee Surprenant , the Graduate Dean, is concerned about academic bullying, and is someone you can go to for help.

To schedule one-on-one meetings with the Dean, contact  [email protected]

Bullies thrive on the power gained from causing emotional turmoil for the targets. Eliminating this source of power can be accomplished by confronting the situation and speaking up. Consideration should be made if there are hierarchical sources of power that could compromise the target if they speak up, but if the bully is a peer, the strategy of confronting the bully could eliminate the power gained from bullying behaviors.

Here are some tips to confront a bully constructively:

First, make sure you are adequately centered and you are able to speak from a calm position. Do not engage if you are emotionally charged.

Next, focus on the bullying behavior rather than the individual. For example, try not to lead with, “ John, you are a obnoxious and dismissive jerk that is impossible to work with ” You may find better results with a statement like, “ John, working with you is becoming unproductive. I feel it is difficult to share my ideas when they are flippantly dismissed. I also feel disrespected by not being allowed to speak without interruption. The inability to express my thoughts is compromising our progress and I would like if we could communicate better so I can contribute to the work we are doing. ”

This simple exertion of your understanding of what is happening and your assertion that it is not ok can lead to the end of the behaviors. Bullies know what they are doing, if even on a subconscious level, and this effort may bring to his or her consciousness that it is not going to be effective.

Document Your Experiences

In general, it is a good idea to be mindful and track your interactions with your team members be they supervisors, graduate students, undergraduates, or staff.  It can help make sure all of you are on the same page regarding getting work done, and lessens the chances that something will drop through the cracks.

One strategy is after every meeting with member(s) of your team, send them an email summarizing the main points of the meeting and the things that each of you committed to do going forward.  It can give you a resource to look back on if things are progressing more slowly than expected or if there are questions about work assignments.

Documentation of communication can be especially useful if you are, or think you are, the target of bullying. As we talked about on the main page , some of the ways a bully can target someone are through consistently unrealistic work demands, or work overloading.  They can assign tasks that are ambiguous, contradictory, or that are deprived of purpose. Some may attempt to humiliate their target, sometimes in public. Documenting when and how these behaviors occur can help you figure out whether what you are experiencing is academic bullying.  Keeping track of what work they assign you can help you determine if the workload is unrealistic.  If they use mocking or derogatory language towards you, documenting it can show if it is a one off situation or a pattern of harassment.  Email can be a tangible way to document communications between you and your bully.  Being able to back up your points with documentation can help you have more constructive conversations with your bully and feel more in control.  Documentation can also lead you to a better understanding of how the bully’s behavior would have to change and what boundaries you would need in order to work effectively with them.  This can give you tangible goals when working to resolve your situation.

Find Outlets To Reduce Stress

Being the target of bullying can cause stress related health problems.  There is no one way to reduce stress, but there are resources at the university that can help.

• Cook Counseling offers individual and group counseling sessions free of charge to students who have paid the health fee.
• Exercise facilities are available at McComas and War memorial gyms, as well as group exercise classes, pilates, yoga, and rec sports.
• Finding a new activity or hobby, or taking up one you used to enjoy but dropped in grad school can help reduce stress, give you time focusing on something enjoyable, help you meet people unrelated to your research.  Gobbler Connect can help you find clubs based around your interests.

Expand Your Professional Network

Having a large professional network is helpful in a number of ways. Expanding your network can help you find allies and advocates as well as minimize the impact of the bully on your daily life.

Being bullied can lower self esteem and professional confidence.  Improving your professional skills can help you build peer/support networks at the university and gain proficiency in transferable skills that will help you find a job in or outside of academia. Realizing that you have marketable skills can help you feel independent of the person who is bullying you and that you are not trapped in your situation.

Making connections with people in your field outside of academia can give you access to people to ask for advice and perspective. It can also give you a network that you can tap to find a career outside of academia.

Joining professional or student societies can be a way of building that network. The Graduate School also offers several opportunities for Professional Development and classes and certificates such as Preparing the Future Professoriate , Preparing the Future Professional , and Communicating Science .

Build Identity Outside of Work/Academia

Being bullied at work can be more difficult to deal with if your identity, self-confidence, and sense of worth rests on your work. While it can be hard to push back on the idea that you should give your all to work, having a fulfilling life outside of academia can help ground you when situations at work/school feel out of control. Spending time with family and friends outside of work/school and getting involved with activities unrelated to your research can help bring perspective on the things that are important to you.

If needed, Cook Counseling can help you identify aspects of your life outside of work that are important to you and strategies to achieve work/life balance that improves your quality of life.

Recovering From Bullying

Regardless of how your situation is resolved, recovering from being a target of bullying can be challenging.  This webpage offers some advice and tips that you may find helpful.

More Resources

Blog Posts about academic bullying and stress in graduate school by Dean Depauw :

https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/kpdtge/index.php/2015/10/18/academic-bullying/

https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/kpdtge/index.php/2015/11/09/academic-bullying-and-graduate-education/

More experiences with academic bullying:

https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2017/jul/28/not-all-phd-supervisors-are-natural-mentors-some-need-training

Avoiding bullies: Having a bully for a supervisor will negatively affect your graduate experience. This blog post   talks about a toxic mentor and contains some advice on what to keep an eye out for when looking for supervisors.

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4 Signs Your PhD Advisor Is Mistreating You and What to Do About It

PhD students rely on their supervisors for support, help and mentorship. But what happens when your supervisor treats you unfairly? In this article, we will tell about the top 4 signs your PhD advisor is mistreating you.

Why Do PhD Supervisors Turn on Students?

A PhD supervisor can make or break your post-graduate experience. An academic staff has a huge impact on how students feel about their experience. So, it’s hard when your supervisor starts treating you unfairly. Some students end up being micromanaged, bullied, and even abandoned by their advisors.

A conflict in working styles is one of the most common reasons why supervisor relationships turn sour. Many PhD advisors expect their students to be perfectly in sync with their work style. They don’t take it kindly when students can’t keep up.

Other times, it happens because of poor communication. Simply clarifying your expectations early can help you set things straight with your supervisor. Sometimes, even relationships that begin well, go on to become intolerable later. It’s all part of the ups and downs of the post-graduate experience.

With that said, there are times when students have advisors who are mistreating them without a clear reason. Let’s see how you can identify a PhD supervisor who mistreats you.

They Manipulate You through Praise

Mistreatment takes many forms. But you least expect it from someone who excessively praises you. Funnily enough, that is how some PhD advisors mistreat students. This type of behavior is called love bombing.

First, they will shower potential candidates with praises, telling them they are unlike other students they’ve worked with. They will lure you with promises of publications and prestigious institutions. However, it all ends after you join their research group.

As soon as you face problems like failed experiments, the same person could behave very differently. Instead of helping you modify your approach and reevaluate methods, they may belittle you.

The best way to pick up on such habits is to ask senior students in the program about their experience. Likewise, you can also ask the advisors how they relate to other students and how students relate to them.

In other words, if you sense your advisor is overpraising you or making fantastic claims about your acumen and credentials, pay attention to how they talk about other graduate students. Therefore, if an advisor tells you (a new graduate student) not to listen to senior graduate students because you are better than them, it’s likely they will discuss you similarly down the road.

They Want to Control Your Actions

Going to conferences and networking with people is crucial for the graduate journey. While it isn’t necessary to attend every meeting, you should definitely visit the ones relevant to your field and research topic.

A good supervisor will help you learn new skills and accelerate your professional and academic goals. Even if they disagree, they will let you decide what’s best for you. However, abusive advisors will stop you from attending conferences unless you have their permission. They will belittle you for going against their will and their position of power against you.

They Try to Isolate You

Abusers thrive in an environment where victims are isolated and can’t share their experiences. Unfortunately, graduate school is pretty isolating. Students must leave their established support circle, become financially dependent on an institution, and do their best to keep the advisor’s favor.

In such circumstances, it’s easier for abusive supervisors to force students into isolation. They may refuse to include other faculty as a part of your committee, so they have complete control over you.

There have been cases where abusive advisors refuse anyone on the committee who isn’t a part of their cult of personality. In such instances, a student’s success depends heavily on keeping their advisor happy. And since the rest of the committee is filled with people close to the supervisor, voicing your concerns can result in a group backlash or gaslighting.

This is why students need to maintain a strong support network. People around you can help you figure out different ways to avoid these situations.

They Want to Become Gatekeepers for Everything

Abusive supervisors have no qualms about telling you to do things and then get mad if you don’t follow through, even if it’s not directly related to the project. They will force you to ask them for permission for the simplest of things.

Impolite advisors may make it mandatory for students to ask for permission before approaching or talking to anyone at a conference. Other times, they might stop you from publishing your article in a journal until they have approved it.

Regardless, it’s likely that they won’t permit you and eventually force you to act on your own, only to then lash out at you for not listening.

In summary, the main purpose of mistreating supervisors is to misuse their power over you and exert their control over you. If you think your PhD advisor is mistreating you or stopping you from publishing an article, don’t worry; we have you covered.

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Ten types of PhD supervisor relationships – which is yours?

Lecturer, Griffith University

Disclosure statement

Susanna Chamberlain does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Griffith University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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It’s no secret that getting a PhD is a stressful process .

One of the factors that can help or hinder this period of study is the relationship between supervisor and student. Research shows that effective supervision can significantly influence the quality of the PhD and its success or failure.

PhD supervisors tend to fulfil several functions: the teacher; the mentor who can support and facilitate the emotional processes; and the patron who manages the springboard from which the student can leap into a career.

There are many styles of supervision that are adopted – and these can vary depending on the type of research being conducted and subject area.

Although research suggests that providing extra mentoring support and striking the right balance between affiliation and control can help improve PhD success and supervisor relationships, there is little research on the types of PhD-supervisor relationships that occur.

From decades of experience of conducting and observing PhD supervision, I’ve noticed ten types of common supervisor relationships that occur. These include:

The candidate is expected to replicate the field, approach and worldview of the supervisor, producing a sliver of research that supports the supervisor’s repute and prestige. Often this is accompanied by strictures about not attempting to be too “creative”.

Cheap labour

The student becomes research assistant to the supervisor’s projects and becomes caught forever in that power imbalance. The patron-client roles often continue long after graduation, with the student forever cast in the secondary role. Their own work is often disregarded as being unimportant.

The “ghost supervisor”

The supervisor is seen rarely, responds to emails only occasionally and has rarely any understanding of either the needs of the student or of their project. For determined students, who will work autonomously, the ghost supervisor is often acceptable until the crunch comes - usually towards the end of the writing process. For those who need some support and engagement, this is a nightmare.

The relationship is overly familiar, with the assurance that we are all good friends, and the student is drawn into family and friendship networks. Situations occur where the PhD students are engaged as babysitters or in other domestic roles (usually unpaid because they don’t want to upset the supervisor by asking for money). The chum, however, often does not support the student in professional networks.

Collateral damage

When the supervisor is a high-powered researcher, the relationship can be based on minimal contact, because of frequent significant appearances around the world. The student may find themselves taking on teaching, marking and administrative functions for the supervisor at the cost of their own learning and research.

The practice of supervision becomes a method of intellectual torment, denigrating everything presented by the student. Each piece of research is interrogated rigorously, every meeting is an inquisition and every piece of writing is edited into oblivion. The student is given to believe that they are worthless and stupid.

Creepy crawlers

Some supervisors prefer to stalk their students, sometimes students stalk their supervisors, each with an unhealthy and unrequited sexual obsession with the other. Most Australian universities have moved actively to address this relationship, making it less common than in previous decades.

Captivate and con

Occasionally, supervisor and student enter into a sexual relationship. This can be for a number of reasons, ranging from a desire to please to a need for power over youth. These affairs can sometimes lead to permanent relationships. However, what remains from the supervisor-student relationship is the asymmetric set of power balances.

Almost all supervision relationships contain some aspect of the counsellor or mentor, but there is often little training or desire to develop the role and it is often dismissed as pastoral care. Although the life experiences of students become obvious, few supervisors are skilled in dealing with the emotional or affective issues.

Colleague in training

When a PhD candidate is treated as a colleague in training, the relationship is always on a professional basis, where the individual and their work is held in respect. The supervisor recognises that their role is to guide through the morass of regulation and requirements, offer suggestions and do some teaching around issues such as methodology, research practice and process, and be sensitive to the life-cycle of the PhD process. The experience for both the supervisor and student should be one of acknowledgement of each other, recognising the power differential but emphasising the support at this time. This is the best of supervision.

There are many university policies that move to address a lot of the issues in supervisor relationships , such as supervisor panels, and dedicated training in supervising and mentoring practices. However, these policies need to be accommodated into already overloaded workloads and should include regular review of supervisors.

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Alleviating the Stress of Finding a PhD Advisor

In the US, physics students rarely enter graduate school knowing what specific problem they will study for their PhD or who will supervise them. Rather, sometime during their first year, they will have to search out both while also taking a full docket of high-level coursework. According to graduate-student Mike Verostek of the University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, at many institutions this search process occurs with little or no guidance. “It’s just up to the student to figure it out,” he says.

Now Verostek and his colleagues show that the haphazard nature of the process can negatively impact the well-being of physics students, particularly those who struggle to immediately find a group [ 1 ]. To eliminate uncertainty, the team advocates for a change in the processes by which students find advisors. “Students need more guidance and clearer expectations, and universities need to build formal structures into their programs to support students in finding a project and advisor,” Verostek says. “Then they will all succeed.”

In the study, Verostek and his colleagues interviewed 20 first- and second-year-physics graduate students. The students were asked a variety of questions that related to their experience in finding a research group: How easy did they find the process? What guidance were they given? Did they feel that they had enough information to make an informed decision? Verostek and his colleagues also collected data on the students’ research experience prior to enrolling in graduate school and on their sense of belonging as PhD students.

The students all described finding a research group as a significant decision, noting that they felt choosing the right group would impact both their experiences as graduate students and their careers thereafter. “Your relationship with your [advisor] can make or break your career,” said one student. As another student noted, the advisor would effectively oversee their lives for the next four or five years. And if it didn’t work out, the only option might be to drop out. As a result, the students experienced anxiety about getting the decision right.

Despite the perceived importance of the decision, few of the students felt prepared to make it, citing little guidance from their professors or from their physics department. Students who struggled to find the right match expressed feelings of isolation or of worry that they were somehow failing before they had even started. Meanwhile, those who quickly found a group reported an increased sense of belonging.

The lack of support can lead students to pick a supervisor who is a poor fit—which studies, including the new one, have shown is particularly a problem for minority students. Verostek and his colleagues found that women and nonbinary students reported reduced research opportunities, as they perceived a lack of an inclusive culture in some of the research groups.

The situation is frustrating for those who strive for equity in the sciences, says Michelle Maher, an education researcher at the University of Missouri who has studied the PhD advisor selection process for biomedical students. “It shouldn’t be so difficult for students to navigate something that should be straightforward.” Jackie Chini, an education researcher at the University of Central Florida, agrees. “We cannot continue to accept this as the status quo in physics,” she says.

Being in the wrong group is known to cause students to feel like a failure and leave their PhD programs, which is what initially happened to Verostek. After struggling to find a PhD supervisor during his first year, Verostek ended up in a group that he quickly realized wasn’t the right fit. Shortly thereafter he left. “It was a really hard decision,” he says. “I was like, what am I going to do now?”

Verostek was later able to start over in a new group. But not everyone is so lucky. “There is an extremely high attrition rate for physics students leaving graduate programs,” says Benjamin Zwickl, a physics-education researcher at Rochester Institute of Technology who worked on the study. One of the reasons that students may abandon physics is the difficulty of getting settled into a group, he says.

Both Verostek and Zwickl think that some of the problem could be alleviated relatively simply—by providing information on the process through easily accessible resources, such as department websites or graduate handbooks. In an analysis of the contents of graduate-student handbooks from 13 institutions, the team found that none provided guidance on how to search for and secure a supervisor. “There was nothing about when the process should start or how it should be carried out,” Zwickl says. “Changing that is the low-hanging fruit.”

Another option is to more consciously expose students to potential advisors or to let them rotate through various labs on a trial basis. This lab-rotation method often occurs in biomedical courses and has been shown by Maher and her colleagues to make the process of finding an advisor more structured [ 2 ]. The students she followed were required to rotate through three labs during their first year, with the goal of picking one to stay in. “It didn’t necessarily make the choice easier, but the process was predictable.”

Zwickl would like to see lab rotations added to first-year-physics graduate courses. “Not all students have had access to research opportunities as undergraduates,” he says. A short-term lab experience would give these students a better sense about what they would be doing in different groups. Zwickl notes that visiting labs and meeting experienced graduate students would also foster community and belonging, both of which are key for a positive PhD journey.

–Katherine Wright

Katherine Wright is the Deputy Editor of Physics Magazine .

• M. Verostek et al. , “Physics Ph.D. student perspectives on the importance and difficulty of finding a research group,” Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 20 , 010136 (2024) .
• M. A. Maher et al. , “Finding a fit: Biological science doctoral students’ selection of a principal investigator and research laboratory,” LSE 19 (2020) .

Physics Ph.D. student perspectives on the importance and difficulty of finding a research group

Mike Verostek, Casey W. Miller, and Benjamin M. Zwickl

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 20 , 010136 (2024)

Published May 7, 2024

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The mediating role of attending rapport on bullying and medical trainee burnout, danielle l. terry, phd, abpp | kartik moza, md.

PRiMER. 2024;8:30.

Published: 5/14/2024 | DOI: 10.22454/PRiMER.2024.840270

Background and Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine whether supervisory alliance (eg, rapport with supervisor) mediated the association between perceived bullying and trainee burnout.

Methods: We administered electronic surveys to medical trainees (N=108) in a rural teaching hospital. The survey included measures of bullying, burnout, and supervisory rapport.

Results: Using Baron and Kenny’s test of mediation with the Sobel test, we found that rapport with supervising attending partially mediated the relationship between bullying and burnout.

Conclusions: This study reinforced the role of the attending physician and how perceived rapport may impact burnout. Given the high rate of bullying in medical training and the negative impact of burnout on physicians, further study is warranted to understand other factors that mediate the association between bullying and burnout.

Introduction

The overall prevalence rate of bullying in medical residency is 51%, with higher odds of experiencing negative acts among females and minorities. 1 Trainees who are subject to negative acts have increased risk of job dissatisfaction, burnout, strain on mental health, and accidents at work. 2-6 The most common perpetrators of bullying are attending physicians and clinical support staff, and the hierarchical structures in medical education are primary sources of bullying and burnout. 1 A favorable supervisory alliance (ie, the relationship between a supervisor and supervisee) has been associated with trainee self-efficacy, greater job satisfaction, and more availability of coping resources. Conversely, a weak supervisory alliance has been associated with greater stress, burnout, and more perceived negative events. 7 The aim of this study was to determine whether supervisory alliance (eg, rapport with supervisor) mediated the association between perceived bullying and trainee burnout. We hypothesized that a trainee’s rapport with an attending physician may explain the association between bullying and burnout.

Participants included 108 medical trainees (81% response rate) from a rural teaching hospital in Pennsylvania. Medical trainees were approached at group meetings and offered an opportunity to participate in a voluntary survey. All procedures performed were considered exempt by the Institutional Review Board of the college and associated medical group. We used descriptive analyses to examine demographic characteristics and tested a mediational model via methodology described by Baron and Kenny. 8

Trainees voluntarily scanned a QR code linked to a survey examining the impact of supervisory alliance that was developed using SurveyMonkey software (SurveyMonkey Inc). Questions included demographic information (age, gender identity, year in program, and medical specialty). We used the Mini-Z 9 as an efficient and validated measure of burnout. This item asked respondents to indicate their level of burnout from 1 ( no symptoms ) to 5 ( I feel completely burned out and often wonder if I can go on. I am at the point where I may need some changes or may need to seek some sort of help ).

We used the brief form of the Supervisory Working Alliance Inventory 10 to assess the perceived working alliance between medical trainees and attending physicians. This measure was developed and validated in nonmedical settings, and we modified terminology to use medical terms (eg, patient vs client , attending vs supervisor ). This instrument includes five items that are rated from 1 ( almost never ) to 7 ( almost always ) and includes two subscales related to client focus and rapport with supervisor. The total scale reliability estimate was 0.91.

We used the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised, 11 which has been used with medical trainees, 12 to assess experiences of bullying and negative acts by others within the training environment. The total scale reliability estimate was 0.90.

See Table 1 for a list of demographic characteristics by sample. We tested a mediation model using steps outlined by Baron and Kenny’s test of mediation. 8 First, simple linear regression indicated that bullying was a significant predictor of burnout (β=.52, t =5.9, P <.01). Second, regression analysis indicated that bullying was significantly associated with supervisory rapport (β=–.56, t =-6.42, P <.01). Third, both the independent variable (bullying) and the mediator (supervisory rapport) significantly predicted burnout ( F [2,92]=20.92, P <.001). We used the Sobel test to determine whether rapport with attending mediated the relationship between bullying and burnout. This test confirmed that rapport with supervising attending partially mediated the relationship between bullying and burnout ( z =2.36, P =.012; Figure 1).

Understanding the mediational mechanisms that explain the connection of a stimulus and response can assist with designing interventions to modify specific outcomes. 13 This study highlighted a connection between bullying experiences and burnout. While most studies have highlighted the role of attending physicians as the primary perpetrators of bullying, 1 this study suggested an influential role of the attending physician and that perceived rapport may increase or decrease burnout. Results inferred partial mediation (as opposed to full mediation), which also indicated that supervisory rapport may be responsible for a portion of the relationship between bullying and burnout.

These findings are consistent with a larger body of literature that suggests that supervisory alliance is associated with greater coping resources and greater job satisfaction. 7 Programs that aim to provide mentorship to those most impacted by bullying (eg, females and those underrepresented in medicine) also have highlighted a positive impact on satisfaction with work climate. 14 Programs that work to enhance supervisory rapport and provide mentorship may positively impact trainees, especially those affected by bullying and negative acts.

While attending physicians may be fostering relationships that mitigate the impact of bullying by other clinical staff, they also may be reducing their own negative impact. Thus, whether the rapport mechanism has an impact via additional support or is simply a perception of reduction in bullying behaviors is unclear. Regardless of reason, our findings highlight the potential import of fostering rapport between attendings and trainees.

Limitations

Our study had several limitations, including its cross-sectional design and inability to make causal inferences, with potentially limited generalizability due to its rural, single-site sample.

Conclusions

This study suggests that rapport with attending physicians partially mediates the relationship between bullying and burnout among medical trainees. Further study is warranted to understand other factors that mediate this association. Given the significant costs associated with medical provider burnout 15 and the high rates of negative acts experienced by medical trainees, understanding mechanisms that may offset this public health concern is essential.

• Álvarez Villalobos NA, De León Gutiérrez H, Ruiz Hernandez FG, Elizondo Omaña GG, Vaquera Alfaro HA, Carranza Guzmán FJ. Prevalence and associated factors of bullying in medical residents: a systematic review and meta-analysis.  J Occup Health . 2023;65(1):e12418.  doi:10.1002/1348-9585.12418
• Paice E, Smith D. Bullying of trainee doctors is a patient safety issue.  Clin Teach . 2009;6(1):13-17.  doi:10.1111/j.1743-498X.2008.00251.x
• Chia MC, Hu YY, Li RD, et al. Prevalence and risk factors for burnout in U.S. vascular surgery trainees.  J Vasc Surg . 2022;75(1):308-315.e4.  doi:10.1016/j.jvs.2021.06.476
• Kemper KJ, Schwartz A; Pediatric Resident Burnout-Resilience Study Consortium. Bullying, discrimination, sexual harassment, and physical violence: common and associated with burnout in pediatric residents.  Acad Pediatr . 2020;20(7):991-997.  doi:10.1016/j.acap.2020.02.023
• Samsudin EZ, Isahak M, Rampal S. The prevalence, risk factors and outcomes of workplace bullying among junior doctors: a systematic review.  Eur J Work Organ Psychol . 2018;27(6):700-718.  doi:10.1080/1359432X.2018.1502171
• Gredler GR. (1993). Book reviews. [Review of the book Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do by D Olweus]. Psychol Sch . 2003;40(6):699-700. doi:10.1002/pits.10114
• Enlow PT, McWhorter LG, Genuario K, Davis A. Supervisor–supervisee interactions: the importance of the supervisory working alliance.  Train Educ Prof Psychol . 2019;13(3):206-211.  doi:10.1037/tep0000243
• Baron RM, Kenny DA. The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations.  J Pers Soc Psychol . 1986;51(6):1,173-1,182.  doi:10.1037/0022-3514.51.6.1173
• Rohland BM, Kruse GR, Rohrer JE. Validation of a single-item measure of burnout against the Maslach Burnout Inventory among physicians.  Stress Health . 2004;20(2):75-79.  doi:10.1002/smi.1002
• Sabella SA, Schultz JC, Landon TJ. Validation of a brief form of the Supervisory Working Alliance Inventory.  Rehabil Couns Bull . 2020;63(2):115-124.  doi:10.1177/0034355219846652
• Einarsen S, Hoel H, Notelaers G. Measuring exposure to bullying and harassment at work: validity, factor structure and psychometric properties of the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised.  Work Stress . 2009;23(1):24-44.  doi:10.1080/02678370902815673
• Terry DL, Williamson MLC. Bullying among medical residents: gender, social norms, and reporting behavior.  PRiMER . 2022;6:17.  doi:10.22454/PRiMER.2022.824936
• MacKinnon DP, Fairchild AJ, Fritz MS. Mediation analysis.  Annu Rev Psychol . 2007;58(1):593-614.  doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085542
• Bonifacino E, Ufomata EO, Farkas AH, Turner R, Corbelli JA. Mentorship of underrepresented physicians and trainees in academic medicine: a systematic review.  J Gen Intern Med . 2021;36(4):1,023-1,034.  doi:10.1007/s11606-020-06478-7
• Han S, Shanafelt TD, Sinsky CA, et al. Estimating the attributable cost of physician burnout in the United States.  Ann Intern Med . 2019;170(11):784-790.  doi:10.7326/M18-1422

Lead Author

Danielle L. Terry, PhD, ABPP

Affiliations: Behavioral Science Department, Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital, Sayre, PA

Kartik Moza, MD - Behavioral Science Department, Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital, Sayre, PA

Corresponding Author

Correspondence: Behavioral Science Department, Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital, Sayre, PA

Email: [email protected]

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Terry DL, Moza K. The Mediating Role of Attending Rapport on Bullying and Medical Trainee Burnout. PRiMER. 2024;8:30. https://doi.org/10.22454/PRiMER.2024.840270

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Explore graduate offerings:, master of public administration.

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Earn a graduate degree and learn from faculty with practical experience solving real-world problems with public and nonprofit organizations. Jump-start your career or advance your knowledge to become a better leader. 

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Master of public administration, d.c. (mpa-dc), master of arts in public policy and management, master of public administration and leadership (online), dual degrees, graduate minors and certificates, meet with a graduate advisor, fall event schedule, attend an information session.

If you're considering a master's degree at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, we encourage you to attend one of our upcoming graduate information sessions. Our team will discuss our degree programs, student benefits and the application process.

We have both in person and virtual information sessions available. Please register by selecting the preferred date and  note all times are for the Eastern time zone (Ohio). We hope to see you there!

Virtual Information Sessions via Zoom:

• Monday, May 20, 2024 at 12:30pm

Unable to attend? Schedule a meeting to talk with one of our representatives.

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Our degrees will prepare you to lead your team and community to a better tomorrow.

Merit-based funding opportunities are available for incoming MPA and PhD students.  Apply by the priority deadline and begin your program in the autumn semester to ensure eligibility.

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The Ohio State University awards University Fellowships annually on a competitive basis. Fellowships provide a tuition waiver for the first year of graduate study as well as a monthly stipend. University Fellowship recipients typically have an undergraduate GPA of 3.6 or higher.

In addition to University Fellowships, Ohio State also offers Graduate Enrichment Fellowships to students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. Enrichment Fellowship recipients typically have an undergraduate GPA of 3.2 or higher.

For more information about fellowships and the selection process, visit the  Graduate School Fellowship  page.

A pplication must be completed by Dec. 1 (Nov. 1 international).

Graduate Assistantships (GA)

These positions provide a tuition waiver and monthly stipend, while requiring a work commitment of 20 hours per week. In addition to research and administrative positions within the Glenn College, many of our GA students have the opportunity to gain practical policy experience by working 20 hours per week at organizations such as the Columbus City Council and Franklin County Board of Commissioners. Typically, GA recipients have an undergraduate GPA of 3.5 or higher.

A pplication must be completed by Dec. 1.

Scholarships

The Glenn College is also pleased to offer a number of merit ‐ based scholarships. These awards are fixed amounts that are paid out over one or more years of graduate study. All MPA applicants who meet the Dec. 1 deadline will be considered.

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In addition to merit-based financial assistance through the Glenn College, students may also be eligible for loans, university ‐ wide scholarships and other forms of financial aid. For more information, please contact the  Ohio State Financial Aid Office  or call them at  614-292 ‐ 0300  regarding these matters.

Financial aid and funding information provided by the Graduate School at Ohio State.

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• Contact the U.S. Education Advising Office in your country.
• Visit the following websites:  edupass.org  and  internationalstudent.com .
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English Proficiency Requirements

Success at Ohio State depends upon the student’s ability to converse in, write and understand English. To assure such competence, the university requires any applicant whose native language is not English, and who has been educated primarily outside of the U.S., to submit official TOEFL, MELAB or IELTS scores.

• Scores must be sent directly from the testing agency to Ohio State. 
• The test must have been taken within the last two years.
• Applicants who are citizens of, or who have received a four-year bachelor’s degree or higher in, one of the following countries are exempt from the IELTS, TOEFL or MELAB requirement: Australia, Belize, the British Caribbean and British West Indies, Canada (except Quebec), England, Guyana, Ireland, Liberia, New Zealand, Scotland, the United States and Wales.

The Glenn College’s recommended minimum TOEFL score requirement is 100 on the IBT TOEFL, or similar minimum score on other English proficiency exams. This is higher than the general requirement for other Ohio State graduate programs, but is required to study at the Glenn College.

For information about TOEFL, contact: Phone:  609-771-7100 Website:  toefl.org

The institution code for Ohio State is  #1592 .

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International students will be reviewed for sufficient financial resources.

Those who are fully funded by the university will not be required to submit any financial documents, but must submit a copy of their passport for themselves and any dependents they intend to bring.

Those who are not fully funded by the university:  

• You are required to provide the Affidavit of Support and confidential bank statement. This form will be sent to you during the application process.
• If you are bringing dependents, you need to inform us as soon as possible and send proof of support for them as well.

Financial documents are not required until admission has been awarded. After admission, as a non-immigrant student you will need a Certificate of Eligibility (I-20 for the F-1 visa or DS-2019 for the J-1 visa) issued by Ohio State based upon documented evidence. Please keep copies of all financial documents to present to the U.S. Consulate when applying for your visa.

Expenses for international applicants

Tuition, fees, insurance and all other expenses are in effect beginning autumn through summer, but are subject to change. For estimated graduate student costs, please visit gradadmissions.osu.edu .

It is recommended that all students have $3,000 in contingency funds available to cover any unexpected increases in expenses.

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Graduate Profile: Oorja Joshi, MDiv ‘24

Memorable Moment 

The time I spent with HDS Muslims in my first year—going apple picking when we barely knew each other, celebrating Eid together, going to the nearby ocean towns, and all the chai times. 

A second moment is when Professor Rivera said yes to being my thesis advisor.  

And some of the best adventures I've had were with Eve, Coco, Fatima, Minahil, Nathan, Mayank, and Hamza. 

Message of Thanks 

There are so many people to thank. 

I would like to deeply thank my parents Akhilesh ji and Archana ji for supporting me to be here, my teachers—Professor Mayra Rivera, Professor Kimberley Patton, Professor Teren Sevea, Dr. Aaliyah El-Amin, and Professor Melissa Kelley—who I am indebted to for their teaching that opened my heart and mind even more to this world. I am very grateful for the support and teachings of my chaplain mentor Reverend Amy Fisher, and the graduate students Asma and Nazma who worked with me at SU Interfaith Center! 

I am very thankful for the love and care of my friends Eve (and Coco!), Auds, Shir, Alejandra, Minahil, Fatima, Sana, Mayank, Nathan, Fawaz, Souman, Bilal, my other Sana, Akhil, Emily, Rebecca, Michael, Azka, Hamza and so many more friends I made in the area, at HGSE, and at Boston College! 

What I hope to be remembered by 

I hope to be remembered by joyful energy, care, enthusiasm for spontaneous hanging out, love for the ocean, and always being up for creative play and fun! :) 

Future Plans 

I hope that wherever I am led, I can keep creating intergenerational communities of care, based in decolonial ethics! And that I can keep learning to love boundlessly from the ocean and the Sun. 

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