How Administrative Staff Become Involved
In the opening case, it was not surprising that Nancy Ames became involved in a problematic situation between a graduate student and her advisor because Ames' responsibilities included maintaining graduate program records. Involvement in advisor-trainee disputes or misunderstandings is practically guaranteed for staff who serve as graduate secretaries or those who administer programs or services for graduate students and/or post-docs. Trainees frequently use these staff members as people to whom they can vent, or as sounding boards or sympathetic ears. While helping to solve trainees' institutional or professional problems is often part of the job description for a staff member associated with trainee program administration, sometimes trainees' personal problems can become an issue as well, even if the staff member is not a counselor. Whether it's an institutional, professional, or personal problem that the trainee brings to the staff member, advisor-trainee relationships usually are involved in some manner.
Although involvement is to be expected for staff who administer trainee programs, any administrative staff member who has any interaction with advisors and trainees can become involved in a problematic situation involving advisor-trainee relationships. For example:
Joseph Green, who is in charge of departmental purchases, is puzzled by a purchase order submitted by Daniel Terry a post-doc in the Oldham lab. The chemical is the same one that Terry has been purchasing every couple months on his NIH post-doc grant, but this time the form indicates that the purchase should be charged to Prof. Oldham's NSF grant account. So, Green gives Terry a call to check. "Yes, that's correct," Terry says when Green explains the situation. "I'm getting low on funds in my account, so Dr. Oldham told me to start putting my supplies on his NSF account. There should be plenty of money there." When Green explains that he can't approve charging supplies for one project to an unrelated project because that would be against university and federal policy, Terry becomes agitated. "Look," he says, "just do as I've asked, OK? I'm already in trouble with Oldham. He says I'm bothering him too much about little things. Just this morning he was going on about how I need to make decisions on my own and be more independent. I need him to write me a good recommendation letter for a job I'm looking at. How is it going to look if you bother him about my purchase order?"
This case concerning Joseph Green is repeated in the Case Section where it is accompanied by a Case Discussion.
So, finding oneself "in the middle" of situations that arise within advisor-trainee relationships is not unique to staff whose job is to administer trainee programs or services. The level and frequency of one's involvement will vary, as will one's obligations, but all staff in a unit that has trainees are likely to be find themselves in these situations. Therefore, administrative staff need to both understand these relationships and think ahead about what their responsibilities are. As illustrated by the two cases presented so far, it is usually not just the advisor-trainee relationship that is the problem administrators are confronted with. Instead, the situations will involve issues covered elsewhere in this tutorial such as financial management, data management, conflicts of interest or commitment, or those common to many research collaborations, but with the extra layer of complexity introduced by the advisor-trainee relationship. Other common issues are abuse of power, communications failures, gender or ethic bias or harassment. So, administrators need to consider their obligations plus the possible effect their actions may have on the special relationship between advisor and trainee.
