Advocating for yourself/making change in your grad program

[psybee]

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In my program when there are conflicts or problems that are acknowledged to be such and are a pain for multiple students in a class, class reps take the issue to the faculty or director, as a way of synthesizing different voices and perspectives, and also making things easier on the professor--one meeting with 2 people about an issue as opposed to 8 meetings with 8 people about one issue. If you have an issue that is not shared by anone else you advocate for yourself (I, for instance, may purse a dual degree and if so as a psych PhD student I will have some unique challenges not shared by the MD or natural sci PhDs), and of course if it's a personal issue you need to do that as well. There's also a larger student board comprised of members from the three doctoral programs in Psych at my school, who have the Dean's ear.

I may have more thoughts to share, ones that are motivating my question to y'all: How do other programs facillitate communication with the upper-ups?

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

I could write a book on this.....but that will have to wait until I finish my reports. blah.

 

[ClinicalTrainee]

In my program there is no such formal system. Complaints involve talking to each other and perhaps to individual faculty members. Then the faculty members bring up issues at faculty meetings (at which, btw, students are not allowed, not even a representative every once in awhile) and argue amongst themselves. In fact, it has been the case in my program that I've talked with two different faculty members about the same topic, and talked to one of them again later only to find out that the other one misconstrued my perspective to support his own opinion. They say things like "students believe..." without getting the student issue verified.

All that said, we don't have a lot of issues in the program, so while the above is irritating sometimes, it's ultimately not a big deal. Also, once a year we do have a meeting with all the faculty and students to discuss the clinical program, though many students don't feel like they can bring up issues in such a public forum.