Improving Advising Relationships Between PhD Students and Faculty in Human-Computer Interaction

Project website for CHI 2024 hybrid panel

https://www.phd-advising-hci.com/

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3643971

https://imjane.net/papers/chi2024-improving-advising.pdf

ABSTRACT

Advisor-advisee relationships between PhD students and faculty are vital to research, but advising dynamics can be challenging for both student and advisor. Though advising can involve egregious problems such as sexual harassment, we focus on what might be less serious but more common issues such as exploitation, unprofessional behavior, mishandling of credit, and inadequate communication. While problems can be caused by advisor or advisee, the power imbalance exacerbates problems for PhD students. In any case, open discussion about PhD advising is rare. In this panel, we hope to start a much-needed conversation about PhD advising to raise awareness within the SIGCHI community about common advising problems; and to begin brainstorming solutions that faculty, administrators, and PhD students can implement.