‘Derailed’: When Graduate Students’ Mentors Leave Harvard

When Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Ph.D. candidate Martha H. “Holly” Elmore applied to study at Harvard in 2013, she did so with a particular professor in mind.

She chose that faculty member, Anne Pringle, to be her academic advisor, interviewing for a position in Pringle’s lab, where she would work closely with her mentor over the course of her studies.

Seven years later, Elmore has changed advisors twice after two of her mentors left Harvard. Pringle departed in 2014 after being denied tenure, while Elmore’s second mentor decided to take a job at another university.

Now, as she approaches the end of her program, Elmore says that having to change mentors and look for new advisors “derailed everything,” adding undue amounts of stress to her course of study.

“I had to go around the department and to someone and be like, you’re my third choice,” Elmore said. “The whole department feels really bad for me.”

For many Harvard graduate students, faculty advisors are integral to their academic experience. Advisors help guide students through their research and advocate for their mentees to receive grants and scholarships.

Harvard faculty might depart from the University for a variety of reasons, including tenure denial, retirement, and job offers from other institutions. Multiple students said taking a younger, tenure-track professor as an advisor rather than a tenured faculty member increases the risk of departure impacting their studies.

When their advisors leave Harvard, graduate students have to alter their plans. They can choose to find a new mentor at the University, follow their mentor to their new job, or stay at Harvard and work with their mentor remotely.

In response to an email sent over the Graduate Student Council’s mailing list, 20 graduate students told The Crimson that their advisors left or would be leaving in the middle of their studies. Some students wrote they changed mentors up to three times.

“People can easily fall through the cracks,” Elmore said. “A lot of people really wanted to help me, and I want to help myself, and I still feel like I fell through the cracks.”

‘BUILDING A WHOLE NEW RELATIONSHIP’

Of the 20 graduate students who replied to The Crimson, 15 said they remained at the University to finish their studies even after the mentor they had been working with departed Harvard — leaving them responsible for finding a new advisor.

Harvard School of Public Health Ph.D. candidate Ian M. Leavitt said in an interview that his advisor, Andy S. L. Tan, announced he would be leaving at the end of this year to teach at another institution. Leavitt said he will now be tasked with searching for a new advisor halfway through his program.

“It’s still a shifted ideology,” Leavitt said. “I came into the University expecting to be with one person.”

Though Leavitt said he came to Harvard to work with his original advisor, he said he would be open to working with another faculty member at the University.

“I wouldn’t say it’s the end of the world at all,” Leavitt said. “I’m a very flexible person in terms of there were some other people that I identified that I had research interests that kind of aligned with.”

Other graduate students, however, said finding a new mentor can pose challenges.

Government Ph.D. candidate Pablo E. Balan — who said he has lost three advisors during his course of study at Harvard — said working with a new advisor requires “building a whole new relationship.”

“The department doesn’t have any institutional mechanism to take care of students who lose advisors for whatever reason,” Balan said. “It’s up to us to reach out to other professors, which can be costly, since investing in a mentoring relationship is a long term investment.”

When students do eventually find a new Harvard faculty member to assist them, that advisor may not necessarily have the same academic interests as them, according to Elmore.

“My advisor at Harvard I love, I’ve learned a lot from, but he doesn’t work on what I work on at all,” Elmore said. “So actually, it’s a terrible situation. Really bad, like really unacceptable.”

‘ADVENTURES AHEAD’

Other graduate students said they have found that the best course of action is to follow their mentors to another institution. Medical Sciences Ph.D. candidate Michael A. Tartell said he plans to follow his advisor, Sean P.J. Whelan, to Washington University in St. Louis, where Whelan will serve as the Chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology beginning later this year.

“You can’t do virus lab work from home,” Tartell said. “When you work in biology, a lot of your day-to-day work relies on a back and forth with your advisor about experiments.”

Tartell said he anticipates both benefits and drawbacks to changing universities. He said moving to a new institution could help him form new academic relationships with members of his field, but it would also involve leaving behind his previous life in Boston.

“It’s just kind of holding on to the idea that your friends will still be your friends no matter where you are, even though in the moment that feels very difficult,” Tartell said.

When former Harvard Chemistry professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik moved to the University of Toronto over concerns about the American political climate, most of his advisees followed him to Canada, Aspuru-Guzik said.

Florian Hase — one of Aspuru-Guzik’s advisees — wrote in an email that he moved to the University of Toronto to continue his research alongside his colleagues.

“Of course I was a little bit sad that I would have to leave Cambridge behind, but I was also excited by the adventures ahead of me, with lots of opportunities at the University of Toronto while still being affiliated with Harvard University,” Hase wrote.

‘PHYSICALLY PRESENT’

For students who cannot follow their mentors to another institution, they have the option to continue their existing advising relationships remotely. Aspuru-Guzik said he communicates with his advisees who chose to stay at Harvard through Slack, Skype, and frequent visits to Boston.

“I explained to them that groups move all the time,” Aspuru-Guzik said. “I worked with them on an efficient plan that is individualized.”

Germanic Languages and Literatures Ph.D. candidate Hans M. Pech — whose advisor, Racha Kirakosian, will be leaving at the end of this year after being denied tenure — said he plans to work with Kirakosian remotely, though he fears communicating with an advisor remotely might prove “tedious.”

“It’s always better to have somebody physically present to advocate for you getting a certain scholarship or whatever it may be,” Pech said. “Just meeting on a weekly basis, for example, or regular basis in person to discuss your research is obviously more productive than writing an email.”

Regardless of what course of action graduate students decide to take, many agreed that their advising relationships are crucial to academic success.

Balan said that in addition to providing intellectual advice and funding, mentors can “offer protection.”

“Having a strong supportive advisor lowers the probability that you are professionally harassed, harassed in the context of teaching, employer-employee relations and so on,” he said.

Leavitt agreed that advising relationships can help graduate students, adding that they should not be “put on the back burner.”

“You're just looking for somebody to basically help you navigate the process amongst many other things,” Leavitt said. “If I needed them, they're there for me.”

—Staff writer Callia A. Chuang can be reached at callia.chuang@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter at @calliaachuang.