How to quit/put on hold a PhD program due to personality clash with advisor?

Question

I've been trying to cope with a very abusive and mentally unstable advisor. In a recent clash she has been spewing lies and threats. It has become clearer and clearer that despite the four years of manipulations, borderline extortion, and five publications that I've survived through, I will never receive a degree from this advisor. I have decided to accept a job offer and I want to just close things up at the school in the best possible way. If possible, I'll leave a door open by taking a leave of absence for a year to come back to a different advisor.

How should I go about my next steps? Do I email the Department Chair directly asking for a meeting? I have been warned such an email would probably reach my advisor first. Do I just walk into the student affairs department with a leave of absence form? If I should email someone, who should it be, and what should I write there?

I'm funded by an NSF grant, so should I write them now in conjunction or after I finalize my leave at school?

Answer 1

Five publications? Good God, you deserve a PhD more than me and anybody else I have known. FábioDias is absolutely right. I know of an identical case where the advisor wanted the student to do more work after six years and four publications...and refused to fund him AND wouldn't get him a TAship. He finally, talked to the graduate chair in our department. He was ready to go to the department chair and even the dean of the college...but it didn't come to that. The graduate chair immediately took charge, switched his advisor, emailed his thesis to three other faculty members to judge if his thesis was sufficient. He scheduled a defense. Half of the department (students and faculty) showed up. The abusive advisor was also present because he was kept as part of the committee, he was just not the chair nor the "advisor". He successfully defended and even the abusive advisor passed him.

He defended and left within a month.

You have done a lot of work and invested a lot of time and you definitely deserve your degree if you have so many peer-reviewed publications. I wouldn't recommend taking a leave because only rarely I have seen someone coming back after a break (whatever the reason may be for the leave) and finishing. And as you said, it will have financial complications and NSF wouldn't like it very much. In addition, would you quit your job a year later to come back to school? Or work part time? Start fresh with a new advisor, or continue the same project? Will you spend another four years with the new advisor? I would say that finish this as quickly as possible in your own favor. And how specifically would an email to the department chair reach the advisor first? Does he or his/department's secretary play golf with your advisor?

I would say, without writing anything, just drop by the office of the grad chair. Talk to him first. Tell him everything verbally. You should think very hard before putting anything in writing as in an email. Ask him for help. See what he does. If he takes control, then good. Otherwise just drop by the department chair's office and talk to him. This also avoids the danger of your advisor seeing your email first because there never was an email.

At the very end, I would compose a very careful email and send it to the dean of the college and/or the dean of the graduate school, making sure to CC both the department chair and the grad chair.

These are all different levels of escalation. You should start at the bottom, give them a fair chance and a reasonable amount of time to resolve this in good faith. But if it doesn't work, then don't be afraid to escalate it to the next level and repeat.

If you want to take it even further, there is the division of student affair and conflict resolution which is usually under the chancellor or the vice-chancellor. There is also the ombudsman office. At the very end, I would talk to the legal counsel at your school. In the US, even the hint of a possible litigation can have miraculous effects. The school's counsel will of course look out for the school but they might convince the school/college/department to behave rationally because the bad publicity is not worth a grad student.

I'd say hang in there. Research these offices in your university. Read up on some of these policies. Be reasonable and fair but also firm and assertive. I know you have put up with so much abuse but you have to start at the bottom and move up fighting for what's rightfully yours.

Answer 2

If you're in good standing with faculty overall, a leave of absence justified with a desire to temporarily join an exciting industry option might quite possibly be granted. Justifying it with "personality clash" strikes me as poisonous, so don't do that - at least not in a public request. You say you plan on coming back to another adviser; but it doesn't sound as if you've worked on finding one.

I don't think you've thought this through: you leave for a year, with only a vague idea of coming back to "someone else" who you must believe you'll find while not even on location. If you don't have one, or several mentors behind you (other than your adviser) who you know have always been very fond and supportive of you, you'll have to explain to some other faculty, while away, why you don't want to come back to your old adviser. A person neutral in the matter will naturally want to hear the other side of the story, and talk to your old adviser who is likely to have similarly ambiguous feelings about you. This is anyway the right approach for faculty as the new adviser will not want to act behind the back of a colleague. This has only some remote hope of working out if the new adviser does like you a lot, and it's certainly made harder by - apparently - planning on tackling this while working in industry.

This is to say that - in my opinion, and absent a powerful other ally among faculty very fond of you - you should first switch to another adviser; then consider if you still want a leave of absence, and see if this is cool with your new mentor. If either the former or the latter don't work out, you should accept the very real possibility that your temporary leave will mean the end of your Ph.D.

Answer 3

Four years is a lot of time to just throw out, and 5 publications seems like you should (at least) be close to having enough completed for a Ph.D. Could you switch advisors to someone who would count your past work? Does she have any previous students you can talk to about what they did? Are there faculty with whom you are on good terms who could give honest advice? If what you say is true, you might not be the only one who has noticed this behavior.