Jill T. Oberski

Jill Oberski
First, a content warning. Today’s conversation covered the topic of suicide briefly, so please feel free to stop the recording and take care of yourself if that is something you need.

All right. Hi, everyone. My name is Jill Oberski, I use she her pronouns, and I’m a PhD candidate in the entomology program at the University of California Davis. And today, I’m excited to welcome you to another conversation in my series of panels about mental and chronic illnesses in academic professional development. This project is supported by the UC Davis GradPathways Institute for Professional Development through the program called Professors For The Future. I have several guests today. Thank you all for being here. And before we start, I’d like each of you to briefly introduce yourselves with your name pronouns and your professional titles where you’re at that sort of thing. Can we start with Geoff?

Geoff Attardo
Yeah, my name is Geoff Attardo (him) and I am an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology here at UC Davis. And I study the biology of insect vectors of disease and their relationships with ecology and interactions and things like that. And I have kind of struggled with anxiety, depression, and attention deficit disorder.

Jill Oberski
And Lisa,

Lisa Whitten
Yes, I’m Lisa Whitten. And I’m an associate professor at SUNY old Westbury, since 1986, in the psychology department, I’m retiring at the end of this year, which I’m thrilled about, and I use she her. And my work has been mostly on bringing culture and race to the center of the undergraduate psychology, prep curriculum. And I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression all my life and then was diagnosed with bipolar, bipolar one, about 20 years ago, when I had a severe year long manic episode, precipitated by a medication that was supposed to be a mood stabilizer, but instead was elevating my mood. And that caused a lot of trouble. It took nine months to be stabilized again. And that’s my experience. I’ve written about it in an article, which we can reference somewhere, I guess. And I just wanted to say also that I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD. But I read an article in the Times or somewhere just today that made it sound like I don’t have ADHD, because I didn’t have it as a child. But anyway, that’s something I struggle with to.

Ariel Lambe
Lisa, I read that article as well. And I think it’s something I won’t say in polite company. My name is Ariel Lambe, I’m an Associate Professor of History at the University of Connecticut. I’m a mom of two and I had a severe postpartum mental illness episode in 2013 2014 2015, finally got help in 2015, and was diagnosed with bipolar one and OCD. And at this point, I am completely out about these conditions after a period of silence. And looking forward to this conversation and other conversations that I’m involved in about really putting myself out there and having those tremendous respondents say, in my in my direct messages or my text messages, “I wish that I could be as out as you are, I’m looking forward to that in the future.” That just fuels me right now, that the number of people that have come forward to me and said, it’s so meaningful to me that you’re being so out. So that’s what’s driving me. That’s my full motivation. And I’m on that note, delighted to be part of this conversation.

Jill Oberski
Amazing. Thank you so much. So it sounds like all of you are pretty public with your diagnoses. How did you “come out,” so to speak, and how public are you with this? I know some of you, it’s like right there in your Twitter bio. Others, it just came up in conversation. What has that looked like for you in terms of disclosure to certain audiences?

Lisa Whitten
Well, I can start, I would say I’m not totally out. And it’s been a lengthy, challenging process. I first talked about my mental illness publicly, in 2009, when I was able to do a short speech, as I accepted the distinguished psychologist award from the Association of Black Psychologists, and I talked for about seven minutes, um, many of the people in the room had witnessed me at the convention in 2001, when I was really in bad shape. But I talked about it there. And it took many years before I wrote about it. And I wrote about it because my colleague let me know about this special issue on the lived experience of mental health practitioners with mental illness. I, um, I sent the article to a number of my colleagues, some of whom I’m very close to, and to a number of my friends. And I must say, the part of the coming out process for me that’s been challenging is that I haven’t, I haven’t been, I haven’t liked, I haven’t been comfortable with, I haven’t gotten the the response that I wanted, which is just some acknowledgement that I have written about it and come out and, you know, or even somebody saying, This is what you’re trying to do here, and I think here are some ways you could improve it next time. That’s what I was hoping for from some folks in my department. And a committee I’m on through the Association of Black Psychologists. So I have to say briefly that this semester, I’ve talked about subjectivity and the stigma of mental illness in my counseling psychology class, but I have not come out. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s always scary. And I’m telling myself, okay, it’s your last semester, it doesn’t really matter. But I’m so concerned about how it will impact my students and their opinion of me.

Geoff Attardo
Yeah, I guess I can go go next. Yeah, I didn’t really talk about it, I mean, for a long time, I had sort of internalized it and didn’t realize what was wrong. And I had very low self esteem, and just assumed that I was lazy, or that I was not good enough relative to other people. And that’s why I was struggling so hard, or I wasn’t trying hard enough. So it made me you know, so a lot of it, you know, I didn’t want to feel like I was just sort of making excuses. I guess that was my big fear is that people would think I was just sort of inherently kind of flawed, and not, you know, not deserving of sort of consideration and getting help and sort of being able to actually identify what the problems were, and understanding those problems has made has turned my view around, it’s really helped my self esteem, and sort of understanding. So my background is I grew up. I’ve always had ADHD, I didn’t realize that’s what the problem was, like, all of my teachers in high school were like, you know, he’s got so much potential, but he doesn’t, you know, doesn’t live up to it. He’s always goofing off, you know, his performance is all over the place. There’s, he’s gets an A and then an F. And it was always put on me as being like, you’re, you know, you’re just you’re not applying yourself. And it’s just, but you’re working as hard as you can. And you’re, you know, and so, besides that I was growing up and both my parents were alcoholics, which, you know, does all sorts of things. That is not, you don’t realize it while it’s happening. But you realize it after the fact when you start to contextualize like not everybody grew up with this kind of crazy environment. And the sort of the pathology of adult children of alcoholics. It’s like I have all that, and I didn’t realize what that was either. So that feeds into the attention deficit disorder, and the depression and the anxiety, it all comes along. Um, as baggage with that, and the thing that, so I hadn’t really talked about it until I started doing, I had been on antidepressants for 20 or 30 years now, doing talk therapy, it kind of like made the symptoms tolerable, and I was able to manage but never felt good. And then I started doing ketamine infusion therapy last year, and that has been life changing for me. It provides a new, it gives you the ability to step outside of yourself and look at yourself from a different perspective, with empathy and with understanding of why you’re doing what you’re doing. And it’s just, it’s, it’s really, I turned my life around. So I’m really a big proponent for the use of psychedelic kind of modalities, which are now becoming sort of accepted in mainstream, because it’s the only thing that’s ever really helped me, because all the antidepressants seem to be just doing is like painkillers, you know what I mean? They’re suppressing the symptoms, but they don’t get at the root cause. And that’s really where the psychedelics get to is that they allow you to see where the pain is that you’ve been suppressing for decades, that is always in the background for everything. And that’s really what has been. So I came out of that therapy, wanting to adjust with this like, feeling like other people need to know about this. Because I, you know, was suffering with this for so long thinking it was just a character flaw in me. And that that’s not the reality and that. But you know, I’ve been vocal about it on Twitter. But I usually don’t get any responses. I’ve gotten private messages back. But a lot of people don’t want to engage publicly about it. And I always worry that I’m oversharing. Or that I’m being inappropriate. So I’ve somewhat dialed it back, because I don’t want to force it on people who don’t want to hear it. But I also want people who are suffering quietly, to know that there’s, you know, there’s options out there, and that’s not you. That’s the problem. So that’s kind of my background and motivation.

Ariel Lambe
I hear that Geoff, I have gone from almost entirely silent to very, very public in the last three years. And, you know, the, the concept of oversharing grates on me, you know, I mean, I think if you’re, I don’t know, if you’re sharing something really physically revolting, then maybe that’s oversharing. But I don’t really believe in the concept. People are welcome to block me if they don’t like to see what I post, you know what I mean? Or just follow me or whatever. I think not to question what you’re saying. I mean, I get the feeling. I’ve had that feeling a million times, oh, my gosh, what did I just do? Why did I share that? But I’ve really become pretty strident about the fact that what matters is those people who do DM you and say that you’re telling my story, this is so meaningful to me, those are the people that matter, not the people who are like, Oh, I don’t want to hear about your depression again, you know what I mean? Like, I don’t have any tolerance for those people. I think they’re there. It’s stigma. It’s ableism. And they can they’re just free to ignore it.

Geoff Attardo
Yeah, for, for me, the the concern, I guess, as as a professor, like, if I’m talking about it with students, is that it could be seen as like me kind of “trauma dumping” on people, you know, and people who there’s a power dynamic, that they don’t have the ability to say, I’m not comfortable with this. So that’s sort of where my concern comes in. Like, with peers, I have no problem sharing, but I don’t want to be forcing something on people that don’t have the option or don’t feel comfortable saying, I’m not comfortable with this. And like, apparently, with ADHD, oversharing is like a common thing because you just talk about whatever’s front of mind. And there’s sort of like a lack of inhibition. So, there’s a self consciousness that I have that I’m worried that like, oh, you know, I’m behaving in a strange way because so I’m constantly I also have social anxiety. So I’m constantly overthinking being like, Oh, I said something. And then I’ll ruminate about it and worry. And so it’s all part of the whole package.

Ariel Lambe
Yeah, so that makes complete, complete sense.

Lisa Whitten
Sounds very familiar to me. And I never thought of, I hadn’t heard that term “trauma dumping” before that. That’s an interesting one that I’ve shared with students in in my office a few times, and they have generally, and it’s been after they told me about their mental health issues, if I’m remembering correctly, and they’ve just been sort of relieved, and, you know, grateful, you know, that I that I shared that with them. Um, I think one of the one of the most difficult things for me, was on… maybe this is getting into a different topic, Jill, you can stop me if you want to. But when I was at the, at the height of my manic episode, 20 years ago, 22 years ago, I literally started standing up and screaming in a meeting and … department meeting … [?] … known me for 15, 16 years, some of them, and I stormed out of the room, and no one came after me, no one did anything. No one called me no one texted–were we texting then? I think so–no one emailed me. And I just I was, these are psychology professors, many, several of them clinicians. And I just was, you know, blown away by that. And I call it a mental health emergency, and that people need to know how to respond to that. That if I had had a stroke, if I had, you know, had a heart attack, people would have jumped up and gotten, you know, called University Police. But instead, they just, I kept the term I kept using was I call it being sick when I was in my manic episode, was they just left me flapping in the breeze. They didn’t know what had happened, where I had gone. And I think that’s grossly inappropriate, and and potentially damaging. And it it damaged me, because it made me not trust them anymore.

Ariel Lambe
Yeah, I think there’s a huge difference between when we’re outed by our symptoms, or our experiences, like when we haven’t willingly said, I live with bipolar disorder, but instead have had an episode that is severe or an emergency enough that people around us are aware that something’s wrong. Like, that’s being outed, I would say, in the way I think about it, rather than coming out, right, in a way that you control or that you feel comfortable with. And I’ve absolutely had the same experience. Lisa, I’m so sorry that you experienced that with your colleagues. But I’ve had that experience with friends, I’ve had that experience in public, where I’ve been completely out of control. And people just don’t know what to do, or they don’t care to do anything, you know, when it’s extreme.

Lisa Whitten
And they don’t think they know what to do, what they’re thinking, I don’t know, it might be a combination of all of those. But instead of doing something, they so often do nothing. And I think that’s a real mistake. In relation to this, I’ll share with you that and it’s in my article, but, um, I made a list of people, emergency contacts, and said something about this is how I look if I start falling apart again. And I gave it to my dean, and I never gave it to HR, but I think it’s possible to do that. Because with this HIPAA stuff, people are afraid to do anything. Because I think that they should have called my parents, they should have called my sister, they could have should have called somebody. And they, so, now I’ve given permission to some people. One of my closest colleagues has the list. And I think that’s something that people might consider doing, especially those of us who can go way out of control and and just be irrational and in real trouble.

Ariel Lambe
That’s a fantastic idea.

Jill Oberski
Yeah, absolutely. Giving people examples of what to look for instead of just keep an eye on me, I think is a really, really important part of that. I want to shift us toward talking about the academic professional development timeline, and how disclosure is something that might impact your job application or interview process. Um, I mean, disclosure or just psychiatric illnesses themselves. How do you account for that? Or how does one account for that? If they know, they have a diagnosis, and they’re starting, you know, the uncertain short term positions and job applications that are oftentimes very demanding for the interview process, that sort of thing? What are… what thoughts are coming up?

Lisa Whitten
Well, I think people should be very careful, and give a lot of thought to how much they disclose, and take into account the context and consult people that they’re close to, because, you know, still, our society is not ready for this yet, you know, and if you know where you live, I mean, it’s so much depends on again, your context. But I would recommend that people be very careful. At the point I’m at in my career, it’s not as relevant, you know, and I haven’t had a manic episode in over 20 years, I’ve just been on the same medication, as I say, it was precipitated by a particular medication, and it just took me a long time to figure out what it was. But I have thought about putting that the name of my article on my resume, because I’m looking for part time work. And I’m wondering how people might respond to that. And, you know, so I’m still thinking about it. But I would say be careful, and consult people that you trust and sort of test the water. Maybe by talking to people who do hiring, or someone who does hiring and that kind of thing.

Ariel Lambe
I feel like my experience is, is a little bit golden, like I had, I just had so much good luck that I hesitate to give advice to graduate students who are confronting these issues, because I just sailed through with some really privileged junctures in my career path. So what I mean by that is I had, for whatever reason, I don’t know, relative stability during graduate school, my my mood, especially during my exams, and my dissertation period, was really stable. I wasn’t diagnosed at that point, I was in no treatment, but for whatever reason, I just got a little window there, where I was okay. And that’s where I did the majority of my graduate student school work. I got a job before I graduated, which is like a unicorn, right? That doesn’t happen. It was pure luck. It was pure luck. And I then had my daughter right after I got the job, but before I had started it, and I was able to use her birth to get myself an extra semester before I started. So the period at which I was the most out of my mind after her birth, I was not yet working. By the time I started my job, I was still in very bad shape. And those first two years were really tough. But I was able to, basically, I let my life fall apart and kept my job on track. I mothered as much as I needed to mother and I worked as much as I needed to work and the rest of my life just completely fell apart. That was how I got through it. I don’t recommend that. But that’s how it worked for me. Flash forward to when I got tenure, I came out publicly on Twitter with a long thread that I had composed prior the day after I got my tenure letter, so I was really ready to be out. But like Lisa says, you have to be careful. And I kept it a secret through my whole tenure track process. The minute I came out, I was immediately sorry that I hadn’t disclosed earlier. In that I got nothing but support. I got help getting accommodations. I had an excellent experience with HR and getting accommodations. I mean everything, like I say, it was golden. Everything was just sparkly for some reason. And again, I hesitate to use that as advice because I know people’s other people’s experiences are not that right. Other people have terrible experiences with HR, terrible experiences with department chairs, terrible experiences with departments as a whole with Dean’s with you know whomever like there’s all these horror stories out there. And for whatever reason I just got supremely lucky throughout the process. Um, so I don’t know what anybody can take away from all of that. But the one thing I will say is, I have a background in union organizing, and my husband is a union organizer. And one of the things that they teach you in union organizing is, if you’re scared, you get more out. Right? So if you support the union, and you’re scared, you become the leader of the union campaign, because then if you’re fired, if you’re sacked for that, you have recourse. Whereas if you do it in secret, and they find out and they fire you, but you haven’t made anything public, you don’t have any recourse. And I think that that applies a little bit to disability. Because I think if I had, you know… I underperformed in during my tenure period, I got my book done, which is what I needed to get tenure, but I didn’t write any articles in that period. And that was really, I was really well behind my peers. Had they used that as an excuse not to give me tenure, I wouldn’t have had any recourse because nobody knew I was disabled. Whereas if I had had a disability, you know, on the books, so to speak, and accommodations and all of that, then I would have had recourse to say, hey, this was discrimination. You know, I wasn’t given what I needed to to fulfill the tenure requirements. So that’s just something to think about. Obviously, it depends on your temperament. Some people just don’t have the wherewithall, especially if they’re unwell, to be public. And I get that, but it’s just it’s, it’s one sort of twist in in your thinking about it to consider maybe.

Geoff Attardo
Yeah, I think, for me, I don’t, I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in currently, if I didn’t have the privilege that I had. So I come from a relatively wealthy family, so I didn’t have to struggle with the financial aspects of things. And, you know, I have a marriage and a very supportive wife. And without her, I wouldn’t have been able to do these things. So I mean, in some ways, I feel I struggle with this feeling of being kind of a fraud, because I look at the people who’ve had to work so much harder, you know, and struggling with systemic issues that, you know, I haven’t had to deal with, just because of, sort of my my background. But I kind of looked back at my trajectory, and I can kind of see, I didn’t realize I realized I was compensating for things as I was going through it. But I, so I did undergrad, I had a fairly mediocre performance there. I worked as a technician for a long time, I went back to take classes again, to be able to boost my GPA high enough to get into graduate school. I did okay, with graduate school. I guess I did well, in graduate school, then I did a postdoc. But there was always this feeling in me like, I can’t handle a faculty position, because I’m not going to be able to keep it together enough to be that, you know, the the multitasking and all that. So I went into a position as a research scientist, because I’m really good at doing bench work and doing data analysis because I can, like, if I can do one thing at a time, I’m great. But it’s when I’m getting hit with lots of stuff coming from different directions that I start to get overwhelmed. And then I will eventually hit like a paralysis state. And so I stayed as a research scientist, and you know, everybody, all my peers are like, “What are you doing?” you know, “You need to be going for a faculty position,” and I couldn’t really explain to them like, I don’t think I can do it. But at some point, I was like, “Alright, I’m gonna try.” But there’s always this insecurity, you know, and this feeling of being an imposter, that I don’t really belong here. And when I got here, you know, I sort of managed but I don’t feel like I do anything super well, I do my best. But there’s a lot of times where I’m just completely spun out and waking up every morning with panic attacks with palpitations, having a hard time breathing. Just because I’m thinking like, I can’t do this today. You know, it’s like just opening my phone and looking at the inbox and seeing all the new stuff that’s come up. That’s going to totally disrupt my plans for getting what I need to do done. And, and then the pandemic hit. And then like the Trump presidency, and just and the wildfires out here, just, you know, having days where it just looks like the apocalypse, and the anxiety got to a level that I had never been at before where it was just incapacitating. And that pushed me past, pushed me into a place that I’d never been before. Where I was, you know, not suicidal, but, you know, it was like, it would be a lot easier if I just wasn’t here anymore. Cuz I can’t, you know, it’s just because you’re… everything is just… you just feel like you’re… you can’t escape, you know, you’re just sort of under this mountain of stuff that you will never be able to dig out of. And, yeah, so I mean, I put in my tenure package, you know, last year, and I got, you know, great reviews. And I’m like, what? This is not how I see myself, you know. I don’t know, I don’t understand the discrepancy between how I’m seeing me and how other people are seeing me. So I guess I hide it very well. But you know, it’s usually when I’m at home alone, in my head that it all sorts of that’s when it really kind of festers.

Ariel Lambe
I can’t tell you how many people when I came out how many of my colleagues said, Oh, we’re so sorry. We had no idea.

Geoff Attardo
Yeah.

Ariel Lambe
You know, and I wrote an article that came out in November, about being a mentally ill historian, and then sort of looking at mental illness in historical figures, and so forth. And it had family history in it. And it had personal history. And it was like sort of partially memoir, and I talked about some of the most extreme things that I experienced in the postpartum period, which was my first few years at UConn. And people were just totally shocked. And I can’t really explain, I totally hear what you’re saying, Geoff, I can’t explain it either, right? Like I was, for days, barely sleeping, you know, seeing things and having massive rage episodes at home. Or in my car, you know, driving dangerously, I mean, some of the most typical bipolar mixed states type symptoms that, that was what I was plagued with during those years was mixed states, which is a combination of depression and anxiety, and depression and mania, sometimes called agitated depression. So I had all these terrible symptoms, and yet I was able somehow to hide them at work. I had a couple of instances where my I had students say to me, Professor Lambe, are you okay? There was one instance, when I was writing on the board, I had my back to my class, and I just stopped, and I just couldn’t go on. I didn’t… my mind went blank. I couldn’t remember even what class I was teaching, let alone what I had been writing on the board. And I had this really sweet student who piped up after about 45 awkward seconds, and said, “Hey, guys, I think we broke her.” And everybody laughed, and I laughed, and I turned around, and I said, “You know what, I’m really tired. What were we talking about?” and they, and they picked it up, and I got back on track, but like, so there were a few little cracks, mostly with my students. But my colleagues had no idea and to this day, and I think forever, I will not understand how nobody noticed, you know, I was having suicidal ideation, I was, you know, not eating for periods of time. And people just, they, you forget how self involved people are. And I don’t mean that in a negative sense. It just everybody is concerned about themselves, you know, they’re concerned about what they’re going through. And they just don’t notice that much about what other people are experiencing.

Lisa Whitten
I have to say, I’ve never talked with other faculty or other professionals about living with mental illness, and it’s very affirming. And I’m really happy to have a chance to do this. And in part because like they say, what happens in groups, where people are similar. The notion of hiding and being a third good actor, because I would be very depressed, but I would have to go and teach a class and act like a normal person, you know, and I got, I got good at it. And Geoff, when you were talking the whole part about all the moving pieces of academia, I was saying to someone just the other day, this was not the best career choice for me. Because, you know, when I worked at the hospital, I went in, I saw patients, I had to write my note before I left that day, or the hospital wouldn’t be paid. And I went home, and that was it. But then, and this is when the, what I describe as ADHD kicked in, when I started teaching, and I had to collect articles, and I had, um, you know, committees and things off campus. And it was, and it has remained very difficult for 30, more than 30 years. And there was something else I wanted to say… the part about accommodations. I was Director of Disability Services for about nine years, and I was offered that position after people have witnessed my manic episode. So I was I was fortunate that they, you know, well, I had a stretch where I wasn’t in trouble, you know, visibly, so so they had reason to think that I could manage it. But that was difficult to manage, also, and it never occurred to me to try to get accommodations for myself. And I think that could have helped. The one thing I did, a sort of “self accommodation,” which is I, um–and I should say, I put “self accommodation” in air quotes for people who couldn’t see that–I very early started having a teaching assistant. And I designed it so that they could learn about the back story of being a professor and everything, but it was someone who helped me to be organized, more organized. And but it’s been a real struggle, and I think has has definitely impacted my career trajectory. And, you know, when I one other thing I’ll say is that, when I was, again, at the height of my manic episode, I went into, I was… people must not have been paying much attention. But again, I was hiding it. I was hiding it. I went into the Honors Convocation. And I was supposed to present the awards to our people in our department. Unfortunately, it was one of the biggest classes we had ever had. I came in about 40 minutes late, and marched on to the front, it wasn’t a stage exactly, and it was… it was a mess. And after that, several people went to the chair and said, What’s wrong with Lisa? And it’s something that I talked about when I was going through this, I kept saying, people were asking what’s wrong with Lisa? What’s wrong with Lisa? But they didn’t do anything about it? They didn’t come to me and say, Lisa, what’s wrong? Is there anything we can do to help? And that’s what I really wanted. Is there anything I can do to help? Because the chair who told me about this, said, Lisa, three people came, two from this category and one from that category, and said what’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with Lisa? But he didn’t offer me any, any help, either. And I could go on and on, but this is helpful for me.

Geoff Attardo
Yeah. It’s great to be able to talk to people who get it. You know, who’ve been there. Yeah, it’s because I, yeah, I think I think there’s a lot of other hidden people who are going through the same thing that we have no idea or even around us, because we’re really good at masking those symptoms until you’re home alone, and then you just let it all fall apart.

Lisa Whitten
Partly because of my experience. I noticed a woman, she’s probably 30 years my junior, in another department, and she just looked off, she didn’t look the way she usually did. She looked depressed and I know what depression looks like. And so I did, I went to her office and I asked her if everything was okay. And she started crying. She didn’t sob but she she teared up. And also the she appreciated me saying something. And I asked her if there was anything I could do, and right now I don’t remember what she said. It wasn’t anything concrete. But I think just my saying something for her made a difference. And I should check in with her… It’s been a couple, maybe a couple years. So I think if we can be more sensitive, even those of us who have gone through this and people weren’t paying attention, it can it can help. Yeah.

Jill Oberski
This is amazing and we are rapidly running out of time. But I wanted to sort of tie that together. Do you think it’s better to just pretend everything is fine until it’s not? Or is there a value in coming out as mentally ill when you’re stable?

Geoff Attardo
I think the more transparency that can be, the better. But the infrastructure isn’t there for that. And the university, I mean, I feel like I’m very supported here at UC Davis, like, department chair has been great. At one point, I went to him, actually, it was right after I turned in my tenure package. And I said, I don’t think I can do this. I had hit like a wall, and I almost quit. And he sort of talked me down off the ledge.

But yeah, and so I feel like I’m supported. But then again, you know, there’s sort of, there’s a lot of, you know, wellness seminars and things, it’s like going to this thing where they tell you, you need to eat better, you need to get enough exercise, you need to get enough sleep. But then the remainder of the infrastructure is telling you, they’re dumping more work on you than it’s possible to get done. Or the expectations, like the only way you’re going to get this grant or all these papers out, is to work at night and work all weekend long. Especially if you have ADHD, where you’re constantly sort of trying to keep your energy focused and on task. And so there’s conflicting messaging where they want to promote wellness. But the reality of the foundation of that is “be well, but get your stuff done,” you know? And it’s not possible to do both. That’s just what it is.

Jill Oberski
Yeah.

Lisa Whitten
I would say… Again, be careful who you who you come out to, and how and when, and consider the repercussions. And maybe find a safe place, a place that you know, is safe, where you can talk about it, sort of what I said before, and test the water and see what what might work in the context that you’re embedded in.

Ariel Lambe
Yeah, I think that that idea of a safe place is so important. And I think of my coming out process as building a scaffolding around myself. And so I started with, you know, the closest people to me. And then I built my scaffolding, one close friend at a time. And then I started talking to colleagues who were at other institutions, sort of testing the waters. And then by the time… I mean, it helped that I got tenure, right, I got tenure, and I came out because I was like, Okay, this, if it’s now or never, I have this job security, I’m going to do it. But by that time, the scaffolding was already in place. And so I had practiced coming out, over and over and over and over again, I knew what language I wanted to use, I knew what I wanted to say and what I didn’t want to say, you know, I had gauged people’s reaction to certain things. I went over it with my therapist, like I, you know, I, I was very practiced by that point. I would say don’t unless you absolutely have to. Decide that your first coming out or your second coming out is going to be to your department chair, or your dissertation supervisor. I mean, if you can avoid it. If you have to, of course, do what you have to do. But if you can go to that safe place like Lisa says, first, again and again, find more and more safe places, then it becomes easier to be a little unsafe.

Geoff Attardo
Yeah, I got to the point where it especially the with the whole, the ketamine infusions, it’s like you come out with this new sense of purpose, which is really sort of what’s helped me and part of it was like, if I if the system that I’m in, doesn’t want to support me, then maybe I don’t want to be in it. You know, that there’s other things that I can do. So if they’re not going to help me be… I know that this is the right thing to do. Like I have this certainty like that people need to be heard and supported. And that this is a remnant of, you know, sort of this capitalist profit at all costs, you know, the workers are sort of an expendable resource. And that’s not right. And I kind of refused to accept that as being okay. So I’m, I’m happy to take any kind of slings and arrows at this point, like, if it does, you know, if they don’t like it, then you can fire me, I don’t care. And that’s kind of where I’m at right now is like, I just don’t, you know… I know, deep down, what the right thing is, and that there are people who are hurting, and that that shouldn’t be the way it is. And it doesn’t need to be that way. So I’m happy to sort of be the tip of the spear for that.

Jill Oberski
Hear, hear!

Geoff Attardo
Yeah.

Jill Oberski
Okay, we are running out of time. So I’m going to stop the recording here. Thank you all, so so much for sharing your thoughts with everybody today. Experiences, real lived experiences are so so important to hear about. And if you want to keep talking about this later, I’m super happy to facilitate that, because I would love to keep talking to all of you. Is there anything else you wanted to share with our audience before I hit the button?

Geoff Attardo
No, I think it’d be nice to stay in touch though. It’s been a great opportunity to chat. I mean, I think like support groups, having support groups within your communities, would be a really great thing where people can get together and talk about their struggles without worrying about being judged or sort of having repercussions.

Lisa Whitten
Yes, and I would just say, if you’re struggling with your mental health, too, find someone who can help you, and keep looking and keep looking, you know, finding resources, even if you think you can’t afford it, there are graduate schools where you can get treated by a talented student and just keep looking until you get the help you need. Don’t, don’t give up.

Jill Oberski
Hi everyone! My name is Jill Oberski, I’m a PhD candidate in the Entomology graduate program at the University of California Davis, I use she/her pronouns, and I’m excited to welcome you to the first of a series of conversations about mental and chronic illness in academic professional development. This project is supported by the UC Davis GradPathways Institute for Professional Development, through the Professors For The Future program.

Jill Oberski
Today’s topic is university logistics and disability accommodations. Basically, we’ll be discussing how managing an unpredictable condition is different for students, postdocs, job applicants, and faculty.

Jill Oberski
Many of the offices and pieces of paperwork and so on that we’re going to talk about today are specific to UC Davis, but they will hopefully be a great jumping-off point for anyone else to consider when starting a conversation with their own institution.

Jill Oberski
I spoke with several offices at UC Davis–the Student Disability Center, Disability Management Services, and Academic Affairs–to get a sense of how these divisions differ and/or cooperate. My guests were hesitant to be recorded, so what I’ve done is package the information I gleaned into a brand-new writeup. I wrote this presentation in the format of an interview, but just consider it a performance; this is not the same as the conversation we had. Reading with me today is _____. Can you introduce yourself quick, using your own voice?

Mia Lippey
Sure! My name is Mia Lippey, I use she her pronouns. I’m a graduate student researcher at the University of California Davis in the entomology graduate group.

Jill Oberski
Awesome, thank you so much. So let’s get started.

Mia Lippey
So, can I get an overview of what the different departments at UC Davis cover? Of course this is going to vary at other institutions, but I know at UC Davis, there’s the student disability center, otherwise known as the SDC; disability management services, which is DMS; and academic affairs too.

Jill Oberski
So, disability management services is under the umbrella of human resources, so they work with anyone who has an employment relationship with the university, so that includes volunteers, academic employees, faculty, TAs, graduate student researchers, and any staff employee. Also fellowships. So we help with accommodations in regards to those jobs.

Mia Lippey
What about the student disability center?

Jill Oberski
The SDC works with students– undergraduate, graduate, professional students. Their primary focus is academic accommodations, but truly most things on the UC Davis campus are considered academic programs. That said, there is a separate office that handles housing accommodations. Those go through Housing and Dining. So everything that concerns students goes through the student disability center, but if you have two roles on campus, like a graduate student who is also employed as a TA, you would probably get your accommodations through both the SDC and disability management services.

Mia Lippey
Gotcha. And then there’s academic affairs. Is that just for faculty?

Jill Oberski
Basically, yeah. Academic Affairs is also under the umbrella of human resources, and it’s like the human resources for all academic faculty. So the central campus office personnel unit. They’re involved in recruitment, appointment, advancement, any disciplinary things that need to happen. But they sometimes get involved with academic related disability accommodations, especially if there are other HR related things in that situation, like family connections or other special requirements that get more complicated. Academic affairs is also in charge of leaves, like for sabbaticals, medical leaves, disability leaves, and parental leaves for people who are starting families. They have a pretty great academic work life program for people who are having kids specifically. And they also have training programs that teach faculty and department chairs and other academics exactly what academic affairs does and what they offer.

Mia Lippey
That’s great. And how do postdocs factor into all this? They’re paid employees with contracts, but they’re not students exactly.

Jill Oberski
Postdocs, just like faculty, usually fall under academic affairs and disability management services, in their employment sense, but a few types of appointments are overseen by the graduate studies division. So generally speaking, because they’re university employees, disability management services would help them with accommodations.

Mia Lippey
Oh, ok. How about people who aren’t yet a part of the university? Like prospective students and visiting professors and faculty job applicants?

Jill Oberski
Prospective students and students just attending events on campus should talk to the student disability center, but that might be different at other campuses, even within the UC system. So the SDC here is under Student Affairs, but it might be under Academic Affairs, or even diversity offices, which are under lots of different places.

Mia Lippey
Gotcha. Thanks. I would love to hear more about job applicants, like what sorts of accommodations can be granted to people who are in the process of interviewing. For example, I know that faculty job interviews are really intense, typically over the span of a couple of days, meeting after meeting including meals. One faculty I know had to request breaks in order to go pump because she was breastfeeding at the time of the interview. So yeah, what accommodations are there for applicants visiting campus?

Jill Oberski
There are a bunch of possibilities that are listed on the disability management services website, which I’ll link in the show notes. But some of them include having the printed interview questions ahead of time, adjusted lighting, making sure the location is physically accessible, maybe scheduling the interview at a certain day or time. They could also bring an attendant with them to the meeting, or request a scent free environment if perfumey scents are distracting to them, that sort of thing. And of course the more standard services like assistive devices and interpreters. But you can also make special requests and they might allow for those too. Also if they do happen to be taking care of a child or breastfeeding specifically, there’s a program at UC Davis that covers the cost if they need to bring their child to keep them close, or pay for childcare or something like that. So bringing super important people along is definitely something that can be discussed.

Mia Lippey
Great, that’s awesome.

Mia Lippey
Can we talk a little bit about taking leaves? Like disability leave? What does that look like for students versus faculty and staff?

Jill Oberski
So, students can do what we call the planned educational leave program (or “pelp”) for one academic quarter, and then if they have a disability and need to be on leave for longer, then the SDC can do that as an accommodation. There’s also situations when the student needs to go on leave in the middle of the quarter, for instance, and then the student disability center would probably help with that too. Any sort of exception to policy, that sort of thing. To go on PELP in the first place, students just file a form with the registrar. It doesn’t have to involve disability offices in any way.

Jill Oberski
Postdocs and faculty at UC Davis can use sick leave for illness, medical appointments, childbearing, disability, and the illness or bereavement of their close family. That’s what’s called Family and Medical Leave, humorously abbreviated as FML.

Jill Oberski
For postdocs, you’re eligible for twelve days of paid sick leave per 12-month appointment. You can also get other leave for childbearing and so on. But mainly you have to talk to your faculty mentor, or whoever is your direct supvervisor, in order to arrange these things, because they are in charge of your paycheck.

Jill Oberski
For faculty, they don’t accrue sick leave over time like other academic staff. The process for leave starts with their department. So departments have the ability to approve leaves that are seven days or less. If it’s over seven days, but less than 30, then the Dean has to approve, and if it’s over a month, then it goes all the way to the Vice Provost. And early career faculty are eligible to take two quarters of paid leave if need be. After ten years of service then faculty are eligible for a full year of paid leave. Also what many employees do in cases of emergency medical leave is sign up for short term or long term disability. So that first part of taking leave initially is often just a starting point to support the employee until that disability kicks in and they can come back to work in a less intense way. There’s also possibilities for leave extensions if for example you sign up for disability insurance when you sign up for benefits. You’d be granted extended leave, but not necessarily get paid by the university–likely only disability benefits. Probably better than nothing, though.

Mia Lippey
So obviously there’s a huge difference between taking a year off for medical leave and taking a year off for sabbatical. But how do those differ logistically?

Jill Oberski
Well, all leaves are processed through the same online portal called MyInfoVault. If it’s a medical leave, usually the healthcare provider has to sign a form saying that the employee needs the leave, so they certify that the individual is actually unable to work. Of course that isn’t needed for taking sabbatical but you use the same system to make that request.

Mia Lippey
Is it common for people to max out their paid leave?

Jill Oberski
Not for a whole year–often it’s a few weeks, or sometimes a quarter. And like I said, it’s sometimes a holdover until disability kicks in. And you know, it just depends what’s going on and how complicated the situation is. But those medical details are usually kept on file at a lower level and won’t accompany the leave request all the way up the approval levels. The request will just say “medical leave forms on file with XYZ person.”

Mia Lippey
So that kind of medical leave covers all physical and psychological emergencies, you just need a health care provider signature.

Jill Oberski
That’s right. The treating provider is certifying they’re unable to work.

Mia Lippey
How does that relate to planned educational leave (or PELP) for students? Do you need a doctor’s signature to do that? Or can you say I’m taking leave for my own private reasons.

Jill Oberski
If a student is asking for an accommodation to extend the one quarter PELP that the university provides, then they need to have a letter from a clinician supporting it. But even though that paperwork is necessary, it is pretty flexible what is accepted, because in a lot of situations, taking a leave is the best accommodation possible for someone to, you know, be back in a position where they’re going to thrive with their education. Something related to this is a minimum progress waiver, which allows a student to continue in school but allows them to do it part time, rather than a full load of credits.

Mia Lippey
Right. Okay. So the general planned educational leave at UC Davis is just something you can sign up for by yourself that doesn’t require a medical sign off.

Jill Oberski
Yeah. But if they get SDC accommodations, undergraduates can take even multiple quarters off. But in graduate and professional schools, things are more complicated, depending on what the program looks like, coursework and so on, and where you are in the process.

Mia Lippey
That makes sense. Probably something you would have to coordinate with the chair of your graduate group and/or your PI if you were a graduate student or a postdoc then. So, let’s say you’re a grad student, or postdoc, or faculty member, and you took a medical leave. Then you have to transition back into work when you come back to work. How does that work?

Jill Oberski
Academic Affairs has a form called a Return To Work form that their health provider fills out that says “this person is able to come back to work now”, with or without accommodation, maybe without restrictions, like they can just get back to work, or the doctor might say they have some limitations. And the duration of those limitations. That’s when the employee should work together with their Chair or Supervisor and Disability Management Services to find accommodations that work.

Mia Lippey
Ok, I was doing some reading on this. So if I get it right, basically everyone talks to everyone else in human resources: DMS connects with Academic Affairs and the employee’s department, plus they reach out to the leaves department, where they do the behind the scenes work to put the employee on leave status. That Return To Work letter might have restrictions or limitations that are permanent or ongoing, but it could also say temporary for a certain length of time, so then there is a sort of back-and-forth between the departments to go over what their job description is, what their duties are, and what accommodations would help them return to work. It’s really an interactive ongoing conversation about what will work, because they want something that will work for the employee so they can safely return and be able to be successful. And they want it to work for the department too of course.

Jill Oberski
Exactly. So the dialogue with DMS is ongoing, because it might change, like if it was temporary limitations for like three months, DMS will probably want a 3-month update to see what has happened, are they continuing, or have they improved? And so the accommodations could change too. DMS is the mediator and then it’s kind of seeing what the person wants and needs, what the department is able to accommodate based on their essential job functions, and then trying to find a happy medium. All things that could help them, like assistive technologies and a lot of times this might involve some work from home or remote work.

Mia Lippey
So, throughout that process, are the details of, say, said medical condition private to the department? Are they private to DMS? Or who knows what?

Jill Oberski
In general, all the university units don’t need the diagnosis. They just need what the limitations are. What are they having difficulty doing on the job? Is it concentrating, focus? This is also important because the same diagnosis impacts different people differently. So what really counts is the limitations and what the department hears about is the limitations. DMS keeps everything confidential, but it’s also possible that some limitations themselves are really, super specific–like they could “give away” the diagnosis if you read the whole list–so if they are that detailed then DMS will probably meet with the employee first and go over the limitations to determine what information the employee is comfortable with sharing before sharing the whole description.

Mia Lippey
Gotcha. From the broadest perspective, what are the most common accommodations that DMS arranges for people? Is it basically the same list on the DMS website we mentioned earlier?

Jill Oberski
Yeah, that’s a general one. But I think the most common is actually just taking leave. DMS might recommend that the department provide a period of leave so they can heal and come back. But we also use accommodations like assistive technology, like dictation software and screen reading software, and a mobility assistance shuttle both for longer term or shorter term. Oh, and sit stand desks, but actually a lot of departments are just implementing those for everybody, so we wouldn’t do it as an accommodation if it’s just becoming a standard in their department.

Mia Lippey
Yeah, but having that list of possible accommodations I think is really helpful. Because people don’t necessarily know what’s out there, or know what they might find really helpful, unless they see an example and get an idea. Then they can take that example to DMS and include it in those conversations and negotiations they are having with their department.
For this ongoing conversation, who from the department is part of that conversation? I figure if it’s for a job applicant, it’s going to be the search committee, or the search committee chair more specifically. What about if there is a new faculty being onboarded?

Jill Oberski
That is most likely going to be handled by the department chair if it’s a new faculty that just accepted the job. They might say “here are some things I need,” or “I have some limitations,” and then the department might contact DMS if they need some assistance. But I think in most cases the department will be pretty accommodating, and if there is pushback of some kind from the department chair, or people feel there is discrimination happening, then maybe at that point they will involve DMS. I asked my department’s chief administrative officer and she sounded pretty surprised that a new hire would make DMS their first step to address the situation.

Mia Lippey
Mm-hmm, but visiting disability services first might also be a safer, more comfortable way to start the conversation for some people.

Jill Oberski
Mm-hmm.

Mia Lippey
I guess the last things I want to ask about are how does medical leave impact the tenure clock? Do accommodations extend the tenure clock? Like I know there’s the Work Life program, if you have a baby, you can get an extra year or something. What does that look like?

Jill Oberski
There’s actually a very specific policy about that at UC Davis, and it’s called stopping the clock, but it’s really more extending the clock. The first reason is childbearing or child rearing. The second one is a serious health condition, including disability or bereavement. So that’s pretty significant. And the third is like some significant circumstance outside one’s control.

Mia Lippey
Great. The academic personnel manual has this policy and the other ones so I’ll be sure to link those in the show notes, although they’re exclusive to UC Davis of course. I think UC Davis is really up there in terms of support mechanisms for folks going through the advancement process.

Jill Oberski
Yes, it’s not perfect, but definitely better than a lot of universities. They even have sample language to use for supporting deferrals, postponements, childbearing, etc., so those things aren’t described negatively in any letter that someone is writing. Any additional time on the clock is not a negative thing, Academic Affairs doesn’t look at the time it took, they just look at the body of work that’s required for tenure, and departments should too.

Mia Lippey
OK, one final question, I guess: How much pushback is there typically from departments in terms of negotiating accommodations and extensions? Are department chairs resistant to providing support? Or are they generally pretty willing to adopt things?

Jill Oberski
I think generally, the departments want to help the faculty member, because DMS gets a lot of people who were referred by their department to talk about solutions. But sometimes the question comes up from departments about if accommodations are temporary, like they can offer an arrangement for a temporary amount of time, and we have to remind them that these are temporary arrangements. And Academic Affairs does have regular presentations and workshops it gives to department chairs about how to manage the accommodation process and other issues they have to deal with as chair. Almost every chair is new to being chair, because it’s a rotational leadership role every 3-5 years, so it’s Academic Affairs’ job to make sure that chairs know who to contact in all kinds of situations.

Mia Lippey
And for students? Are departments pretty willing to coordinate accommodations?

Jill Oberski
Generally departments are very supportive. And if you’re an undergraduate, it might not be really noticeable, they might talk with their advisor but that’s about it. Even when you get into graduate and professional schools, there are still a lot of student resources out there that apply even though you’re older and working. The issue is only when a student is out so long that their academic program is impacted. And that’s really rare and the SDC spends a lot of time on those cases. But the general consensus among the disability and HR folks I talked to is that the general support is absolutely there, that the instructor and everybody is on the same team with the students looking for a successful outcome.

Mia Lippey
That’s great. Thanks so much for presenting these resources with me!

Jill Oberski
Yeah, thank you!

Jill Oberski
All right. Hi, everyone. My name is Jill Oberski. I use she her pronouns and I’m a PhD candidate in the entomology program at the University of California Davis. Today, I’m excited to welcome you to another conversation in my series of panels about mental and chronic illness and academic professional development. And this project is supported by the UC Davis grad pathways Institute for Professional Development through the professor’s for the Future program. I have several guests today. Thank you for being here. Before we start, I’m going to introduce one of my guests whose name is D, who will be participating via the chat box. So D says,

D
Hello, I’m a PhD in biophysics, who graduated last quarter, I’ve been struggling with health issues most of my life. When I first joined by program quite some time ago, Student Health cut down severely on my psych medication. And then shortly after, couldn’t deal with medication management when things weren’t working. Student Health was also struggling to deal with my other health issues as well. I had to take my first help that is planned educational leave to get better health care with a job of some sort. In order to keep my better health insurance. When I came back, I had to keep working. finishing my PhD while working proved to be quite arduous. But eventually I got to the point where all unnecessary publications were submitted to peer reviewed journals. But right before getting news of acceptance of the last publication, I had a heart attack. Two weeks later, I was hospitalized again due to a kidney injury from complications with associated medicine. Then two weeks after that, I had a series of strokes from clots in my heart, I have been dealing with cycles of neurological, kidney and cardiac issues ever since. Luckily, I had a very supportive pi. I’m not sure I would be done without that. Looking for work, the push among employers to return to onsite work, everything in person is making it hard for me to find a good job.

Jill Oberski
So that’s D’s introduction. Thank you for joining us, D. My personal story is that I have bipolar disorder, bipolar one. And I was diagnosed halfway through college, and immediately had to deal with some really terrible medications that were wrong for me and all of the side effects that were associated. And I luckily had very understanding mentors along the way. But I also had one who was not that helpful, and we are no longer on speaking terms. So it’s definitely been a journey and trying to find the people that will support me when I’m not being my most productive has been, you know, something that’s been difficult to navigate. And I have one more guest with us. Could you introduce yourself and your own voice?

Heather Ringo
How are ya? I’m Heather Ringo. I’m a third year PhD student in the English department specializing in Environmental Humanities and hearing both your stories really reverberates with my experience. I have I’ve actually non traditional students. So I was able to get through most of my master’s degree all the way through with Berkeley for my BA and then my master’s degree at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. And then after that, I actually left academia for a little while, and worked as a teacher and then for county parks. And my disabilities were manageable because they’re invisible. So I could put on a mask and grit through even though personally and privately I was not managing well. And I love my job for the county parks, working outdoors with kids teaching. But with the wildfires, starting in 2017, the air quality got really bad. And I don’t know if y’all remember the smoke, and unfortunately, my asthma became unmanageable. I was having asthma attacks at work, severe out taking medication that caused my nose to just start bleeding all the time. And I kept getting infections and lung infections. So unfortunately, I had to give up the job I loved. And I thought what a great time I’ve always wanted to complete my PhD finished my education. This is a great time to go into academia for me, where it’s going to be more accessible given my disabilities. And indeed it was in 2020 though, the COVID 19 pandemic was very scary for all of us, as disabled folks, especially. What it did do is it enabled everybody to work remotely. And that actually made going to class go into school managing my disabilities, way more accessible and I actually thrive I loved being able to participate in that way. Unfortunately, like it sounds both of you. The issue wasn’t my disabilities, it was the way academia responded to them. So when everything shifted sort of shift back in person, I had a PI who is hostile, saying discriminatory things about disabled people not knowing that I would disabled the talking about students and mocking them for having mental illnesses, which I spoke up about and face backlash for. And then when I needed accommodations, and I got them after fighting for them hundreds and hundreds of hours, this pie who is also a supervisor, because of our dual role a student worker, refused to implement the accommodations the university had granted me. So I had got pushed out of that program. And then speaking up for myself, kind of, like you said about the non speaking terms ended up kind of torpedoing an entire that person and the resources they had, and their connections. So navigating that in a professional development environment and trying to find those supportive people, luckily, I have found supportive community and a new PI. That’s supportive, but it’s still tricky. So anyway, thank you.

Jill Oberski
Yeah, the file brings true. Yeah, and d, if you’d like to contribute, please just share whatever you like in the chat whenever you like. And I will read it out for the call for people listening. Yeah, there is it’s so tricky when you’re trying to make your way as a student, but you need people to write recommendation letters, but you need to speak up for yourself and advocate for what you need. But you don’t want to step on any toes like, have you tried to position yourself as like being as non problematic as possible when asking for accommodations or help for things? Or do you have confidence when you’re navigating these conversations? Like I know what I need, I’m gonna get it. Personally, I think I tend to shy away a little bit from the direct confrontation, and I try to like make myself seem as gentle as possible. It seems like I shouldn’t have to do that. But are there ways that you? Yeah, are there ways that you change that like confidence level or the gentlest level?

Heather Ringo
Can I read these comments in the chat? D wrote:

D
I actually found people were more supportive when my health issues became visible, rather than dealing with the invisible form.

Heather Ringo
And yeah, on that note, not quite related to that comment, but I also reverberate with that, depending on it’s so dependent, right, like the both in terms of when visible and invisible disabilities. how people respond to them is dependent on the person, it depends on the context. And similarly, when trying to determine an approach for self advocacy can be challenging for those same reasons, those same complex dynamics. My approach is generally I will start kind and assume best intentions and with educational because of a teacher, right? I’m like, oh, this person probably doesn’t have the information they need. Here’s the information in a approachable, potable format. And oftentimes, that does get results. However, if a person is non responsive to the gentle Colin, at that point, I escalate. And it’s gotten to the point where choosing my battles is really important. And sometimes, for example, a conference is not said we’re not going to provide remote opportunities to participate. Whereas in the past, I’ve fought that and fight for my rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Increasingly, I’m deciding okay, I’m just going to seek out the places that want me.

Jill Oberski
But, yeah, yeah. Which obviously seems inherently unfair, because there are fewer opportunities available. If you’re only choosing the places that are are going to welcome you with open arms. But D says:

D
To be honest, I didn’t fight. I had to prioritize health and take a leave. It slowed me down. But there’s some formal support for that.

Jill Oberski
And I think that’s really important. I was talking to the people from the disability management services and the Student Disability Center. And I asked what the most common form of accommodation was. And basically, it’s just leave, taking time off to deal with hopefully the most severe part of your ailments and then coming back, hopefully with more energy and more health is the best way to do things. D also says:

D
It is unfair and slowed my career for sure.

Jill Oberski
And that makes absolute sense. Yeah. I think it, it doesn’t surprise me that people were more supportive when the health issues became visible, because there’s a different level of stigma I feel for visible disabilities that are health related. And people can like, understand when someone has a broken leg that they can’t walk up the stairs. But if people are struggling to get out of bed, and remember things like I remember, I remember having terrible memory. When I was first starting my bipolar medications and trying to learn in a lab environment when my short term and long term memories were just toast was absolutely miserable. But I couldn’t articulate that to my professor. So I think you might have to handle it differently when self advocating when it’s visible versus invisible. Maybe even requiring more self advocacy for invisible things, because people are less likely to recognize that there is a problem.

Heather Ringo
Yeah, and I think something that D said in the chat, too, it’s unfair. And so in my career, for sure, I agree that there is this, the formal option that the university provides, for example, tends to be held and pushing to help. And I also had to take pills. And it was helpful because I was having health issues that, you know, I needed to focus on and heal at the same time. There are so many cases where we could be accommodated and still keep doing our work and making our progress on our own timeline. And I think that’s one of the things about invisible illnesses to or chronic illnesses is that there’s this assumption that in the broader society, that, Oh, you get sick, it’s like a broken leg, and then you heal and then you’re better. Exactly this expectation that it’s like a magic thing that, okay, you’re gonna take a pill, and then you’ll be good. Your reality of chronic illnesses, especially mental illness. And that was me like my asthma too. And I also have PTSD is that, like, I had healed my PTSD prior to deciding to enroll in the Ph. D program, and then the pandemic hit, and then a bunch of other terrible things happen. And so I have a resurgence of symptoms, right. And even one day to the next, I can feel I’m great today. But real life is happening out there. And traumas happen. We just had trauma here at UC Davis. No kidding. And trigger warning, or, you know, there’s violence, there’s people being harmed actively. And so for me that’s triggering. So now, like you’re saying, my memory is less good, less functional right now than it was prior to this. And then I’ll pass it to D.

Jill Oberski
Great. D says in the chat:

D
I’m bipolar two, and I think mismanagement of this is part of what led to all the other things. It was second on my list of chronic issues.

Jill Oberski
And, yeah, it’s so important to recognize the chronic actually means long term, you know, it often is thrown around as a, I don’t know, a more general word for like, this is a serious problem, but actually, you know, it indicates that it’s a long term thing that isn’t just going to Get Better chronic pain, chronic illness. And I have had conversations with professors who have said things along the lines of, Oh, I understand that you’re depressed. I was depressed once. And then I got better. And that’s not always how that works. So explaining that to people has been tricky sometimes. Because yeah, like you said, I am also a teacher. So my instinct is that, oh, they just don’t have all the information. Let me give them some more information so that they can understand the situation. But I don’t know, when you’re trying to educate people who are superior to you, in the workforce or in the academic mentoring environment. There are some weird ego things that can get in the way

Jill Oberski
Yeah, D, can you elaborate on the mismanagement of your bipolar two? I’m just Yeah. Wondering how it related to the the other conditions that you’ve mentioned.

Jill Oberski
D gained a lot of weight which led to diabetes.

Jill Oberski
Yeah, and diabetes comes with its whole list of associated health conditions like high blood pressure D had…

Jill Oberski
Yeah. Thank you, that really paints the picture of how starting with bipolar two very invisible mental illness led to some more like physiological recognized things that other people could see in you. Yeah. And no, go for it.

Heather Ringo
I think that also speaks to another misconception that folks have about disabled colleagues is that we’ve become, like, almost labeled with whatever if we ourselves with which is very risky with what our diagnosis is, we become that diagnosis. And it’s almost like, that’s us, right? But the reality is that we are often we have comorbidities, right. So like, I have chronic illness, and I have mental illness. And they’re not two separate spheres. So when I’m having that asthma, I have to get on steroids. Steroids are not good for PTSD. And I also have depression. So caffeine is one of the ways that I become functional. I self medicate with caffeine, unfortunately, caffeine also amps up PTSD symptoms. So it is. It’s this balancing act. And so you know, I guess something that’s been helpful in navigating professional development. There are going to be folks who are hostile, there’s kind of I’m going to call on like, hot, warm and cold, right? There’s people who are hot to supporting you, right, that are like, I understand you, I get what you’re saying, you know, maybe they have someone in their family, or maybe they’re disabled. Those people are great. Then you have like warm folks who are like, I want to support you, but I don’t know what’s going on. Or maybe they’re kind of tentative, and then you have cold people who are like, I’m hostile, I have ingrained stigma towards this. And you know, they’re never gonna. And so when I’m navigating professional development or self advocacy, I’m kind of trying to find the hot and the warm people to sort of gravitate towards, and those are the people that may be for example, I would explain in I mean, I don’t want to advocate anyone outing themselves or like having to disclose because actually, the ADA says, we don’t have to do that. Unfortunately, my experience has been a lot of folks don’t understand until you kind of like, share, unfortunately, I’ve had to share like really horrible things to get people to be sympathetic to what’s going on. So I don’t know.

Jill Oberski
Yeah, yeah. I, there were a couple of things you said that really connected with me. So I love the idea of categorizing people. I mean, I guess I already did it, but having categories for like hot people, warm people, cold people, people that will like fight for you people that are like, I agree with you, but they don’t know how to take action to support you. And then the people who just think you’re making a big deal out of nothing or that sort of thing. I, yeah, I’ve been lucky to have more warm to hot people in my professional timeline than cold people. But do you have a good support network right now? Where you are in your PhD?

Heather Ringo
I’m not sure if you’re talking to me, or D. But while he is formulating the response, I’m happy to give mine yeah. Yeah, I’ve actually found that the, if I had one piece of advice, if there’s anyone watching this, who’s maybe in their first year or second year, is actually finding, you know, group of folks, maybe disabled folks, maybe, you know, that are, we’ll say how to warm people, right? The people who are going to be your support team, and communicate with them regularly, make a signal chat, you know, hang out with them, do whatever you need to do, because you’re going to need that because a lot of the world is going to be kind of hostile to your existence. And they can advocate for you. So when there’s something when there’s a cold person, we come across who’s act like actively hurting us, we will band together and kind of support each other through that. And then yeah, now that I feel I have sort of my, my team, my dissertation committee, etc, who I chose specifically for their expertise, but also because they were supportive of me, which honestly, in my opinion, in my experience, and talking to other marginalized folks from various backgrounds, having a supportive committee is if you can find it, one of the most crucial choices and professional development. And D says:

D
Not so much support, since I don’t have a placement, I started a company, there’s a lot of support of that, for that, however. I had to control my work.

Jill Oberski
Yeah, I have also found that having people around me that even if they’re more tangentially related to my work, or research, having supportive people in my community has been so helpful. I didn’t join my lab because I loved the research and it was my top, like, research interest; when I started, I joined the lab because it felt like family. And that has been by far the most important thing to my mental health and physical health over the past six years. But if people don’t have much support, like if D and other people are in the workforce, working remotely, starting companies and not live in the little University bubble any longer because D graduated (congratulations!). Then I have found, (you’re welcome!), I’ve found that Twitter has actually been a really great place for connecting with people in the disability community, both visible and invisible disabilities, people who will be public about their struggles and talk about it. And just knowing you’re not alone in the difficulties you’re experiencing is so important. So that’s part of what keeps me going with sharing my bipolar diagnosis is that I’ve had other people in my field and in my graduate group come up to me and say, I was just diagnosed too, can we talk about things? What have you tried, what works for you? What doesn’t work for you and making, making those connections and helping other people out has been great, because sometimes the external support just is not there.

Jill Oberski
Yeah, UC Davis, for me has been largely supportive. And I’m lucky in that regard. Would you agree or disagree from your side of campus?

Heather Ringo
While D is formulating a response, I’ll go ahead… I’m going to try and be realistic yet also optimistic. For me, I’ve worked because I’ve kind of took this non traditional path. I’ve actually worked in a lot of universities, colleges, high school, I’ve had a lot of experiences. UC Davis has, for me been the least supportive and the least lexical and the most hostile? It’s been a mixed, though it’s not to say everybody is but I’m saying the system itself is kind of. Yeah. But I would say that my like, humanities as a whole, there’s sort of this understanding that humanities is like warm and fuzzy and nice. Not so much. I think that it’s, there are folks in there who are truly supportive and justice minded and others who are not. And I would say that actually, DMS is doing better than they were. It seems like they’ve gotten a new director, who, at least for me, has required less. Previously, they’re making me prove my permanent disabilities every single quarter, which was taking immense amount of time, cost amount of money, I was at the doctor all the time for things I didn’t need to be. At this point. I’m very grateful that they’ve not made me have to re get my paperwork every single quarter. And that’s made a huge difference in my time in the amount of time I have to dedicate sound like professional project. So it’s a mix for me.

Jill Oberski
Absolutely. Yeah, D says:

D
UC Davis was supportive compared to the general workforce, but student health in particular needs a lot of work. The people are friendlier at Davis, but the healthcare is better outside.

Jill Oberski
And that, yeah, I can see that student health I feel like is for more… I don’t know, it’s for general aches and pains, and, you know, birth control placement, and just little, small scale, like, student health concerns and not chronic problems. But there are plenty of students with chronic issues that need to be treated. And I don’t think we are given a very good overview of what our options are in terms of insurances and health care providers. Because we aren’t necessarily restricted to student health, but it’s the only easy option and often the cheapest option. Which is awfully tricky. But I’m very thankful for my UC Davis psychiatrist, so shout out to her.

Heather Ringo
That’s great to hear, actually, and I kind of have a question for both of you as well. Because I’ve heard mixed things about the mental health support at Davis. How fast were you able to get care established?

Jill Oberski
Well, I have definitely heard from other folks that if, during their time at Davis, they develop a concern, or they want to start counseling, or they want to start seeing a psychiatrist, then it takes a very long time to get appointments. And that’s basically unacceptable. If you’re dealing with mental illness, things need to be taken care of straightaway. I was in a very good place with my health and mental health when I started to Davis, and I was very proactive in establishing a relationship with the health center. And so I’ve been using the UC Davis psychiatrist for the past six years, and it’s been great. We meet every couple of months. And I suppose this is also a case of, I’ve had it pretty easy the past few years. But all of the small changes I’ve had to make to my regimen have been relatively easy. I can imagine though, if things are more tumultuous for you, that it would be not enough support. That’s quite easy for me to imagine. D says:

D
My experience may be outdated because I gave up on student health over five years ago. I did complain to them back then.

Heather Ringo
I’d be really curious to hear folks in their first or second year, what their experience is now. Because I at least dealing with students and trying to support students has been very heartbreaking. Because we’re not just — a lot of us, those of us who are doing teaching, for example, are not just students, we’re not just PhD students. We’re also carers, right for students. And part of my mental health exacerbation has been how I feel like I’m… the systems are inadequate for supporting students and therefore I’m, you know, letting them down somehow, and from students I’ve heard that they have very long wait lists that they’ve tried to try and try to get in. And so I am privileged in some ways, because I rely on my husband’s health insurance from his much better job to give me the health care I need. And even I’m having to wait, you know, a month or two, between appointments, which was much better than the three to four months I was having to wait before. Yeah. But it’s not enough. It’s not, you know?

Jill Oberski
Yeah. Yeah, I have been optimistic because I’ve been getting emails from the college about, like the telehealth mental health services that UC Davis is paying for now for students to use. But I don’t know anything about how effective those are, how easy it is to get appointments. But at least they… there seems to be more of an effort post pandemic than pre pandemic in providing mental health support for students. But that’s just a distant impression, I guess. D says:

D
I had a very long wait list myself, it was three to four months for me.

Jill Oberski
And yep, that happens.

Heather Ringo
And that actually brings me to another I don’t know if it’s so much a professional development point. But maybe like a support point for folks who are newly into the system, or maybe haven’t sought care yet, is that you had said you felt like you were able to kind of build a relationship or find that set that up ahead of time, kind of, and I guess that would be my suggestion to, is to, before you need it, start establishing these relationships and connections to these services. And also have backup plans, if possible. And these networks that I was talking about earlier about like having an outside support system, whether that’s in your department, or outside your department, or in your community that you can kind of ask about resources or support.

Jill Oberski
Yeah, I think that’s a great point is trying to recognize when you’re in a good place, because things you know, things get better, and they get worse, and they get better and they get worse. Recognize when you’re in a good place and take the time and energy then to prepare for the times to come that won’t be so good. Because when, for example, I’m in a depressive spiral, I don’t have the energy or the bandwidth or the motivation to repeatedly call doctors and try to set up appointments. And that’s just not going to happen. So it it’s easy to just like want to sit back and enjoy the good times, but there also needs to be like preparation for the the worst season. D says:

D
I have to say both of you have been slash are more proactive than I have been, I want to be more so myself.

Jill Oberski
But I consider my proactivity to be kind of just lucky, if that makes sense. You know, a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to be proactive, because they’re in the trenches.

Heather Ringo
Yeah, and this also kind of speaks to this idea of I would say one of the hardest things to navigate is this expectation that if somebody isn’t getting the care that they need, that it’s their fault. And I guess destigmatizing the fact that yeah, sometimes like especially if you have a mental illness or chronic illness that can get in the way of you getting the care you need as well. So you’re navigating not only like the disability, but also the barriers erected by the institution, that sort of thing. So yeah, the I just want to talk speak back to your saying, I don’t want to invalidate, but I do want to say that I think you’re probably, I mean, my assumption is doing the best you can do with what you have. And I wish that our systems were more collective, less individualistic and less stigmatizing.

Jill Oberski
Absolutely. So I’m wondering in the context of professional development… How do each of you feel about the health insurance question, because trying to move forward in academia, we’re faced with short term contracts, we’re faced with unpredictable outcomes of interviews there’s no guarantee you’re gonna get funding. We’re faced with frequent moves, maybe across the country, between different institutions. So we have to change healthcare systems and all of that. Yeah, I, how, have you managed that? slash, do you see managing that in the future? I have a feeling we’re all going to have similar answers. D says:

D
Right now I have, I’m struggling financially too. My wife’s work provides good health insurance, but it’s below living costs.

Jill Oberski
And I think reliance on a partner’s health insurance is a major, a major safety net that people with disabilities use, is trying to keep the job themselves but having a partner that can reliably have health insurance or so that one person always does is an absolute necessity.

Heather Ringo
Yeah, I’m very privileged in this regard, I literally could not survive or get my health care or anything if it weren’t for my husband’s work. And earlier, D had talked about like having to work on top of school like on top. And that’s been my experience as well. I also have another job that I’ve taken a break from right now. But this is going to be an annoying answer. And I’m sorry to get on my soapbox of my union spiel. But my other workplace, that has a functional union, is has successfully won us a cost of living adjustment, is currently working on establishing better health insurance for even adjuncts. And I think my optimistic self is that we, just for the UAW 2065, which is our union here at UC Davis, we just elected a reformer to our presidency, Shawn Fain, we just turned over our local union leadership to folks who are specifically fighting for disability protections. And in about two years, we’re going to have to negotiate a new contract. We also have currently you have contract protections specifically for disability, for health coverage for all these things. That if you face for example, if you’re being pressured to go on PELP, or the thing about PELP, by the way, for those you both probably know, but folks might not know is when you go on PELP you lose your insurance or you have to pay for it, which– and you also lose your income. So you can’t really pay for it. So you kind of, disabled folks, unless they have a spouse, just are—I’m not going to swear—but they’re left out in the cold. And so there’s, if you’re in a place where you feel like okay, I’m being discriminated against, or my disability is making it so I’m gonna have to drop out or whatever, or I’m being pushed to PELP, contact your union reps, ASAP for UAW 2065 and establish that relationship and file a grievance, document everything, every single email that you have, communicating with your supervisor, CC yourself on your private email, take records of everything, if you have a meeting that’s only voice, take notes, collect everything, date it, save it, and folks will work with you to advocate for your protection.

Jill Oberski
Yes, and that doesn’t just go for UC Davis, if people are listening who are at other places, see if you have a union, get involved. Regardless, document everything, you can probably take it to HR if nobody else. And D says:

D
Regarding the relying on spouses during PELP, the Planned Educational Leave, I wasn’t married during my first PELP, I had to find work.

Jill Oberski
Which, I didn’t realize—I’ve never taken PELP myself, I’ve been lucky enough to not need to do that here at Davis—that you lose your insurance.

Heather Ringo
You’ll have to pay I don’t know what the cost is. Now you have to pay out of pocket to keep it which last I checked was like $1,400 or something like that, basically half of our paycheck or more. And yeah, and you lose income. So you’re giving up income and you’re giving up also access to most university services. So…

Jill Oberski
That’s insanity. It’s when you need the most support and they’re taken away. Okay. Anyway, D says:

D
It’s part of why I started a small business. Once it gets going I hope to provide for myself, and then later employees, with good health care and disability insurance.

Jill Oberski
Amazing. Yes, okay, disability solidarity. Love this. We’re coming up on the last five minutes or so. Oh, Uh, do I want to ask an optimistic or pessimistic question? How… Let’s go with… What advice do you have for people who are thinking about grad school thinking about beyond grad school trying to work in the fields of university life and research and academia in general, what would be like your top thing that has helped you thus far that you would advise other people take with them? D says,

Jill Oberski
Have a supportive mentor. Absolutely agree, 100%. Even if that mentor is like, in addition to your mentor on paper, have a supportive mentor, build a network of mentors that you can talk to and work with, in order to best support you from five different angles, you know.

Heather Ringo
I agree with that 100%. My mentor is not like this rock star expert in my field, but he’s a kind, supportive person who also is able to help me sort of navigate the terrain and use their power of tenure, which is powerful, albeit less so continuously, but to kind of advocate and make connections for me. And then that sense of community that I already mentioned, outside. I would also say this job, like, academia, I don’t remember who said it, but I’ve heard it 1000 times and I agree, it won’t love you back. You could do everything perfect, you can mask your illness, you could do all the things and it’s still going to treat you like trash. So for me, it’s been crucial to not make my identity be this. I can do research, I can love my work, there’s so many ways to do research, right? It doesn’t have to be this, like, very narrow, like our one institution… it could be, if you find your, your niche, you know. But having an identity outside, building relationships outside, you know, doing mutual aid, keeping with your hobbies, that’s the hardest thing to do when you’re depressed or have a mental illness sometimes, is doing the self care things that you love. But finding the time for love, and there will always be more work in academia, they will grind you down and like, you know, give you 80 hours of work per week. Finding that special time and treating it as sacred and doing the things you love, going hiking or doing crafting or playing video games or whatever it is.

Jill Oberski
Mm-hmm. And tell some people No sometimes. D says:

D
I love the book radical self acceptance.

Jill Oberski
And I’m gonna have to check that out. I’ll link that in the show notes. D says:

D
It’s called Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha.

Jill Oberski
So I look forward to reading that. For my answer, I guess, I would agree that sometimes finding a supportive mentor and supportive people who are further ahead than you in the professional development journey is sometimes more helpful than finding community at your current level. Because you can band together with your friends all you like, and say, This is great. I have people I can connect with. But if you don’t have other people further up in the system that are helping you make those changes that are going to help you succeed, you’re going to be stuck with like an army of solidarity people with you to to support you, but… it would be harder to make changes in in your system and your trajectory without people further along to help mentor you.

Jill Oberski
And to that end, I want to say finding a truly supportive mentor is very difficult thing. And when you are looking for a mentor, for example, to join their lab or their research group, it’s so important to talk to all of the people around them and not just them. How do their students feel about them? When they’re not in the room? How do their students feel about them? How do their coworkers feel about them? Yeah, because a lot of times meeting people one on one, it’s great, it’s a delight and then, you, you hear about them behind the scenes and that changes drastically. So try to get multiple perspectives when evaluating potential advisors I think would be my, my main piece of advice.

Jill Oberski
All right, any final words before we end our call for today? Oh, yes. D says:

D
How do you deal with disclosing specifics in general? Some people ask simply “what can I do to help” without asking for specifics. I find that pretty helpful.

Jill Oberski
Yeah, I think that’s a great idea because people want to help, but they don’t know how. And if you give them tasks like, Could you please give me a call tomorrow morning at eight to make sure I’m out of bed? Or could you please come over and keep me company while I do laundry and clean up my house a little bit? Or…? Yeah, concrete tasks are so much easier for people unfamiliar with your situation to latch onto. That’s a great point. Anything else before we end?

Jill Oberski
All right. Thank you both so much for joining me today and talking about these things.

D
Thank you for including me.

Jill Oberski
I’d love to continue the conversation some other time. I think that would be a lot of fun and very useful. Did either of you want to promote any of your own scholarship or resources or your business? Maybe?

D
Not yet.

Jill Oberski
Okay.

Heather Ringo
Just one more, that’s not my business or my scholarship, but just promoting, even if you don’t want to do any work or volunteer at the Union, do reach out to your representatives. If you’re at UC Davis, that’s Samantha Abbott, who leads our local chapter now. And if you want to read my—you talked earlier, Jill, about finding community through like Twitter, for example. I don’t know how much longer Twitter’ll last, but if you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m @FeralHeather, and I share a lot of resources relative to like disability and academia. And that sort of thing.

Jill Oberski
Amazing. Okay, thank you so much. I’m going to end the recording here.

Jill Oberski
Today’s topic is university logistics and disability accommodations. Basically, we’ll be discussing how managing an unpredictable condition is different for students, postdocs, job applicants, and faculty.

Jill Oberski
Many of the offices and pieces of paperwork and so on that we’re going to talk about today are specific to UC Davis, but they will hopefully be a great jumping-off point for anyone else to consider when starting a conversation with their own institution.

Jill Oberski
I spoke with several offices at UC Davis–the Student Disability Center, Disability Management Services, and Academic Affairs–to get a sense of how these divisions differ and/or cooperate. My guests were hesitant to be recorded, so what I’ve done is package the information I gleaned into a brand-new writeup. I wrote this presentation in the format of an interview, but just consider it a performance; this is not the same as the conversation we had. Reading with me today is _____. Can you introduce yourself quick, using your own voice?

Mia Lippey
Sure! My name is Mia Lippey, I use she her pronouns. I’m a graduate student researcher at the University of California Davis in the entomology graduate group.

Jill Oberski
Awesome, thank you so much. So let’s get started.

Mia Lippey
So, can I get an overview of what the different departments at UC Davis cover? Of course this is going to vary at other institutions, but I know at UC Davis, there’s the student disability center, otherwise known as the SDC; disability management services, which is DMS; and academic affairs too.

Jill Oberski
So, disability management services is under the umbrella of human resources, so they work with anyone who has an employment relationship with the university, so that includes volunteers, academic employees, faculty, TAs, graduate student researchers, and any staff employee. Also fellowships. So we help with accommodations in regards to those jobs.

Mia Lippey
What about the student disability center?

Jill Oberski
The SDC works with students– undergraduate, graduate, professional students. Their primary focus is academic accommodations, but truly most things on the UC Davis campus are considered academic programs. That said, there is a separate office that handles housing accommodations. Those go through Housing and Dining. So everything that concerns students goes through the student disability center, but if you have two roles on campus, like a graduate student who is also employed as a TA, you would probably get your accommodations through both the SDC and disability management services.

Mia Lippey
Gotcha. And then there’s academic affairs. Is that just for faculty?

Jill Oberski
Basically, yeah. Academic Affairs is also under the umbrella of human resources, and it’s like the human resources for all academic faculty. So the central campus office personnel unit. They’re involved in recruitment, appointment, advancement, any disciplinary things that need to happen. But they sometimes get involved with academic related disability accommodations, especially if there are other HR related things in that situation, like family connections or other special requirements that get more complicated. Academic affairs is also in charge of leaves, like for sabbaticals, medical leaves, disability leaves, and parental leaves for people who are starting families. They have a pretty great academic work life program for people who are having kids specifically. And they also have training programs that teach faculty and department chairs and other academics exactly what academic affairs does and what they offer.

Mia Lippey
That’s great. And how do postdocs factor into all this? They’re paid employees with contracts, but they’re not students exactly.

Jill Oberski
Postdocs, just like faculty, usually fall under academic affairs and disability management services, in their employment sense, but a few types of appointments are overseen by the graduate studies division. So generally speaking, because they’re university employees, disability management services would help them with accommodations.

Mia Lippey
Oh, ok. How about people who aren’t yet a part of the university? Like prospective students and visiting professors and faculty job applicants?

Jill Oberski
Prospective students and students just attending events on campus should talk to the student disability center, but that might be different at other campuses, even within the UC system. So the SDC here is under Student Affairs, but it might be under Academic Affairs, or even diversity offices, which are under lots of different places.

Mia Lippey
Gotcha. Thanks. I would love to hear more about job applicants, like what sorts of accommodations can be granted to people who are in the process of interviewing. For example, I know that faculty job interviews are really intense, typically over the span of a couple of days, meeting after meeting including meals. One faculty I know had to request breaks in order to go pump because she was breastfeeding at the time of the interview. So yeah, what accommodations are there for applicants visiting campus?

Jill Oberski
There are a bunch of possibilities that are listed on the disability management services website, which I’ll link in the show notes. But some of them include having the printed interview questions ahead of time, adjusted lighting, making sure the location is physically accessible, maybe scheduling the interview at a certain day or time. They could also bring an attendant with them to the meeting, or request a scent free environment if perfumey scents are distracting to them, that sort of thing. And of course the more standard services like assistive devices and interpreters. But you can also make special requests and they might allow for those too. Also if they do happen to be taking care of a child or breastfeeding specifically, there’s a program at UC Davis that covers the cost if they need to bring their child to keep them close, or pay for childcare or something like that. So bringing super important people along is definitely something that can be discussed.

Mia Lippey
Great, that’s awesome.

Mia Lippey
Can we talk a little bit about taking leaves? Like disability leave? What does that look like for students versus faculty and staff?

Jill Oberski
So, students can do what we call the planned educational leave program (or “pelp”) for one academic quarter, and then if they have a disability and need to be on leave for longer, then the SDC can do that as an accommodation. There’s also situations when the student needs to go on leave in the middle of the quarter, for instance, and then the student disability center would probably help with that too. Any sort of exception to policy, that sort of thing. To go on PELP in the first place, students just file a form with the registrar. It doesn’t have to involve disability offices in any way.

Jill Oberski
Postdocs and faculty at UC Davis can use sick leave for illness, medical appointments, childbearing, disability, and the illness or bereavement of their close family. That’s what’s called Family and Medical Leave, humorously abbreviated as FML.

Jill Oberski
For postdocs, you’re eligible for twelve days of paid sick leave per 12-month appointment. You can also get other leave for childbearing and so on. But mainly you have to talk to your faculty mentor, or whoever is your direct supvervisor, in order to arrange these things, because they are in charge of your paycheck.

Jill Oberski
For faculty, they don’t accrue sick leave over time like other academic staff. The process for leave starts with their department. So departments have the ability to approve leaves that are seven days or less. If it’s over seven days, but less than 30, then the Dean has to approve, and if it’s over a month, then it goes all the way to the Vice Provost. And early career faculty are eligible to take two quarters of paid leave if need be. After ten years of service then faculty are eligible for a full year of paid leave. Also what many employees do in cases of emergency medical leave is sign up for short term or long term disability. So that first part of taking leave initially is often just a starting point to support the employee until that disability kicks in and they can come back to work in a less intense way. There’s also possibilities for leave extensions if for example you sign up for disability insurance when you sign up for benefits. You’d be granted extended leave, but not necessarily get paid by the university–likely only disability benefits. Probably better than nothing, though.

Mia Lippey
So obviously there’s a huge difference between taking a year off for medical leave and taking a year off for sabbatical. But how do those differ logistically?

Jill Oberski
Well, all leaves are processed through the same online portal called MyInfoVault. If it’s a medical leave, usually the healthcare provider has to sign a form saying that the employee needs the leave, so they certify that the individual is actually unable to work. Of course that isn’t needed for taking sabbatical but you use the same system to make that request.

Mia Lippey
Is it common for people to max out their paid leave?

Jill Oberski
Not for a whole year–often it’s a few weeks, or sometimes a quarter. And like I said, it’s sometimes a holdover until disability kicks in. And you know, it just depends what’s going on and how complicated the situation is. But those medical details are usually kept on file at a lower level and won’t accompany the leave request all the way up the approval levels. The request will just say “medical leave forms on file with XYZ person.”

Mia Lippey
So that kind of medical leave covers all physical and psychological emergencies, you just need a health care provider signature.

Jill Oberski
That’s right. The treating provider is certifying they’re unable to work.

Mia Lippey
How does that relate to planned educational leave (or PELP) for students? Do you need a doctor’s signature to do that? Or can you say I’m taking leave for my own private reasons.

Jill Oberski
If a student is asking for an accommodation to extend the one quarter PELP that the university provides, then they need to have a letter from a clinician supporting it. But even though that paperwork is necessary, it is pretty flexible what is accepted, because in a lot of situations, taking a leave is the best accommodation possible for someone to, you know, be back in a position where they’re going to thrive with their education. Something related to this is a minimum progress waiver, which allows a student to continue in school but allows them to do it part time, rather than a full load of credits.

Mia Lippey
Right. Okay. So the general planned educational leave at UC Davis is just something you can sign up for by yourself that doesn’t require a medical sign off.

Jill Oberski
Yeah. But if they get SDC accommodations, undergraduates can take even multiple quarters off. But in graduate and professional schools, things are more complicated, depending on what the program looks like, coursework and so on, and where you are in the process.

Mia Lippey
That makes sense. Probably something you would have to coordinate with the chair of your graduate group and/or your PI if you were a graduate student or a postdoc then. So, let’s say you’re a grad student, or postdoc, or faculty member, and you took a medical leave. Then you have to transition back into work when you come back to work. How does that work?

Jill Oberski
Academic Affairs has a form called a Return To Work form that their health provider fills out that says “this person is able to come back to work now”, with or without accommodation, maybe without restrictions, like they can just get back to work, or the doctor might say they have some limitations. And the duration of those limitations. That’s when the employee should work together with their Chair or Supervisor and Disability Management Services to find accommodations that work.

Mia Lippey
Ok, I was doing some reading on this. So if I get it right, basically everyone talks to everyone else in human resources: DMS connects with Academic Affairs and the employee’s department, plus they reach out to the leaves department, where they do the behind the scenes work to put the employee on leave status. That Return To Work letter might have restrictions or limitations that are permanent or ongoing, but it could also say temporary for a certain length of time, so then there is a sort of back-and-forth between the departments to go over what their job description is, what their duties are, and what accommodations would help them return to work. It’s really an interactive ongoing conversation about what will work, because they want something that will work for the employee so they can safely return and be able to be successful. And they want it to work for the department too of course.

Jill Oberski
Exactly. So the dialogue with DMS is ongoing, because it might change, like if it was temporary limitations for like three months, DMS will probably want a 3-month update to see what has happened, are they continuing, or have they improved? And so the accommodations could change too. DMS is the mediator and then it’s kind of seeing what the person wants and needs, what the department is able to accommodate based on their essential job functions, and then trying to find a happy medium. All things that could help them, like assistive technologies and a lot of times this might involve some work from home or remote work.

Mia Lippey
So, throughout that process, are the details of, say, said medical condition private to the department? Are they private to DMS? Or who knows what?

Jill Oberski
In general, all the university units don’t need the diagnosis. They just need what the limitations are. What are they having difficulty doing on the job? Is it concentrating, focus? This is also important because the same diagnosis impacts different people differently. So what really counts is the limitations and what the department hears about is the limitations. DMS keeps everything confidential, but it’s also possible that some limitations themselves are really, super specific–like they could “give away” the diagnosis if you read the whole list–so if they are that detailed then DMS will probably meet with the employee first and go over the limitations to determine what information the employee is comfortable with sharing before sharing the whole description.

Mia Lippey
Gotcha. From the broadest perspective, what are the most common accommodations that DMS arranges for people? Is it basically the same list on the DMS website we mentioned earlier?

Jill Oberski
Yeah, that’s a general one. But I think the most common is actually just taking leave. DMS might recommend that the department provide a period of leave so they can heal and come back. But we also use accommodations like assistive technology, like dictation software and screen reading software, and a mobility assistance shuttle both for longer term or shorter term. Oh, and sit stand desks, but actually a lot of departments are just implementing those for everybody, so we wouldn’t do it as an accommodation if it’s just becoming a standard in their department.

Mia Lippey
Yeah, but having that list of possible accommodations I think is really helpful. Because people don’t necessarily know what’s out there, or know what they might find really helpful, unless they see an example and get an idea. Then they can take that example to DMS and include it in those conversations and negotiations they are having with their department.
For this ongoing conversation, who from the department is part of that conversation? I figure if it’s for a job applicant, it’s going to be the search committee, or the search committee chair more specifically. What about if there is a new faculty being onboarded?

Jill Oberski
That is most likely going to be handled by the department chair if it’s a new faculty that just accepted the job. They might say “here are some things I need,” or “I have some limitations,” and then the department might contact DMS if they need some assistance. But I think in most cases the department will be pretty accommodating, and if there is pushback of some kind from the department chair, or people feel there is discrimination happening, then maybe at that point they will involve DMS. I asked my department’s chief administrative officer and she sounded pretty surprised that a new hire would make DMS their first step to address the situation.

Mia Lippey
Mm-hmm, but visiting disability services first might also be a safer, more comfortable way to start the conversation for some people.

Jill Oberski
Mm-hmm.

Mia Lippey
I guess the last things I want to ask about are how does medical leave impact the tenure clock? Do accommodations extend the tenure clock? Like I know there’s the Work Life program, if you have a baby, you can get an extra year or something. What does that look like?

Jill Oberski
There’s actually a very specific policy about that at UC Davis, and it’s called stopping the clock, but it’s really more extending the clock. The first reason is childbearing or child rearing. The second one is a serious health condition, including disability or bereavement. So that’s pretty significant. And the third is like some significant circumstance outside one’s control.

Mia Lippey
Great. The academic personnel manual has this policy and the other ones so I’ll be sure to link those in the show notes, although they’re exclusive to UC Davis of course. I think UC Davis is really up there in terms of support mechanisms for folks going through the advancement process.

Jill Oberski
Yes, it’s not perfect, but definitely better than a lot of universities. They even have sample language to use for supporting deferrals, postponements, childbearing, etc., so those things aren’t described negatively in any letter that someone is writing. Any additional time on the clock is not a negative thing, Academic Affairs doesn’t look at the time it took, they just look at the body of work that’s required for tenure, and departments should too.

Mia Lippey
OK, one final question, I guess: How much pushback is there typically from departments in terms of negotiating accommodations and extensions? Are department chairs resistant to providing support? Or are they generally pretty willing to adopt things?

Jill Oberski
I think generally, the departments want to help the faculty member, because DMS gets a lot of people who were referred by their department to talk about solutions. But sometimes the question comes up from departments about if accommodations are temporary, like they can offer an arrangement for a temporary amount of time, and we have to remind them that these are temporary arrangements. And Academic Affairs does have regular presentations and workshops it gives to department chairs about how to manage the accommodation process and other issues they have to deal with as chair. Almost every chair is new to being chair, because it’s a rotational leadership role every 3-5 years, so it’s Academic Affairs’ job to make sure that chairs know who to contact in all kinds of situations.

Mia Lippey
And for students? Are departments pretty willing to coordinate accommodations?

Jill Oberski
Generally departments are very supportive. And if you’re an undergraduate, it might not be really noticeable, they might talk with their advisor but that’s about it. Even when you get into graduate and professional schools, there are still a lot of student resources out there that apply even though you’re older and working. The issue is only when a student is out so long that their academic program is impacted. And that’s really rare and the SDC spends a lot of time on those cases. But the general consensus among the disability and HR folks I talked to is that the general support is absolutely there, that the instructor and everybody is on the same team with the students looking for a successful outcome.

Mia Lippey
That’s great. Thanks so much for presenting these resources with me!

Jill Oberski
Yeah, thank you!