2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The hierarchical nature of STEM academic programs creates a substantial interpersonal power differential between graduate students and faculty. Research advisors often control a graduate student’s funding, research topic, and acceptance to their graduate program and have significant influence over a student’s career prospects. Understanding the power differential between graduate students and faculty offers the STEM community multiple opportunities to positively impact the academic journey, professional advancement, health, wellbeing, and lives of graduate students. Data was collected through two phases of qualitative interviews with seven disabled STEM graduate students. This paper presents an amalgamation of the participants' paraphrased quotes from interviews regarding their experiences in the form of a poem. This composition reveals a spectrum of interpersonal interaction between graduate students and faculty including, supportive interactions (listening, advocating, affirming, openness, and flexibility), and violence (harassment, discrimination, gaslighting/denial, outing, and abuse). This paper explores harmful interpersonal practices that need to be interrupted and supportive practices that can be modeled. Additionally this paper highlights the need for institutional structures to provide better support and accountability to faculty so that the norms of STEM graduate education can change.